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 their strategies and tactics to help you create a five-star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, the operations and guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. It gives you all the insights you need without annoying your guests with all the questions. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And today we have someone who is not just an expert in the industry but a hero of hair the COO of the Savory Fund, josh Beauchard. Welcome to the podcast, man.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Zach so nice to be on.

Speaker 1: 0:40

And this is so funny because, for those who listen to this podcast, they might be thinking wait, hasn't Josh been on? It's like, yeah, I've talked about Josh on the podcast, and Josh and I have talked so much that we were at RLC recently and I was like, hey, you get a t-shirt because you were on the podcast. And he's like I haven't been on the podcast. I was like there's no possible way that you haven't been on the podcast already, because I just get the privilege to talk to you quite a bit, and so I feel like I'm always infused with your wisdom, which is one of the benefits of this podcast. But I'm grateful that you're finally here, josh.

Speaker 2: 1:12

I am the most patient person. I've just been waiting and I finally got this invite. I'm so excited, so this is like the pinnacle of my career being on Ovation's podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Yeah, the pinnacle of a quite illustrious career. I mean, you've done some incredible things and you don't have the traditional restaurant operations background. You actually come from a tech background well, and exotic cars, but you also have this insurance background, tech background. I would love to get your thoughts on what, from your tech background, do you think has helped you be successful as the COO of Savory Fund.

Speaker 2: 1:53

You know, what's interesting is, we're always trying to create that experience, whether it's for the customer or for the guest or for our employees. It's all about that experience, and the only way that I know how to do that with scale and number of stores is with tech. And so you take really good products and you build the infrastructure that allows for your employees to succeed, from sourcing, onboarding to compliance, but then enabling them to just be next level with our guests.

Speaker 1: 2:26

And when you look at next level, how do you constantly push your team to get to that next level? Because a lot of times you're creating great experiences. The brands you have are incredible. You buy brands and you invest in brands that have this seedling and have something that's already going and then you take that to the next level. But how do you constantly push to that next and next and next. And is that exhausting or is that exciting?

Speaker 2: 2:53

No for me. I'm a developer, I'm a maximizer, and in those two things there's always opportunity for improvement. So, as we started our career here in restaurant for improvement, so as we started our career here in restaurant, we were franchisees and a lot of people started that way. And so, as franchisees are saying, oh, I wish the franchisor would do this, and if they only did this, we could be that much better Well, we made that shift to the Savory Fund and we started partnering with founders and then we started hearing from them their expectations, and now we've added this franchisor vertical to Savory, where we actually have to make it happen on our side. And that's an interesting place to be, because now we're saying we should be doing this because our franchisees expect that. So there's never a stopping part at Savory. It's always progression.

Speaker 1: 3:47

And when you look at that progression, what are some things that you do in terms of and the reason I want to really dig into this is because you guys really do push the envelope and constantly look for new ways to make things better. Is there like a meeting that you have like an innovation meeting? Is there a philosophy, a question that you ask to help spark and push that things to progress forward? How would someone take that piece of your culture and say, like I want to do that in my restaurant. What would you recommend to them?

Speaker 2: 4:21

I think for us, partnering with founders who created these brands is a huge piece to what we do, and so if you listen to those partners who say we have to have a surfboard that's touched Hawaiian waters, that we buy from a shop in Hawaii because that's a part of the experience, that's something that I could never. Never put in a Moe Betos right, for instance. That's something that I could never say. I've never even been to Hawaii, so someone who's from Hawaii no, isn't that crazy?

Speaker 2: 4:55

Seriously, yeah, seriously. Never been to Hawaii. We go to Mexico. My wife's from Florida, and so we go to 38 all the time. That's where we go, but never Hawaii. I'm patiently waiting here we go.

Speaker 2: 5:09

It is about those founders who care about their brand more than anyone else, and that is a secret sauce at Savory. And when we partner with those founders, they tell us what needs to happen, they tell us the experience that needs to be there, and then we just go find great tech, we find partners in the industry to go make that happen. They tell us the experience that needs to be there, and then we just go find great tech, we find partners in the industry to go make that happen.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And that's something where you've always done a good job of making sure that the technology does not get in the way of the employees and the guests, but making sure that it enhances the employee and the guest experience. And so I'd love to understand, as you're thinking about the moves that you make and the guest experience what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

Speaker 2: 5:54

The most important part of guest experience is momentum, and I'll tell you why. When I went skydiving for the first time, I realized something unexpected the most terrifying part of skydiving isn't the free fall.

Speaker 2: 6:08

No, yeah, that's true, it's. Yeah, you wear helmets, you're good. No, but it wasn't the free fall. It was actually standing at the edge of the door hesitating right. So once you jump, momentum takes over. Every second after that feels natural, it feels exhilarating, right and free. It's the same in our guest experience today. So the hardest part isn't serving the food or delivering the service, it's getting the experience started with energy, and you do this really well, zach. But you have to have clarity, you have to have connection. It's the greeting at the door. If that's awkward or slow, you've lost all the momentum. You're not going to have connection. It's the greeting at the door. If that's awkward or slow, you've lost all the momentum. You're not going to have that customer experience. But if you start strong, it starts with a smile, it starts with a first welcome. You create that momentum that carries that experience forward in a positive way.

Speaker 1: 6:59

That's awesome, because it's totally right that when you are looking at what we need to do to get things started, when you walk in the door and you're greeted by someone, it will affect how you are.

Speaker 1: 7:14

We had a group of friends and every time that somebody would walk into our apartment, we would all applaud and we just like we literally gave them an ovation. It was just so fun because they would come in and it was just like we literally gave them an ovation. It was just so fun because they would come in and it was just like it would change the day during COVID. For like the first six months of COVID, whenever I got on a meeting with someone, I would start the meeting off by like chanting their name, like Josh, josh, josh, josh, just because I knew that everyone was having a tough time everyone. And to just have like even though it was a little tacky, to have that little bump of energy, like feels good. And if you walk into a place and they're like welcome to Moe's and it feels inauthentic, it's almost worse than not saying anything, right.

Speaker 2: 8:01

So you got to go for it. Yeah, If you ever walk into a restaurant and there's no music, you're like what is off?

Speaker 1: 8:09

Isn't that so weird?

Speaker 2: 8:10

I'm not doing something and that makes the big difference. So in that, if you're creating that with the energy and the positivity and the momentum on that side of things, with your employees, you're winning.

Speaker 1: 8:22

So that is such a unique answer and it makes so much sense. I think a lot of that starts with your pre-shift meeting. Doing that is a great way to get people excited and get them pumped up. I remember when I did summer sales before we went out Did you ever do summer sales? The door to door knocking.

Speaker 2: 8:36

I didn't.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Oh, good for you. That's because you probably love it. I did insurance, that was not the way to go going Well.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Well, it led you to Andrew, which is great, right, but before you go out there and get door slammed in your face and get yelled at all day, we had a meeting and we would like chant and pump each other up and again, it was a little bit tacky, but it was so good to have that start to the day and then use that as it got depleted throughout the rest of the day from getting yelled at. So what an interesting concept of momentum. And think about that guest walking in for the first time and what do they feel before they get the food, before they really experience the service, right, and that's really interesting momentum. I love that. Now you've done a lot of things because the savory fund you guys have what a dozen brands. Now you're building a restaurant empire. I mean, like it's crazy. And so you've obviously implemented a lot of tactics with a lot of different brands. What are some tactics that you would use to improve the guest experience nowadays?

Speaker 2: 9:47

It's interesting, Zach, in our acquisition model we're acquiring brands, we're meeting with tons of restaurants who are trying to figure out the next steps, and when they come onto the Savory platform, we partner with them. No-transcript me look good just because we're trying and testing and seeing. So I do have to say if I'm looking at something that's going to improve the guest experience, it's Ovation, and I don't mean that to be a plug, but I have to say I think I'm a power user in the system and I see things very differently than a lot of people. We have eight brands that are on Ovation and I compare and contrast every single one of those brands in the platform and I'm looking at things that are making a difference in our brands.

Speaker 2: 11:04

It's pretty interesting for me to see how Ovations changed our business. When you look at someone like Via 303 that implemented Ovation and they went from a 4.1 to a 4.7 in Google rating. That's what everyone wants in the restaurant industry. And then the biggest part there is the number of guests saved. Biggest part there is the number of guests saved. That's huge for us, and so if you look at even via stats, they're saving 11 guests per location every month. Wow, I mean that's mind blowing. And so for me, as I dive into the systems that we use, I start pulling out and seeing patterns, and so like a pattern for me is number of guest feedback that comes in at those day parts and I'm saying, are we executing in the morning versus afternoon, versus evening, and what do we need to do to shift so that we can have consistent feedback in positive ways? Or let's go fix the feedback that's coming in where we see it right. So it's just an interesting place for me.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Wow, I mean well, first of all, thank you. I'm like you've encapsulated what the dream is of someone to like, take this data and then take action on it. And yeah, there's going to be some great benefits to what happens with things like your Google score. But I always say, we're not here to make bad restaurants good, we're here to make great restaurants better, and I think that what a great restaurant takes is it takes people that care. It takes people that are willing to swing the hammer and it takes people that are willing to look at the nail right, because if you're not going to look, because there are people you know, one of the things that we find is like at the pizza expo, whenever we go there, that is the place, more than any other place, that I hear I don't even care what they're saying.

Speaker 1: 12:54

I'm not, I don't want to look. I don't want to look. I don't care what they're saying. Like, if they don't like my pizza, go someplace else. Screw all the reviews. And there are people like that that don't even want to look at what needs to get fixed. But you're not building a one-off. You're building numerous brands across the country now with franchising, and you have to understand what's actually going on in your individual locations and how to fix that, and then do the work to fix it.

Speaker 2: 13:25

If you're not looking at how fast your team is responding to customer feedback and the specifics to go orders, if you're missing it every time on I don't know paperware or whatever it is, or making sure that they get every single item and you're not going back and fixing those things, you're just letting sales walk out the door. Going back and fixing those things, you're just letting sales walk out the door. So for us, that's the piece where we have to get so detailed and dialed in on all the data and then execute on that. When you see something, say something. When you see something do something right.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Are there any specific changes that you could point to and say like, oh, we didn't know about that and then, once we heard about it, we made this change when?

Speaker 2: 14:08

you look at what's most important in negative reviews. Most of your reviews are food and service right, and so if you're focusing on those, the service to me is the most important in the review process as customers come back to you process, as customers come back to you, and just a piece that came up this week when we have managers who are leaving early and leaving the stores kind of leaderless, that's a problem, obviously, and you see sales dip when you have a system like Ovation that can tell you that and then you can take action on that. To go back to your GMs, because a lot of times you don't hear what's happening in the store level and so when you start seeing those metrics, then you can actually take action and go Ooh, okay, now we need to be looking at clock in and clock outs and let's see how much time they're actually spending there. So that was just one example of how we used it.

Speaker 1: 15:03

That's really interesting because when you have 120% employee turnover and 80% manager turnover, it's really hard to run a business when you don't have all of that information in real time. And you got to make sure that the tools aren't there to get people in trouble. The tools are there to help them improve and help you have the visibility so that, at the end of the day, we're all working towards the same thing, which is a better guest experience.

Speaker 2: 15:32

If you're doing it that way, you're in a winning position. And when you take that approach, you've all of a sudden created this partnership with your employees where they're saying, okay, you're giving me things to help my business run better, sales increase, which makes labor easier, that you're actually helping improve their life when you spot those trends, those pieces that you need to be fixing in your restaurants.

Speaker 1: 16:06

I love that because it's so much more than just a single point of data, and I think this is one of the benefits about hearing from a lot of your guests is that you can differentiate between a one-off that just needs an apology, needs to handle something, but it was just like a totally random thing that is not a systemic issue, is not a systemic issue and what are the consistent problems that are bubbling up? And you need to treat those two things differently. But to start, you need to treat them the same, which is like understand that that individual guest needs to feel heard and seen, but then understand that don't fixate on the one loud person. Understand what are the things that need to be improved generally, at each location, down to the employee and the manager, and I think it's awesome that you're taking that data and really doing things with it to improve and it shows I mean, your scores are phenomenal innovation, your response rates are amazing people. As I said, it's obvious that you've created a culture where it's cool to care, as Will Gadara would say.

Speaker 2: 17:13

I'm going to steal that one. Cool to care. That's what we want to be.

Speaker 1: 17:17

Yeah, now, knowing all the people that you know, I want you to think about who is someone that deserves an ovation, who is someone that we should be following Hands down.

Speaker 2: 17:26

Ovation goes to Chef Joey Maggiore, and the reason I say that is yes, he's our partner in Sicilian Butcher and that brand is phenomenal, it's blowing up, it's doing great things. But Joey is a creator and it's so hard to build brands, it's so hard to build something around that brand and he's done a really good job with the Mexicano Hash Kitchen. Everything that he builds is actually it's like larger than life, but it's still incredibly personal. It's personal to him. He talks about his family. His families are in the restaurant. They're eating there weekly. He knows how to invest in people, into the culture, into the community. He's building restaurants right and it's fun being a partner with someone like that because we can add some of our secret sauce on scale and growth and out of heritage markets and what we're doing. But we hold on to him being that like foundation. So in that sense of hospitality, the way that he thinks about it, guests not only show up but they remember the experience.

Speaker 1: 18:29

I love that because the remembering of it, right, that's the impression. Flavor profiles fade, but, man, how you feel that sticks with you. I love that. And Josh, how do people find and follow you? And the Savory Fund Okay.

Speaker 2: 18:44

so we have a couple of different ways. Restaurantology we do a conference every single year. It's our way to give back to aspiring entrepreneurs, those who are building their restaurants. So it's for restaurants who are two to 20 units, and it's a day of action-packed, just feedback how to hire, how to fire someone. I mean, it's just tactical. So come see us at restaurantology.

Speaker 1: 19:08

And, by the way, I do have to say I have consistently heard from restaurants that is the best conference of the entire year. So what?

Speaker 2: 19:17

Zach, that's Coming from the person who's been to every conference. That's like the nicest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Yes, but vendors if any vendors are listening it is a non-sponsored, vendor not allowed conference. This is straight restaurants and just learning and you with your peers. It's unlike any conference there is because every other conference is trying to make a ton of money. Restaurantology is there to teach you to network, to learn. It really is, I mean, like huge plug just for the fact that I have so many people that speak so incredibly highly of restaurantology and so, from the industry, thank you for doing it.

Speaker 2: 19:57

No, that's really nice. Then you can find me on LinkedIn and then go to our website, savoryfundcom, see what we're all about.

Speaker 1: 20:03

And if someone is interested in learning, if they're kind of in the savory fund sweet sweet spot. What does Savory Fund tend to invest in and acquire?

Speaker 2: 20:12

We want an established brand. Five years, five units is our sweet spot, but we've been outside of that and we want someone who's passionate about their brand and wants to grow it, but needs capital, needs structure, needs contracts, needs the expertise to help them get to the next level.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Awesome, Well, josh, for helping us push to the next level and for reminding us that skydiving is really just one scary step. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you 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.