Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Give an Ovation, the restaurant guest experience podcast. I'm your host, zach Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and 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 all the insights you need, with none of the annoying surveys for your guests. Learn more at OvationUpcom. Today we have a hero of mine, someone who not only is in the pizza industry, but somebody who wears it on their sleeve the man with the shirt, avery Ward. He went from Apple genius to CEO of Little Italy Ristorante. He's also the creator of Slice of Life series and just digital master. You do such incredible videos and content and it's an honor to have you on.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Avery Well, thanks for having me, thanks for the kind words. I love that you recognize what we've been working on over the last few years. It's been a lot of growth, a lot of hard days, but it makes it all worth it to come talk to great people like you. And thanks for the shirt inspo.

Speaker 1: 1:04

So there's a pizza neon sign behind my head that Matt Platt gave to me, and Matt, he saw my shirt, he liked it. You work with Matt. You saw the picture of the shirt, you liked it. So Matt found a guy and you now make your own custom pizza shirts with drippy pizza and pepperonis and your logo on it, and they look awesome and it's super cool, man, because I think that it makes a lot more sense for you to be rocking a pizza shirt than me well, I mean, I saw you.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I was like man. That's because so matt, you know, always talks about wearing your brand. Right, he's always like. You know, you got to live the brand, you got to wear the brand, you got to be able to talk about the brand and his thing is orange. You know, he's got the orange cars and he's got the orange shirts and the orange shorts and everything's orange. And I'm like man. I need something like that. So I was on the search for probably six or so months and he was doing a podcast. I saw you in the pizza. I was like the pizza shirt's it, I can wear it, it's open.

Speaker 1: 2:08

It's free game. Oh, that's yeah, because they're done. They don't make the pizza shirts anymore, and so it's great that you did your own new and improved version of it. But I want to talk Avery. I know that we're maybe we'll see how the timing works out on this, because we just have so much to talk about. I want to talk about guest experience, but first I want to talk about content. There's a lot of restaurants out there who are like afraid to make content, and I feel like there's very few who are just crushing the game. You're doing it, sean Walchef is doing it, there's a few others, but what is the benefit? Like, have you seen more business by doing social media?

Speaker 2: 2:51

It's one of the hardest questions to answer, right? I get asked that question so often of what's the value that it brings you and it's truly immeasurable. I can't necessarily translate the work that we're doing online to a dollar value that it's helped us grow and everybody's always, like you know, they hear my story and they see that we went from this $500,000 a year pizza place hole in the wall mom and pop to this five and a half million dollar restaurant location which is soon to be a restaurant group with multi locations in the pipeline plan, and we're going to be a $24 million restaurant group in 10 years or less. And so everybody sees that growth and they're like how are you doing it? And I can't give you an answer because there's a hundred thousand things that we've got on our plate that we're working on to make that happen Right, and social media and our content game is just one of those strategies in that pipeline that allow us to get to that end result. But what I can measure is the people that come in our store and have a conversation with me going, hey, I saw what you guys did last. Or I saw where my salad comes from and the lettuce that's on my plate. That was crazy to see how that's grown. And those are what's measurable.

Speaker 2: 3:57

What's also measurable that I never anticipated the slice of life series would bring us our culture change. We've always had a really good culture and I've always known the restaurant culture that I wanted to have for my space. I didn't want to have a workplace where employees would grab the door handle and sigh before they open that back door to come to work that day. Right, I always knew the type of workplace I wanted to have, but I always struggled getting everybody in my business and especially as we grew from a point of 12 employees to now 95, getting everybody in the company to understand not only where we've come from, where we're going, but more importantly, the work that they don't understand. Their managers and leaders do every day to make this place better. And so Slice of Life has quite literally allowed us to showcase that to them in a visual way where they're seeing the work that goes in week after week and the growth and the change in front of their face in the restaurant, but also they're seeing the story of how those changes come to life.

Speaker 1: 4:51

And it's been really powerful stories sell, and it's not. They don't just like sell pizzas, but they sell vision, they sell engagement, they sell loyalty, and I love that you're sharing these stories, not just of the food, but of the origin of the food and of your story too, of, like, the origins of the ideas and stuff it's it's powerful, 1000%.

Speaker 2: 5:13

And you know, the thing about slice of life is we've been going at this for a little over a year now. I think we're up to 60 episodes last week. It's not about just us. It truly pulls back the curtains to allow us to showcase our team members and the great, great work that they're doing in the dish community involvement, what we're doing in our community and of different organizations that we partner with on a regular basis. But then also, my favorite part our industry people like yourself, people like the guy who makes my sub buns to the company who makes my lettuce. I want to showcase the hard work that they do that goes into that piece of lettuce, because sometimes people get a plate of food and they don't really realize how much work, love and care goes into each ingredient on that plate.

Speaker 2: 6:03

And we've been able to take the slice of life into some amazing places and we have some great episodes coming up in the next few months where we go in to some food service partners of ours and show the process, show the people that go in to that bun, that lettuce, that pepperoni, that sausage, all of the things. There's a people and there's a process and people are really curious about that. But we're ultimately curious about it because we know that we've picked the right customers for us to serve, but also the right vendor partners yourself, and there's people behind these brands that we work with and we want to share the amazing things that they're doing. I love that. And so last piece on that our community. Because we're doing all that, they get to feel a part of our story and they don't just see the food.

Speaker 2: 6:49

They see not only our values but the care and the detail that we put into everything that we do, and that's been immeasurable. So how do I measure it? I can't but the conversations that I have and the work that we're doing with slice of life.

Speaker 1: 7:02

that's measurable and it's beautiful to see, it's like Gary V, one of the things that he tellsa story about his head of marketing, who was like what's the ROI of a follower? What's the ROI of a follower? And he finally goes to her and says what's the ROI of your mom? How do you just put a value on all those little things that she did for you? What is the ROI of a fan? What's the ROI of the media? Some things are hard to track, but in aggregate, they create a brand, they create a experience that helps people feel connected, and when you feel connected, that is what drives true loyalty. And so I think that what you're doing is incredible. What would you say to anyone who's worried about creating content for their restaurant, not sure if they could do it or if they should do it?

Speaker 2: 7:48

Get uncomfortable. Every business has an evolution and a revolution. The revolution is that we need to do something. We're at this point and we realize there's opportunity and then you get to that point of an evolution. It's like, oh, we did that. We look back and go oh, I can't believe we were struggling with that. Right when we were at 60 weeks ago with slice of life, it turned into this. It was this little fun side idea, side story of this I always wanted to be a TV personality. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a weatherman. I was oh yeah, oh yeah, it's bad, it's bad. My dad, when he pulls out the VHS man, stuff goes wild. I literally set up a VHS recorder on a tripod and there was a blizzard in 2008 that wiped through Ohio and I was literally outside like the wind was going wild, I was holding onto my jacket and I was filming the weather at like yeah, it's stupid.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Oh my gosh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 8:40

My creative marketing director saw that. He was like dude, you're meant for the camera and I had done some other things with other organizations. You know that one of the highlight is and stuff. But the first episode was called Avery goes back to school and we went to the local school. They wanted me to come in and talk to some middle school students about career path and stuff like that, and we filmed it and I watched the episode. I was like dude, this is killer. And he's like we could do this every week. And I was like let's do it. And so that week forward.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Man, we have not missed a week and it's been a beautiful thing I'll tell you 2024 was over and we did a recap on 24 and just look back on what we did that year, because we started it around January and it was so amazing to watch that video and quite literally see my whole life flash before my eyes over the course of the year and all the wins and all the struggles and just it was a beautiful thing to watch, truly it was. But what?

Speaker 1: 9:29

great advice get uncomfortable, flip that camera around and hit record and just do stuff. We were talking right before this podcast about like recording equipment and were talking right before this podcast about like recording equipment and how. When I started this podcast, I literally didn't even have a microphone. And then now I'm trying to do like in-person podcasts and so, avery, you were the one who showed me the mics that you use, so I bought those same mics and then I don't have a camera yet for that stuff, but I'm doing using my laptop. It's just a matter of like. Just start with what you got. It doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be polished, but what it does need to be is consistent and try different things until you feel something that fills your niche.

Speaker 2: 10:07

Critical right there. It's restaurant owners all the time. They see all this content online, whether it's from amazing coaches that are out there like David Scott Peters, a great friend of mine and awesome guy. But people like that can quite literally change your life if you let them and you take their advice and make change. But sometimes people hear individuals online talking or maybe it's me right now and they hear all the things we're talking about Like I could never do that. It's just another thing in their bank deposit. In the back of their head it's like, oh, I want to work on that. Oh, I need to do that. Oh man, I suck at that. Oh, I got to do this.

Speaker 2: 10:39

But if you just keep letting those things bank up and stack up behind you and you don't ever start to chip away at them or document them somewhere and going, oh, I need to do that, I'm going to do that and not that you need to, you're going to and so start tracking. You're running what I call issues list. You're tracking your issues that are happening in your business, whether they're a short-term issue or long-term issue, and you're creating in your head a process that you can go down to fix it right. And you just got to start doing it and put in the work to do it. You can't give up. So when it doesn't work, you identify how you make it better or how you fix it right, and it's not just like, eh, that thing didn't work as I tried it. No, we'll work. You just got to do it.

Speaker 1: 11:20

Yeah, I look at this podcast. I mean probably our first 50 episodes. It was like me and my grandma who listened to them, right, and now we're closing in on 400 episodes and you learn how to do it and you learn how to get better and what works and what doesn't. But it's about that constant evolution and changing and trying new things. And, yeah, so tell me about your philosophy of guest experience. How do you create a great guest experience?

Speaker 2: 11:46

Yeah, so yeah, I think it's important to go back to the beginning and I'll be very brief with this. We're a 45-year-long legacy restaurant. I started with my grandparents in the 60s as a grocery store. They were business owners at heart and always wanted to venture into owning their own grocery store because my grandpa was a produce manager and they got this great offer traveling through town to purchase this business $18,000 and ran their grocery store for almost 20 years.

Speaker 2: 12:14

And my grandma's little side gig of love of cooking Italian specialties meatballs, pastas home, you know, scratch made noodles and dressings and all that stuff became what people came for rather than the grocery store. So they're coming to the grocery store to get groceries, yet leaving with grandma's to-go container clamshells of food for dinner that night. So that's kind of where the light bulb in their head went. We got something here and so they purchased a little pizza shop down the road and kind of the rest is history with. Literally my dad ran that business for 40 years and my dad was very much. So do it yourself, know it all got a hand on everything, or else it's not.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Yeah, right.

Speaker 2: 12:50

Right, I grew up in that business, you know so. My grandma's house, which she raised my dad and his three other siblings in, was inches away from the grocery store which then turned into the restaurant. So summers and after school I was at grandma's house, but I'd always end up in the restaurant with my dad, and so I watched a lot of things that he did well and I watched a lot of things that he didn't do well. That I knew I didn't want to replicate. I never wanted to be in the family restaurant business. Like you said, I worked for Apple for about five and a half years. That was my passion. But you say what makes us unique? I think what makes us unique is going back to the foundations of how we got started, and that was that my grandma and my dad and my grandpa did really, really well was building connections in this community. So they established really great relationships with their clientele, so much so that those people considered them like family and went and told the whole world about this little grocery store and or a little pizza shop that you got to check out in Groveport Ohio. So when I came back to the family business, it wasn't because I wanted to, it was kind of a necessity. My dad had a brain aneurysm in 2015. He wasn't able to do his same level of doing it all any longer, and so I very quickly saw that I need to delegate really well, I need to grow a team, I need to grow the business sales because at the time they were about to go bankrupt because it was going down because my dad couldn't be the be-it-all guy anymore. Through that, I looked back and I took a really long, hard pause to think about how did we get to where we are? How are we in business for 40 years as a pizza place and 20 years as a grocery store before that and still be here today? And it was because they created lasting memories that are worth sharing. And so our tagline that I created now for our restaurant group is creating lasting memories worth sharing through exceptional hospitality, great food and even better people.

Speaker 2: 14:51

And so my dad and my grandparents were huge about the way that they treat their customers, the way they establish relationships, and it wasn't just Betty Sue who comes in. It's Betty Sue who's married to Bob, and they got a son named Jim and they come here once a week and little Jimmy loves the ravioli. And are you getting little Jimmy's ravioli today? So that's the level of relationship building that they did. And are you getting little Jimmy's ravioli today? So that's the level of relationship building that they did.

Speaker 2: 15:20

And when you have that type of relationship with your customers, they want to go tell everybody about this place because there's not many of those that are around any longer. Right, there's when we think back to the 1950s and 40s and 60s. I've got so many photos of when it was a grocery store and it's a beautiful thing to see. But you can see people connecting with one another at a counter holding up this piece of meat, right, and you could just see the level of engagement that they had with that person. You don't have that anymore and you walk into your big chain grocery store and it's.

Speaker 2: 15:45

I'll take a flight. Okay, anything else, sir, here's your flight, taking that same mentality that it was back then, because worlds were a lot simpler. We didn't have these phones that we're connected to. We didn't have these laptops that we got on and talked to a guy who's halfway across the country on a podcast. We didn't have those forms of communication. So our best forms of communication was in-person connections. So that's what we do differently. We build great hospitality through great food, but even better people in the relationships building that we do inside of our four walls and we turn that into a business model that honestly builds people, it creates a legacy and it connects them with our community in a way that most restaurants will never think about even touching.

Speaker 1: 16:27

You've done the hard work, and you've done the hard work consistently, and it's not like there's an overnight menu fix to tweak this or like the one higher that you need to make, but it's like doing the right things long enough, yield the right things, and I think that you're just proof of that. So kudos to you, man. Now we already gave a shout out to David Scott Peters and DSP. He's my man. Go check out his other podcast episodes with us here at Give an Ovation and go check him out. He's great. And gave, obviously, a shout out to Matt Plapp. Gotta love him. Anyone else that you think deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry, anyone that we should be following Avery.

Speaker 2: 17:04

Those are my people, man, those are my two. David's quite literally taught me how to get out of my own way and run the restaurant like a business and he coaches operators to build a sustainable and system-driven business and he's kind of that no BS mentality, and Matt's the same way, but on marketing side, how do you take what you're doing and ramp it up and tell your story? Those are the people, but honestly, I think there's a lot of great people in the industry. I love meeting new people and connecting with them on a different level, whether it's learning what they do and what makes them tick or how that relationship could eventually benefit the both of us. But yeah, man, get involved.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Those two are fantastic people to give an ovation to. And Avery, how do people find and follow you and Little Italy?

Speaker 2: 17:49

So you can follow our journey on YouTube. That's kind of our infant platform that we're really trying to grow the Slice of Life on. Just search the at sign Little Italy Growth Port. We post our weekly Slice of Life vlog on there and it's great for industry folks to watch because it's more than just our restaurant, it's other businesses in the industry and so we post that weekly vlog on Wednesdays and it's showing everything from community projects to behind the scenes kitchen life at our restaurant. And we've also we're on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and it's just at Little Italy Groveport. And I'm also on LinkedIn, avery Ward, and on there I'm more so talk about kind of the systems thing and leadership and stuff like that that I'm doing in our business to make it grow and be better. But whether you're in the industry or just love hospitality, you're trying to build something that's worth people watching and tuning in for.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Love it, man. And hey, by the way, I just sent you a LinkedIn request. I could not believe that we weren't connected on LinkedIn already. So excited to follow your journey on LinkedIn. But, avery, for giving us a slice of your wisdom from a slice of life and for keeping the pizza shirts alive, baby, today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give an Ovation. Thank you, 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.