Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and 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 have two gentlemen who, honestly, they sound like movie stars, they look like rock stars and their food is just from the stars. It's amazing Jason Subosinski and Etkin Tekin, the president and CEO respectively, and co-founders of the booming Haven Hot Chicken, winners of last year's Perfect Pitch competition, and they've just been exploding since then doing some incredible things. Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1: 0:55

So first of all, talk to me a little bit about your growth. I know, Etkin, you and I talked about this recently at a trade show and it's crazy to where you've been, to where you're at. Talk to me about that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:07

So I think the first time we met in person was at Fast Casual Executive Summit last year, and we had four locations in October of 2023. Since then, we've opened five units in less than a year, for a total of nine. I think the foundation of our ability to grow has been investing in our people, building up that team pipeline and making sure that we have fantastic store level leadership, really strong training programs, establishment of a learning management system and then having a fantastic tool that allows us to constantly monitor how we're performing at each of the locations, which is where Ovation comes in.

Speaker 1: 1:43

That jump is really big. As you've been looking at it, what are some lessons that you wish you could have gone back when you were your first location and said man Edkin, here's what you should do differently in this to help grow.

Speaker 3: 1:58

How long is this podcast?

Speaker 2: 2:00

Yeah, I'll let Jason jump in as well, but I think that maybe not for the first location, but for the second and the third one of the biggest lessons we learned was that we kind of let the tail wag the dog. We allowed the construction and physical space timeline dictate when we moved forward with opening the location, when it should have been completely dependent on the readiness of the teams that were going to operate. I would say that's the single biggest learning that we've had, and we've since corrected it and we're much better at opening new locations now.

Speaker 3: 2:31

Yeah, I'll second that with. It's all about the people. You'll hear us say this a million times Our biggest challenge is people. Our biggest asset is people. Training our crew and making sure they're at the level where we need them to be to do what we need them to do in order to hit the brand the way it has to be hit that's our biggest challenge. If I can go back in time to store 001 and do it all over again, I would just train five times more, just to be more. Really, training is just everything.

Speaker 1: 3:04

I went to a restaurant recently and I saw like the employee backdrop and it said like their training poster was in the background and it said something like positivity is contagious or something. And the guy taking my order was one of the most grumpiest curmudgeons and it was just like this juxtaposition of like wait a second, I'm like so confused here because they obviously have missed something, when that is the number one thing on their training poster. And this guy is cranky, right, like how do you prevent that? How do you train that out of people? How do you? What do you look for when you're hiring?

Speaker 3: 3:45

I think that hiring for attitude over skill is paramount right now, making sure that you have the right people coming in.

Speaker 3: 3:53

One grumpy person can bring the entire staff down on a random day. We often talk about culture, everyone talks about culture. We can't talk about culture and then expect the culture to be in the store on the ground level with the guest. We have to have certain standards that we set and then we have to let the leaders and the people who are in those stores on the ground we have to let them create their own culture and by doing that they're going to adhere to it that much better. If you have that grumpy team member, eventually they're going to get weeded out, and probably pretty quickly, because nobody wants to work with someone like that, nobody wants to pull tips with somebody like that. We're trying to create guidelines for culture and guidelines for attitude, but we can't go in there and tell them you know command and control, that you have to act a certain way. We can just set that standard and then they have to uphold it themselves and keep each other accountable.

Speaker 2: 4:52

You know we believe in clarity, competency and control at the store level. We want to give our store level leadership as much autonomy as they can so they are empowered to make decisions even going to legends and hospitality or team engagement budgets or the ways in which they're allowed to or given control over how they engage with their teams what fits and what makes sense for them. There aren't kind of catch-all programs that we apply forced fun to. Forced fun is probably my least favorite part of my corporate career, and so one of the sentiments coming into running our own company was no forced fun, we're going to do things.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Right, I mean that's. That's definitely one of those things where, when I look at these different things that companies do to try to like be cool, but they're like, but you have to show up it's crazy. I actually had someone the other day who did a big company party and they said, hey, plus ones are invited. And this person actually sent in a bill for their plus one and said, hey, you got to pay my plus one, their hourly rate, and it's like. The point is that, like, we're here to grow together and to like have more fun together. Not like this isn't necessarily a work thing, this is like a people to people thing and it's interesting to see. I like that idea of you have a budget that the locations use to like engage with each other.

Speaker 3: 6:19

Yeah, they get a monthly budget that they're able to spend in any way they want. You want to go buy coffee or do you want to do save up your budget? We've had a couple of gms save their budget over several months and then do a big gift for each of their team members at the store. That's it's whatever you want to do for engagement to get people you know excited and into what they're doing. I think a big part of this for us that's worked really well is we're obsessed with the quality of our food, obsessed with it. We're obsessed with the texture crispy, crunchy, juicy, spicy, delicious that's our mantra.

Speaker 3: 6:56

Our teams make everything in store. It's a three-day process to get the chicken from when it comes in raw to out the door in a bun for the guest right. They know how much goes into it. There's a lot of pride in that process and there's a lot of pride when we get great reviews, guest feedback. That pride is something that I can't manufacture. They have to live it, be in it, see what it takes to put the product out the way it needs to be put out, and when they get feedback that it's delicious and people love it and they're trying it themselves, their friends, their family are into it. That's something that you can't really match. I mean, pride to me is maybe the number one thing for culture building. So as we watch our team members get involved in the process of making our food, getting it out to their guests and feeling that pride in doing that, that's also a huge part of our culture and it makes people happy. Yeah, and that's part of what we want to do, that's part of our mission.

Speaker 1: 7:56

I think that what you bring up about being obsessed with the food is interesting, because I've been to some places where it's so inconsistent both the food and, quite frankly, the service, right Person to person. And I think that the two things that you've talked about really are training the people right To make sure that you get a consistent experience of service, and obsession about the food to make sure there's a consistent experience with the food. And, jason, you and I were in that room. I can't remember what show that was. It was, oh, rftc, that's right, that was my 100th trade show I've been to with Ovation, wow, so yeah, which is like.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I know people are like, do you ever work? And I'm like, no, I just eat good food and conferences. But in that room I don't know if you remember, but there's a guy talking about trends and talking about how the most important thing nowadays is consistency, because guests want to make sure they're getting what they're paying for, right, right. And I guess, as you're looking at your business and you're looking at I love that we've talked about some different tactics to improve the culture which improve the guest experience, but are there any other tactics that you would say are helping you to improve the guest experience or improve that consistency.

Speaker 3: 9:08

Well, I'll just layer on quickly that I agree Consistency is absolutely key, but I know a ton of businesses that are consistent. I want to be consistently great. Yes, and that's even more important, we look at and, trust me, we screw up I would use a different word, but I don't know if you bleep things out. We're human, we're growing, we screw up, and we screw up a lot at times, especially when, when things get piled on and I want to call it out, we call them opportunities. Ovation has been a great way for us to get the feedback on that. We also use Google, we use Yelp and we jump on, we respond, we learn, we humanize. That's our biggest way of learning right now is getting the reviews from our guests and going out there and sharing them with our entire team. We're not hiding them. We're going out there and saying okay, we recognize we did not deliver what we were supposed to. The first thing we apologize. That's the second thing. Typically, if it's something that's pretty bad, we're not asking for your money, so we're going to give you a refund, because this is about building a brand, not about making money at the end of the day right now for us and always. And then try to reconnect and what we've found is that when we can do that connection, it does again humanize us from being just like this brand.

Speaker 3: 10:30

Now we have nine stores. People consider us big. You and I know we're not very big, but when we connect, it's a person, it's one of the general managers or an AGM on the other side connecting and saying I am a person, I want to recognize that we screwed up. I want to refund you, but more so, I'd like to get you back in. I'd like to figure out a way that we can make this right so you can see what we're meant to be doing. Sometimes that ends up being better for us. Sometimes one of these total mess-ups ends up creating a guest that drops the other brands that they're going to because they've now gotten to know us on a different level, and I think that's the opportunity that really makes it special. That's one of the best tools we have, because we want our core guests to come more often. We want repeats. This business has high churn Everybody does in the QSR and we want to reduce that, and a great way to do that is just to connect with our guests.

Speaker 2: 11:26

Yeah, I think it's recovering guests and again this happens at the store level, you know, monitored by, you know, district managers and our co-founders as well. But we also want to give our teams the opportunity to make good or great experiences, just completely over the top. Jason last year had us all read Unreasonable Hospitality. We're big Will Goddard fans. It's important to remember the lessons that are distilled in that book and it's something that we spread to the store level leadership teams and we literally we have a button in our point of sale system called Legends in Hospitality and this is an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 11:58

When our guest experience lead, the person at the register, really connects with a first-time guest or a repeat guest, they have the ability to do something for them. They can give them a banana pudding if they haven't had one before. You know if they're talking through what heat level a guest should be getting for their sandwich or their tendies. They're able to provide an extra tender for them at the other heat level that they were unsure about, just to give that added spark and connection. That we're not just a transaction, right. We want that full experience as a QSR. That interaction opportunity is often only 60 to 90 seconds, right, and so we want to make it impactful and we want to make it last, and so, again, I really think a lot of it comes down to empowering our teams to make decisions that we want them to make. We're not afraid of giving away products in order to make a guest really happy, Like that's such a no-brainer.

Speaker 3: 12:49

We actually track comps and if your store is below, like what was the last one we did, you had opportunities. Did you miss the opportunity, the mistake, to correct something? If you're not comping at all, what's going on? Something's not catching. So we do look at those comps. We're typically looking at transactions like overall transactions.

Speaker 1: 13:18

In a week.

Speaker 3: 13:30

I know that there's opportunities out there and this, in my mind, it's marketing, this is brand building, this is how we. I'd rather pay it that way and in kind to someone than go out there and spend big money on out of home.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Yeah, I'm thinking about this. Just yesterday I went to a burrito place and they were like, hey, here's free chips and guac. And I got home and literally the burrito was wrong. Like they gave me the wrong burrito and I was so mad. But then I was like, but they gave me chips and guac and it was almost like it's like did you know? Like were you planning on screwing this up? Because, like I literally would go leave my bad review, but they gave me free chips and guac and so, anyway, I had that pro.

Speaker 3: 14:11

I like to say I like they gave you something you didn't expect. We talk about unreasonable hospitality, but in that book and this is something we preach all the time service is when you get something you paid for your expectation. Expectation is it's a product, it's a service. This is what I get Hospitality. Hospitality is when you receive something that you didn't expect. That's when you make that crease in someone's brain. Right, that's when it sticks. That's when it becomes something where they're talking about hey, I had this experience where I got free shifts in Guac. Maybe next time you talk about that, you won't mention that the burrito was wrong, because you're like ah, it's okay, but like the fact that you're talking about it now, you didn't plug whoever the burrito place was. But in general, if you're out there like, this is how we market. We exceed expectations, we blow minds of our guests, so they're talking about what we do to others.

Speaker 1: 15:07

And had the burrito been right, I'd be mentioning this location, but you're making me hungry. I want a burrito now. Well, I see. The other thing, too, is that your team obviously cares. I mean, you respond to every single piece of feedback innovation and your score is incredibly high and your response times are incredibly low. And so I think one of the questions I have is like, how has Ovation been helpful for you guys? Because you obviously created a culture that cares and, like in the words of Will Guder, like you've made it cool to care, but how has Ovation helped in? Has helped Haven?

Speaker 3: 15:42

I think it comes down to what I was saying before the pride on a work that goes into the product, and so when we get a review or an opportunity, we'll call it back from Ovation saying I got home and there's no sauce in the bag. It's like you know what? Our chicken is delicious, but if you have it without our ranch, you're really missing something. So I just want to use the word. But I can empathize, because I've gotten orders and they've not had sauce in the bag and it. It pisses me off. I've got three kids. Sometimes I'll make an order and it's wrong, and some of my kids are young, so that that ends their entire evening and like, hence, your entire evening, exactly. So I get it. I get how disappointing it can be. Our product's not the cheapest either, and so when we fail on a quality or we fail on putting something in the bag, it really hits. And that pride comes in when the GM and AGM and it used to be literally me responding to every single ovation and then around store three, we said, okay, that's insane, we have to do other things. And now we put it in there in the hands of the leaders of the stores and I think it's better because they can literally say it's me, melanie, I'm at store one and I've had people respond this is AI and we'll write back. No, it's me, melanie, and I watch all of these because I'm obsessed with this. So I'll jump in and say, hey, it's Jason, I'm one of the co-founders, melanie's the GM and then people will say, oh, I had a bet with my wife that you guys were AI and it's really hilarious I Hilarious.

Speaker 3: 17:23

I think they're jumping in and they're responding quickly for a couple of reasons. Number one is pride. They have pride in what they've created in the store and they want to make sure that, hey, I can jump on this opportunity, I can create a better guest experience, I can fix what we've done wrong, but also to be out there and honest. Like we use an aggregate ovation score as part of our bonus for our team leaders and we look at things because sometimes people will give a bad score because they didn't like the way something was priced. Okay, that's okay. We're not for everyone. We have to recognize that too, but attaching it to your bonus is a really great way for us to say this is really important. Guess first, like every day. This is really important Guess first. Like every day, it's guess first. That's been the tool, yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:13

Yeah, I think, making sure that, again, all of our store level leadership their bonus, is predicated on innovation ratings, but also on developing their teams right and allowing them to grow within the organization, so making sure that they're getting people into different training roles and leadership roles.

Speaker 2: 18:28

And then I think the other thing that can contribute to that pride is that we try to celebrate success as often as we can. One of the most active Slack channels that we have as an organization is the shout outs and celebrations channel. We talk about the guest wins that we have every day. Somebody will drop a screenshot of the latest phenomenal feedback that we've every day. Somebody will drop a screenshot of the latest phenomenal feedback that we've gotten from a guest and that fuels the team our monthly all-hands. Also, we celebrate that success and we walk through and celebrate stores that will go dozens and dozens of reviews in a row at five stars and they're competitive with each other and really want to get really high average ratings. And so, in addition to giving them the ability to do something about it when a recovery is needed, but then also recognizing the hard work that their team puts in and the passion and commitment they have for delivering a great guest experience alongside the premium product that we offer.

Speaker 1: 19:23

Awesome. I love that. And, by the way, have there been any like changes that you've made at Haven Hot Chicken because of feedback that you've received?

Speaker 3: 19:30

Well, let's see, we've taken menu items away that people really like and we've gotten feedback to put them back on, and so we're working on some of that, but we have a pretty straightforward and simple and small menu. We want to do very little things and do them really, really right. That's been the formula.

Speaker 2: 19:47

So yeah, I would say that we just recently overhauled our menu and it was a direct result of thousands of data points across Ovation, you know, across the accessibility of our menu, and so we underwent probably six or eight months of menu testing, iterating and developing a new format for our menu so that we have a couple of new product offerings as a result. We serve premium food at premium prices and large volumes, and we've had folks that are we absolutely love your food, I like. I would like to eat it more often. I need a smaller portion size.

Speaker 2: 20:23

Oh, interesting, yeah, that was something great for us to incorporate. That was yeah, that's true. That's something that we absolutely learned through getting reviews.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Well, you guys both of you and the brand is just so awesome and it's an honor to work with you and I think what you do is incredible. How can people find and follow you and your brand?

Speaker 2: 20:41

Yeah, we're just at at Haven Hot Chicken on Instagram, linkedin, facebook. We're not on Twitter, so don't look for us there. Most importantly, come visit one of our nine locations in Connecticut, nine going on 90,.

Speaker 3: 20:56

I hear Nine, going on 90, and look out for some Haven locations out of Connecticut soon.

Speaker 1: 21:02

Nice Love that Well, gentlemen, for caring enough to be consistently great and caring enough to connect with the guests, today's ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Give an Ovation. 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.