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 Secret to Consistent Success with Joseph Sample
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In this episode of Give an Ovation, we welcome Joe Sample, President of Crave Management Group, the multi-unit, multi-brand operator behind top-performing Taco Bell locations and Bobby’s Burgers by Bobby Flay. With over 22 years of experience, Joe shares his proven strategies for creating high-performing teams and delivering exceptional guest experiences.
Zack and Joe discuss:
- The key question every GM should ask to drive operational excellence
- Why having one standard is critical for consistency
- How autonomy and trust improve both team and guest experiences
- Hiring tactics to identify top-performing restaurant leaders
- Simple changes that elevate the guest experience, like redefining roles
Tune in to hear how Joe’s leadership style and operational insights have helped Crave Management Group thrive in a competitive industry!
Thanks, Joe!
Creating a Five-Star Guest Experience
Speaker 1Welcome 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 we have an operator of operators . He is a gold star operator , joe Sample . He's the president of Crave Management Group , a hair that I aspire for . Did you start Crave Management Group ?
Speaker 2Yes , it's a new branding . Actually , when we added the second company restaurant company we rebranded into Crave Management Group .
Speaker 1Yep Got it , but I mean this is like yours for 22 and a half years Multi-unit , multi-brand . And not only that , but you've got Taco Bell's and Bobby's Burgers , and we met because I was in Bobby's Burgers . They've been working with us for a while and they finally opened one here in Utah and thank you , joe , for opening that . And so I was there having lunch and I saw this guy walking around . I was like he looks like he cares a lot about the guest experience and I was like hey random question Do you own this place ?
Speaker 1He's like , yeah , and I was like all right , you can tell by the walk that you care , but you get people to care too , because digging around a little bit I found out that there's ballpark call it a little over 8,000 Taco Bells , and six of your Taco Bells are in the top 100 .
Speaker 2Yes , so it changes every year , but , yes , over a number of years . There actually for it was three years straight we had two Taco Bells not necessarily the same ones operating in the top 100 out of over 7,500 stores , and now they're 8,000 . And that was a holistic measurement . It's not like a sales measurement or just a guest satisfaction measurement . It was a holistic measurement of operations , and so that was something we've been very proud of and excited about and want to just keep adding more to that . So what's the ?
Speaker 1secret Joe how do you consistently have stores in the top 100 ? I mean , that's an incredible feat . How do you do that ?
Speaker 2Yeah , thanks . Well , the simple answer is there's a lot of things that you do in order to get there , and it's a lot of work . The exciting thing , I think , for people to know , is that the leadership styles of the various managers were very different , and yet they all ultimately attained that level of performance . So just one of the sort of key mindsets we have as we approach operations is this what we call the big question , and that is what did I do today ? This is for a general manager what did I do today to enable my team to run A-plus operations in my absence ? And so , as they process that and as they enable their team to run at a really high level , that doesn't require them to be there .
Speaker 2So some people achieve really great performances in restaurants , but it's because they are literally there all the time . They never leave the place . I see it all the time . That is not the type of environment that we're trying to create and , by extension , as the GM started thinking like this , that means that other people have more responsibilities , they have things to own , they come in with greater purpose around what they're going to do and accomplish that day , and if you can get your entire store sort of feel like that and operate like that . You can operate in the top , it's a lot of fun to watch and it just looks really smooth and easy . But it certainly wasn't to get there .
Speaker 1I love how the most profound things are often so simple . But that concept of how is the restaurant when you're not there and how do you get your team to think about that ? Because everyone could go in there and put in their A game . There's a franchisee that we worked with of a very , very large brand and he had 30 locations and one of his locations was always giving him problems down in revenue , bad in online reviews , but every time he went there , Joe , what do you think happened ? It was smooth , right .
Speaker 1It was like something about him just being there and he could never figure out what was going on . So that's when he started using Ovation and he found out in one week that that location was being really messy with how they made their pizza . But when he was there they took a lot of extra care , and so he was able to go in there , retrain them on how do you make pizza and then keep a pulse on that , and he knew what to look for now , and so it went from 28 complaints a week down to three complaints a week , which is on par with his other locations .
Speaker 2And you know that's actually something you hear about and you see so often in the space is this dual standard ? Because the operators , they allow for certain cuts to happen or they disagree with something that the brand may say . This is how this should be done , and then when somebody else comes in and now the team has to do it a different way . Now , of course , this example was just the team themselves were choosing to do it one way , and then when leadership of that brand or that owner came in or operator came in , then they would do it the right way .
Speaker 2It's just really frustrating . That's another one of those things that makes it really difficult to manage at a very high level , because you don't want to have to manage that . You don't want to have to manage to two standards . It's already hard enough to do one standard really well , and so that's something we've always taken a lot of pride in . We take that Taco Bell playbook , we're going to take this Bobby's playbook and we're going to execute it to the best of our ability and there will not be two standards .
Speaker 1I love that because that one standard approach of this is how things are done , period , regardless of what else is going on , and then having those checks and balances to make sure that that's happening and having that trust in the team . That's just really powerful and it's . Are there any ? I know this is not a question that we had prepared , but , like , are there any questions that you ask when you're looking for a GM that kind of help you suss out ? Are they going to be someone who's going to buy into this mentality ?
Speaker 2Yeah , yes , so the most important thing that we try to understand with GMs is actually how they just were at their last job , and so that's through pretty rigorous reference checks . But I don't know that there's one particular question . So we build a scorecard . The book is called who by Jeff Smart I'm pretty sure he's a Utah guy and the original playbook there was called top grading . Anyway , that's a system and a process that we use . We think it's been extremely effective .
Speaker 2The scorecard lays out the various attributes that we're looking for from the general managers that we're trying to hire , and those are going to be in the . To what extent are they a people developer ? To what extent are they a people retainer ? Are they an A-plus type operator ? Do they a people retainer ? Are they an A plus type operator ? Do they get system and process ? Do they have this is a new one technology sort of acumen and capacity ? Technology is everywhere now and it's been very frustrating for some GMs who just completely lack that skillset to really get up to speed with everything that's going on . We look at a lot of different things in that scorecard , so I wouldn't say there's just one particular question . But it's a pretty rigorous process and we follow it again , just like these other systems and process to a T .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I look at this , who , jeff Smart , randy Street ? I mean there's 2,500 reviews , the 4.5 on Amazon , so definitely going in my to-read list , very cool . This is all boiling down because , regardless of if we're hiring GMs or we're sticking to standards or we're doing the decor , the cleanliness , it's all about the guest experience , right ? So what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience ? Joe ?
Speaker 2Well , they're coming in for a product or , in my world , they're coming in for food .
Speaker 2So the most important thing that I can do is deliver great food that they have ordered and deliver it the way they've ordered it .
Enhancing Guest Experience Through Brand Ambassadors
Speaker 2Now , if we're talking about the customer interaction with our team , I mean , if you want to deliver an exceptional experience , you are selling . That counter person is selling , and selling is the transfer of energy . That person on the front counter delivers energy and different energy , not this robotic same thing every time , because you can't make it a unique experience for the guest if it is the same thing every time . And then the other thing that we learned was that and this was the service profit chain model , which is a long way of talking about it , but a long time ago they discovered that the team member experience will never exceed the guest experience and the guest experience will never exceed the team member experience . So if the team member doesn't have the autonomy and authority to bring their full self , their full creative and fun self , to the experience , then you'll never be at the highest level of the guest satisfaction .
Speaker 1And I am jiving with you . I'm looking behind me . There's a book . Hold on , this is worth it . Okay , all right , let's take a look . So Scott Sampson wrote this book called Essentials of Service Design and Innovation Okay , called Essentials of Service Design and Innovation , and this is .
Speaker 1I was out of credits , so I audited his course because of exactly what you're talking about , which is like , even go back to the suppliers . If you don't have a good relationship with your suppliers , with your franchisors , then that's going to affect the guest experience , because if you need something and it's last minute , who knows if they're going to help you out ? If you're in a bind , you need something and it's last minute , who knows if they're going to help you out ? If you're in a bind , you need something . So it's about this entire service value chain going from how far up the chain can you go and create the great experiences all along there ? Because I 100% agree with you is so much of this is about the people , and you really care about people and you care about your team members . You provide benefits for your team members . I was doing some research on this and , like you , do a lot of things to make sure that your team members feel cared about and they feel like this is a place that they can grow .
Speaker 2Yeah , thank you . Thank you . No , it's super important . So , for example , our vision is summit together . So you have just mentioned and brought up why and how , all those different ways in which different groups and different parties will summit together if we do an amazing job with what we're charged with here about this is trust and that base layer . We look at that five dysfunctions of a team . We use it in an intrapersonal way , but that base layer is trust , and one of the best ways that we can provide trust to everybody on our team is through autonomy . So if we can build out great systems and process so they can come in , they don't have to ask somebody what they need to do . They already know what they're going to do and then they just start executing and we give them the freedom to go in and just do their thing without having to ask or without having to be told . It creates a much more enjoyable environment .
Speaker 1That's such a great tactic as well . In thinking about this and normally when we talk about tactics , we're thinking about like , thinking about this , and normally when we talk about tactics , we're thinking about like , hey , put in a speed counter , speed timers , you can see how quickly your orders are going out , or things like that but what other tactics do you have that have improved the guest experience ? Because I do think , by the way , that focusing on your employees and all of this is amazing . They're amazing tactics to improve the guest experience .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I think , for example , one of the things we did was when we were in training for Bobby's they had called the role of lobby attendant . You know , it was very busy and they wanted somebody out there to check in on the meal , check in on the tables and whatnot . I'm like lobby attendant and so something as simple as we just changed the way that role looked and felt , so we changed it to brand ambassador and so we're kind of selective with all right , who gets to go out there and then we get to go have fun with it . It's not just more about functional , it's experiential . It's not cleaning tables and taking care of trashes and making sure the next . It's experiential . It's not cleaning tables and taking care of trashes and making sure the next table can be ready .
Speaker 2It's about talking to people and seeing if they ordered sweet potato fries , did they decide to pair that with what Bobby Flay recommends , which is the honey , mustard , horseradish sauce , and that's just kind of like this different experience . And then if they say , oh no , that sounds interesting , I would like to do that , then just go grab it for them . And now you can not only talk about the food quality , you can give people a little bit of a different flavor , try some new things . We really want trial and menu exploration so it's just really fun to go out there and do that . But just the title change alone shifts how a person thinks about that role out in the lobby and so that was a simple one , but that's one .
Speaker 1I think that's so powerful , and even having that role of a brand ambassador that goes around and does good table touches , but it's more about the service of it , it's more about how can we go , just like that little bit more , because those little things make a huge difference to the guest experience , and I think that's so powerful . Now , who is someone ? Obviously you've been in this industry for a long time . Who's someone that we should be following ? What's a brand that you're checking out ?
Speaker 2nowadays we're based in Salt Lake now . So the prominent brand in Salt Lake you see them all over the place and it seems to be quite a trend is this Dirty Sodas , and in that space and in salt lake it's got to be swig . So I would say swig . It's really interesting . They have sort of like a premium brand halo in their space . They offer the convenience that people are wanting and I know they have some huge expansion plans going on right now . I believe it was the miller group . Yeah , they bought them .
Speaker 1Yeah , in savory yeah , and so that's a really interesting partnership and I'm going on right now . I believe it was the Miller Group . Yeah , larry H , miller Group and Savory .
Speaker 2Yeah , and Savory yeah , and so that's a really interesting partnership and I'm going to be curious to see how that does . A lot of people are saying , oh , I don't know , maybe it's just a Salt Lake thing . I don't think that's the case .
Speaker 1No , I mean as they've expanded into other locations . I mean like Oklahoma is crushing it right and that's outside of the Rockies . It's doing really well and people are interested in it and it's one of those things where , in the show notes , we'll put the podcast episode that I did with Nicole Tanner , who's the founder amazing woman so focused on the mission and on doing good and putting out happiness . On doing good and putting out happiness . Probably the second place right now in Utah is a group called Thirst , run by Ethan Cisneros . Let's put his podcast in the show notes as well . He is out there every single day , I mean seven days a week , just posting to social , sharing the story of how he's growing thirst . So anyway , I think there's some really cool stuff happening in the soda realm . And who would have thought right ?
Speaker 2I mean the scary thing for every single one of those is all of the QSRs have convenience , have a soda base and it's like the leap for the entire space to have . That option is not far , and so I think it'll be really interesting to see . And of course this has been the case .
Speaker 2People have been like , oh , we didn't need another sub shop , and yet here we are with Subway and Quiznos and Jersey Mike's and Jimmy John's For an $8 billion acquisition right , yeah , so I'm of the belief that and somebody would probably say the same thing to me about burgers it's like , really , in Salt Lake , do we need another burger place ? Well , yes , you do , because you need a better burger place . But there is plenty of market share to be had . So I'll be really curious to see how that goes . And some of it is that convenience piece . You know , the QSRs are already there , but Swig , I mean , they're able to plunk down or thirst pretty small boxes and make it work at great economics , I'm sure .
Speaker 1Well , where can people go , Joe , to learn more about you , your brand , if they want to follow you ? Maybe get some hair tips from you , I don't know .
Speaker 2Just on LinkedIn for me . And then the brand you can follow Bobby's Burgers by Bobby Flay on LinkedIn . They're pretty active in that space . Our website is cravemanagementgroupcom . We're in the process of revamping it as we've added this other brand and we're trying to showcase the power of operating in multiple states and multiple brands . So , yeah , I would say those are the best .
Speaker 1Awesome . Well , joe , for making sure that my life is filled with both burgers and nacho cheese . Today's ovation goes to you . Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation , my pleasure . 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 .