Speaker 1: 0:00

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. Today we have a good friend, a mentor and someone who one time yanked me out of a hallway to come onto my own panel Stacey Cain, a fractional CMO for Emerging and Beyond Brand. Sixth time she was voted the top 25 restaurant executives and and I think her most proud moment to date was being voted best dressed at the 2024 Fast Casual Movers and Shakers Gala. It's true, that was amazing. Who did you win that with? Who was your counterpart? I always forget who was your counterpart.

Speaker 2: 0:56

A man with really good hair.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Oh was Sterling. Was Sterling Douglas. Did he win along with you?

Speaker 2: 1:02

No, a little bit closer to home there, Zach. Oh wow, Look at that award, oh my goodness, that's right, mine's a dress and yours is a bow tie. Perhaps in post you could insert our beautiful photograph from that evening.

Speaker 1: 1:18

Oh yeah, we do have a great photo together where you won best dressed and I won best dressed. You deserved it, I paid for it. It is what it is 100%. It's now my Facebook cover photo of you and I oh my gosh, I didn't even know that.

Speaker 2: 1:32

So the only person who actually sees it. There is probably my mom, but you know, there you go.

Speaker 1: 1:38

That's awesome. Well, Stacey, thanks for joining us today. I know that you've got a lot on your plate, and why don't you just talk to me a little bit about? You do have a lot on your plate. What is that lot? What kinds of brands do you work with and what do you do for them?

Speaker 2: 1:52

Well, most of them are small, sub 30 units, and they're kind of in either this emerging status or meaning they're starting to grow, or they're kind of holding steady that they're family owned or not franchised. So I go into brands in a couple of different ways. Some of them don't have marketing departments so I become their marketing department, some meaning I'm sending the email at two o'clock in the morning or I'm directing a social media content person.

Speaker 2: 2:28

And then in some brands I'm mentoring somebody who's in house, like with fresh baguette, that really quickly growing French bakery out of DC. Or in the case of Ziggy's, I'm acting as leadership for a robust team. They have about 12 people on their marketing team and they just needed somebody with experience to come in there and say this is where you sit, this is where you sit, here's what our brand means, the big picture stuff. So it's one of those three ways and right now I have somewhere around eight or nine brands in various different capacities.

Speaker 1: 3:10

You've been in this industry for a while and are you just trying to say I'm old.

Speaker 1: 3:15

No, what I'm trying to say is like I feel like everywhere I go, any discussion about marketing for restaurants, stacey Cain is involved. People are talking about her, or Stacey Cain is talking, and I think that it's really powerful to get that broad perspective on what's working and what's not working. When you enter a brand, what are some of the things that you look at to say here are things that we could look at for some low hanging fruit, where I know that restaurants are consistently getting these things wrong. What do you look at there?

Speaker 2: 3:49

Well, one of the first things that I do when I come into a brand is try to figure out who they are. And I don't mean like who everybody is, who's running it, but who are they as a brand? So what's their mission, what's their vision, what is their brand personality? That's a big thing actually. Brand personality Like how is that brand reflected to the consumer? So you could have like 10 different social media people, another copywriter and somebody else who's designing POP, and they've never had the discussion of what's our brand voice. So for the first probably month, it's uncovering that If a brand doesn't have a mission or a vision or any of that kind of preliminary stuff done, then I'll come in and do that. That's what I like to get to the heart of, because it affects everything. It affects guest experience Totally, it affects your content strategy, but what it really affects is how people become loyal, or why people become loyal to your brand.

Speaker 1: 5:02

How do you take someone down that journey, stacey? So let's say that I've been around for five, six years, I'm growing, I've got a few locations, things are going well, and maybe I'm looking back and I'm thinking, oh boy, like I don't know if I have all this stuff written down, it's kind of just been what is my personality? Sure, how do you then transition to something that's growing and documented and translatable?

Speaker 2: 5:26

Well, as with any good superhero movie, we start with the origin story, so I just did this presentation. It's like how did Peter Parker become Spider-Man? So he became Spider-Man not only because he was bitten by a spider by a radioactive spider but it was because he saw Uncle Ben get murdered and he didn't do anything about it. Those two things came together. He became a person who helps people. Because of the guilt when I go into a brand, I don't want to know what you did last month. I want to know why did you found this brand this way, and what were the first couple of months, years like?

Speaker 2: 6:13

Because that normally dictates, kind of everything. Founder stories are so important in this kind of work, and so, look, you've known me a long time. I don't have like high emotional IQ, I'm very down and dirty kind of person, but these kind of conversations are really important because people want to do business that they connect with. So those are the kinds of stories that we go in and try to figure out.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Interesting. I think that is a really powerful super tactical thing that everyone can take away from this of like find the origin story and there within is the mission, and in those early sproutlings of the dream is the vision. Go back to that. That just gives everyone a reason, something to hold on to, and when you're all holding on to that same thread that ties everything together, it's a lot easier to move in the right direction. It's a lot easier to train people, because then everything's connected to the why.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Yeah, everybody's all Simon Sinek up in here. You know we've all been Simon Sinek and love him and he changed the way a lot of us look at brand and why we do what we do. So I love that. But, yes, it all comes back to why it also helps. This origin story, this mission, this vision, help with core values, right, that become that litmus test for every business decision we make, right? So who you hire, how you train them, all of that comes from the core values and how we want to interact with our guests.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's all about the guest experience, and everything that we're doing boils down to that. So, as you think about guest experience nowadays, what do you think are some of the most important things to keep in mind as people are building their restaurant brand?

Speaker 2: 8:17

I think this concept of one size fits all is not the case anymore. I think we have a multi-generational consumer base and we need to make sure that we're truly meeting people where they're at, in all touch points, having things like, for example, I have Mamoun's, the oldest falafel shop in New York City, still run and owned by the same family, and they realized that people want to order differently, whether not just online or in the restaurant, but also within the restaurant, four walls itself. So they were founded in 1971.

Speaker 2: 8:56

And two years ago put very robust kiosks in because there's a segment of the population, especially in New York, dense population that wants to order, doesn't want to talk to anybody, just literally wants to go to a kiosk, pick what they want and get it quickly, without ever having a human interaction. Although I would say Mamoun's always has some sort of personal touch in there. I would say, like, from a guest experience perspective, you need to realize that one size does not fit all.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, and the whole concept of meeting guests where they're at is a cliche, and cliches are cliches because they withstand the test of time and they withstand the test of consumers, and so I think that meeting them where they're at is really important. And how would you boil that down to any tactics? Someone's listening to this and they say all right, stacey. I love this conversation about brand voice and about understanding how to meet the guests where they're at. But, like, what can I do about that in my restaurant this week?

Speaker 2: 10:02

This week. Wow, that's a really quick turnaround. Nice deadline there, zach.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Well, okay, how can I start? What can I start planning on this week to actually improve the guest experience?

Speaker 2: 10:13

It's funny that you say that One of my brands I've been working with. We just realized this today. I started with California Tortilla in 2007. And they were my first kind of leadership role, so I was the VP of marketing there for a long time and it's their 30th anniversary and we are resurrecting all of the old wacky promos that we did back in the day. We're resurrecting them all this whole like kind of play on nostalgia. So one of the things that we're doing for March Madness is we're bringing basketball hoops into the Nerf, basketball hoops into the restaurant and for March Madness you'll be shooting hoops for various prizes.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Oh, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Super tactical. It's easy to do in one or two restaurants. It's nuts to do it in a small chain. But we're doing it because we did it in 2008. And I know this because we found the video pre-pandemic Instagram, actually pre-Facebook. We found the YouTube video that we produced in 2008 and we're repurposing it.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Oh my gosh, it's all grainy and like terribly shot.

Speaker 2: 11:35

So things like that. I think again, if your mission, vision, brand values and voice line up with doing something fun and interactive, it's really easy to do Having a wheel on a really slow night, super engaging, People love it. You come in, you make a purchase, you spin a wheel, you win something for a bounce back.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Oh, interesting that's super tactical If you want to talk about something you could do immediately. I think bigger picture things is. I always go back to communications, communications. So a lot of brands, especially in the franchise space. It's hard to especially in the emerging franchise space, let's put it that way it's hard to figure out the dollars and cents of text marketing. You have one big creative fund. How do we account for this store getting 10,000 texts and this store getting three texts or 10 texts because of who you have opt-in? But that's one thing that is super easy to pull the trigger on is not just having email as your communication tool, but anything kind of within your tech stack and then using them. That's a big thing. We have lots of technology in restaurants that sometimes we just don't have the human resources to use.

Speaker 3: 12:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Sometimes I feel like restaurants become a big mansion where it's like, oh yeah, we have that room, but we just don't ever go in that room.

Speaker 2: 13:08

All the time I'll find a piece of functionality that PS has been part of our ever-growing list of SaaS fees and, oh my gosh, we haven't pulled that lever.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Yeah, and I think that's something that I always recommend to people is go and talk to all your vendors, find out what they do. People is go and talk to all your vendors, find out what they do, because, as someone that is building a B2B SaaS company focusing the restaurant space, we have an entire team of people that is just focused on building new stuff at Ovation and what happens is we build the stuff, we launch the stuff and then we forget to really let people know that we have this stuff, and then so we go a few months and people are like man Zach, do you know of anyone that does text marketing?

Speaker 2: 13:56

And I'm like oh my God, that happened with you and I a couple months ago. I was like who should I use for text marketing? And you're like you're already paying ovation. And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, not related to customer feedback, actual text marketing. And you're like Stace, we do that, we do that and this is not a commercial for ovation, but let's make it a commercial for ovation. I had no idea. And again, we're all so busy and pulled so thin that sometimes you're not having those kind of follow-up calls or regular calls with your vendors to know what the capabilities are, especially in small brands.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Yeah, because what happens is, again, maybe you have a monthly meeting with each vendor, and so you're like, oh, I feel like I know what they're doing, but the problem is, on those monthly meetings, what are you doing, stacey? You're like, okay, we have this thing we need to send out. We got this problem. This location isn't doing this, and so, like you're doing very tactical things, make sure that you're taking a step back with each of your vendors to say, hey, here are my goals as a brand, how can you help me achieve these goals? And hey, is there anything that we're not using that you're doing? And hey, is there anything that we're not using that you're doing? Because I promise you, it's a lot easier to work with a vendor that you're already working with and make it better, unless you know, like we work with people all the time who they work with, great vendors who do long form surveys but at the end of the day, like guests just don't want to take a long survey, and so that's the thing of like, if the vendor isn't doing what fundamentally is going to create a better brand for yourself, then, yeah, switch vendors. But I would say, start off by figuring out what your vendors do, because they really do want to partner with you, and if they don't, then that's a good sign they're probably not a good place for you. So really good, you threw out like half a dozen tactics there. Love that.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Now here comes the hard question, stacey Okay right, because you know everyone. Everyone knows you. Who deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry? Who's someone that we should be following?

Speaker 2: 16:03

You're gonna make me play favorites, but I'm gonna play favorites. I mean, it's really got to be the team at Garden Catering right now, specifically Tina.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Love Tina.

Speaker 2: 16:14

I love Tina so much and she is the COO of Garden Caterings. She's got two little kids. Her daughter was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago. So big projects that she and I have worked on together are raising funds for organizations that help kids with cancer. And she is smart and works her ass off and, yeah, I have just mad respect for her as a working woman and as a mom and so if I was going to give an ovation, it would be to Tina.

Speaker 1: 16:51

She's amazing, and the brand is amazing, and she's amazing and so, anyway, well, well deserved, totally applaud that ovation, pun intended. So, stacey, where can people go to follow your musings?

Speaker 2: 17:03

Oh God. So I decided, after launching California Tortillas social presence in 2008 as a whim which is what I credit my entire career to to maybe I didn't need to be. I'm kind of quiet on social and LinkedIn, but if you need anything, just give me a shout at Stacey S-T-A-C-E-Y at GoStacyCaincom.

Speaker 1: 17:30

That is Cain with a K. Yeah, like citizen.

Speaker 2: 17:34

There we go Awesome.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Well, Stacy, for giving us just a dose of your amazing personality to remind us to help our brand find its personality. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation.

Speaker 2: 17:46

Thanks, Zach, Thanks for joining us on Give an Ovation. Thanks, Zach.

Speaker 3: 17:49

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.