Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Give an Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast. I'm your host, zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover real strategies and actionable tactics to help you create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is powered by Ovation, the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. It gives you the insights you need without annoying your guests with endless questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today I am so excited I have someone who is just I mean, as someone with the last name Oates calling someone a serial entrepreneur is a real thing, and so I am excited to welcome Lawrence Longo on. He is the you ready for this. Founder and CEO of Off the Menu, ceo of Prince Street Pizza, ceo of Irv's Burgers and a very busy man. Lawrence, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, zach. So, first of all, where do you get all these hours in a day to be CEO of three companies and you do speaking and marketing and podcasting? How do you have time to do all this?

Speaker 2: 1:01

It's a great team around me. Hopefully, you know I'm hiring all the right people to help us paddle the canoe to get us from where we need to go. I think I love what I do, so it doesn't feel like work. So the only thing that I want to get away from my work for is my family and maybe to play hockey once in a while. I love that.

Speaker 1: 1:19

I see all those hockey sticks behind you. Love that. I love that.

Speaker 2: 1:20

I still walk with my hockey sticks. You can see them in the background.

Speaker 1: 1:22

I know I see all those hockey sticks behind you Love that man.

Speaker 2: 1:25

But it's like I tell everybody in the food business is that if you're in it to make a quick buck, you're in the wrong business. Truly, truly, you need to love what you're doing in order to be successful, and I think that's and just have a passion for people, have a passion for food and just doing things right. I'm proud of the product, of everything I do. I'm proud of the brands, so it makes it easy. I hate that part of it just because I love it so much. If you don't love it, it's probably a miserable experience.

Speaker 1: 1:57

Well, okay, but you have got some pretty different things that you're doing and, by the way, I didn't even mention all the stuff you're doing. You've got even other projects you're doing. So and, by the way, I didn't even mention all the stuff you're doing. You've got even other projects you're doing.

Speaker 2: 2:14

I saw that you just had an award recently about one of the top bars in America. Yeah yeah, bar Next Door was one of the 50 best bars in North America.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Man, that's wild. So what's the secret to success in terms of how do you do so many things well when people struggle often to just do one of those things well?

Speaker 2: 2:30

I think keeping things simple Any of the businesses that I run I'm not trying to do too much. We're keeping it simple. The bar next door is just a neighborhood bar with high-end craft cocktails. I had a location beside Prince Street and I was like what works best beside a pizzeria? Well, it's either ice cream or a bar. So I opened up a bar on the side of it and the idea was just create that third place, that place where you go before drinks, you go after work, you go after dinner. It's a place where, hopefully, the bartenders know your name, they know your drink and it's a place that you can go regularly to Nothing too trendy, nothing that's going to be like the flavor of the week and just really great customer service and really great product. I tell everybody, if you have one thing on your menu that's craveable, that people will keep coming back every week for it.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Oh, yeah, I mean there's a restaurant down the street and they have this dish that is unreal, like 11 out of 10. And the other dishes they have are great too. Like it's an overall great restaurant but that one dish is so memorable and it's so craveable that I love going back to that place, as long as I can get a reservation, because it's always booked up. But I mean, like it's just like here in Utah, michael McHenry just does a great job building restaurants that have cool brands, cool vibes and super memorable food.

Speaker 2: 4:02

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1: 4:04

You keep it simple, you do those things right and with a craveable product, you should be successful the norm of a food entrepreneur, restaurateur, and that's why I think in your LinkedIn, I believe you call yourself a food entrepreneur, not a restaurateur, which I find interesting. But tell me a little bit about Off the Menu and how that started.

Speaker 2: 4:37

Yeah, off the Menu. So my background was in movies and television and content really comic books, graphic novels, children's storybooks and just really like content is king type of mentality and I created a show called Off the Menu. Never made it to air, I sold it a few times but I realized just because, like in my content days is that you really had to own the IP if you wanted to own the series or own the show. And so what I did was I created an app called off the menu and what I did was I sourced all the secret menu items at all the restaurants across North America that had secret menu items and I emailed it to like 25 of my friends being like hey, I just created an app. It was when everybody was like creating apps, right, but I just wanted to do it because I love food so much and I wanted to like create this world of off the menu. And I launched the app and it got in crazy amount of downloads and now I'm an app entrepreneur.

Speaker 2: 5:40

But I raised a little bit of money and quickly ran out of money. It was like, oh shit, what do I have to do? Well, you have to have a real business. You can't just source secret menu items. And what problem are you solving? And what I realized was restaurants closed down. 60% of restaurants are closed within the first two years or first 12 months, and then 80% of restaurants are closed within the first five years. So basically, 80% of people getting the restaurant business aren't even making their money back. And I was like, well, how can I solve that problem? Through secret menu items.

Speaker 2: 6:12

And what I realized was secret menu items drove foot traffic into the restaurants. It created a viral, social kind of marketing, and those are things that could help restaurants survive. When I first tried to, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to charge restaurants to be on the app. All the restaurants were like we're not paying you. You got to. Can you prove that you're going to have this foot traffic? So I flipped it and I was like you know what? What I'm going to do is I'm going to charge the customers $20 a month and what they're going to get is they're going to get one free secret menu item every day at a restaurant in their area. So, instead of having an app that curated all the secret menu items, I turned it into a food club.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Oh, very cool.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Learning my mistakes now is I didn't need to do every single day. Somebody got a free item. I should have just focused on one restaurant, one item, and drove all the traffic there. But at off the menus peak, I had over 4,000 users in LA and it was a real business. I wasn't raising money, it was a business that was running itself.

Speaker 2: 7:18

But what happened was I needed to figure out customer acquisition strategy and how do I get people on the app. And one of the things was through experiences and I created this event called the Burger Showdown, which was a live event in 2017 or 18. And I had, like Marshmello and Shea Mitchell and Tommy Lee, create their own burgers and then bring them to this festival and then all the people that came to the festival will get to try these burgers. And I did it for the LA times. And then in 2018, I did a Prince street pizza pop-up. I asked the owners of Prince street pizza if I could do a national pizza day bring Prince street to LA. And that kind of like was gangbusters 300, 300 people waiting in line for three hours in the foreign rain and I had like probably 200 signups onto the app that week.

Speaker 2: 8:13

It was like, oh wow, this is really more importantly is like people love this product. People really are dying for this square Sicilian pizza with these cup and curl pepperonis and the spicy sauce. So, with these cup and curl pepperonis and the spicy sauce. And then after that I did Tender Fest, a Chiffon Tender Festival but with that I realized whoa, this craveable product, everything I learned from off the menu of like why restaurants fail, what drives them, what makes a successful product, I felt like Prince Street had all those things so I asked could I open one up in LA? Opened one up in LA and the same thing. I had lines and two zip codes and it was really exciting and I didn't put an investment into burgers never say die, which was the first LA smash burger that, since pretty much all of America's kind of tried to copy, but burgers never say die was the first like authentic, really cool hype smash burger yeah in Los Angeles.

Speaker 2: 9:11

That's kind of how it all started with the experiences, and then since later, I've created the whole krabby patty collab experience for spongebob square pants. That is.

Speaker 1: 9:20

I thought that is so cool man yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:23

So I think just knowing what's cool having a good palate I love food and I guess I know what's good and what the average person's going to crave. In a way, I think if anything was strong at anything, that would probably be it.

Speaker 1: 9:38

See, I think that is just so cool because, at the end of the day, like we said, it's the guest experience. And so, as you're looking at all these varied experiences from events to restaurants to apps what do you think is the most important aspect of the guest experience or the customer experience?

Speaker 2: 9:54

Authenticity and quality I would say is big, and then the speed and ease, right Like the convenience of what I'm doing. And then really, at the end of the day, we say service but it's really hospitality. I mean, if you're servicing, it's a transaction. If you're giving hospitality, you really like the customer, really feels like they care about the business, cares about the customer. Yes, so I think I feel like that's the digital integration, from whether that's mobile ordering or a loyalty program. It's having a seamless like.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Digital integration is something I'm not necessarily great at right now but we strive to every day to get better. I know it's a part of the culture, the food culture. Gen Z doesn't need the human connection because they're like this all the time. So at first I was like no kiosks, no kiosks, no way. And then you're thinking about yourself well, if that kiosk experience is exciting and is good, maybe it's not that bad and I hate to say that. But you know, when I saw shake shack and the guy I look up to, danny Meyer, doing kiosks, you're like, ok, maybe we got to think twice about kiosks in the restaurant.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Well, because honestly, it's like and I'll I rarely do this, but I think that maybe you'd agree with me I'd like to push back a little bit against. Gen Z don't need connection. I think that they're in their phones because they're looking for connection. I just think how they get connection is different than prior generations because they grew up with so much technology. They get connection through a text message. They get connection through that response back and forth, and through, like the personalization. Look at someone in the eye, shake in the hand.

Speaker 1: 11:54

And when we were kids, the only way that I could get people's phone numbers is I had a little digital card and it was like I could type in people's names and phone numbers and it could store 250 names and phone numbers and that was my cell phone, and then I would use that to go and call my friends, right, but we didn't have the technology, and so it was so much more about the face-to-face stuff, right, absolutely, absolutely. And I love what you're saying, though, about like that convenience factor, because if you don't have that, people aren't even going to try you out, right Exactly, I mean.

Speaker 2: 12:22

or they're going to try you out once and they're going to get frustrated and then they're not going to come back.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Unless your food is so good that, like the soup Nazi, you know your food is so good you can treat people like shit. They'll still come back.

Speaker 1: 12:37

And you go to, I guess Chances are that's probably not your restaurant, right? If you're listening to this, Definitely definitely not.

Speaker 2: 12:44

I mean, especially with competition out there. It's like people secret recipes aren't so secret anymore because somebody could take a recipe, go to a lab, figure out exactly how you made it and make it themselves. So people copy all day long. People are copying that are spicy spring pizza opening up I'm opening up an herbs and planet Hollywood and there's a not going to name the pizzeria right beside it, but it's literally an exact rip off of Prince Street Pizza with a different name. I was like oh and I, so I ordered the King Street pizza.

Speaker 2: 13:17

It's so funny. It's like well, the sauce isn't good, it's not cooked through like Prince Street, they're not using the Greek cheese, the pepperoni it's a rip off but it's not the same pepperoni and they're not cutting it the same. So all the little things that they're doing to copy are totally off, which makes it not like it doesn't hit you. It's not like a punching you in the face. Oh, wow, that's an amazing slice. But even if you have a great product, you have to have great hospitality 100% love that.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Now, lawrence, I know you know a lot of people in the industry. Who's someone that we should be following? Who's someone that deserves an ovation?

Speaker 2: 13:50

Yeah, yeah, especially for this podcast. I'm going to give an ovation to Preston Lee and he has a company called the 30% Rule which I've hired and he helps me with all of my front of house hospitality and really training almost training the staff, but training the trainers because that's the most important thing is who's training your staff and like, how are you training them to train your staff and you continually train and retrain.

Speaker 2: 14:23

That, for me, is a guy I'd like to give a shout out to, preston Lee. Uh, the 30% rule. Every restaurant has got to be taking their front of house seriously. It's the first touch point of the restaurant, before they even get the food. Hello, how are you? Welcome to Irv's. Welcome to Prince Street, welcome to wherever restaurant you are having that connection. Welcome to Moe's. Welcome to Moe's, Whatever it is he helps restaurants do that, so that's my shout out Awesome.

Speaker 1: 14:53

And now, Lawrence, where can people go to find and follow you and your brands?

Speaker 2: 14:57

So me personally is at Big Shot B-I-G-S-H-O-T. And just so you know, I got that Instagram name not because of how it sounds, it's more. It was when I first joined Instagram. It was a filter app for photos, so I was going to take the big shot.

Speaker 1: 15:17

No way you legit have big shot. That is your legit Instagram. Yeah, that is nuts. Well, I am adding one to your 23,700 followers.

Speaker 2: 15:28

And I'm not awesome on Instagram personally, like I'm not. And then Prince Street Pizza Erzburgers Bar next door, underscore, underscore. And then a new one on the other side of prince street, west hollywood's gonna be opening an ice cream shop called hall pass ice cream oh nice, yeah well, I don't forget about sparky sports bar oh, sparky sports bar in malibu. That's right. How do you forget? I love that man. Because we're redoing our liquor license and everything. It's been closed for a oh, sparky Sports Bar in Malibu. That's right. How do you forget it?

Speaker 2: 15:57

I love that man, because we're redoing our liquor license and everything. It's been closed for a couple of months and Malibu has been an absolute disaster. Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:05

Oh geez, I love that you got that much stuff going on, though. Lawrence man, I'm so grateful you came on the podcast, and Lawrence, for showing us that you actually can't find 30 hours in the day. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us and give an ovation.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Thanks so much for having me. This was great Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 1: 16:24

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