Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to another edition 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. Learn what's actually happening in your restaurants and how to improve without just a long survey. Learn more at OvationUpcom. And I'm really excited today to invite Justin Falciola on the podcast. Justin is not only an industry vet, but he's been on both sides of the coin, both as a vendor and as an operator. He was at Papa John's as the SVP, chief Insights and Technology Officer, cke as the Chief Technology and Growth Officer and now President of the Americas at DeliverAct. Welcome to the podcast, justin.

Speaker 2: 0:51

How are you Doing great, Zach. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 0:55

First of all, we were commenting on Falsiola and Oats. I got a little bit of the long end of that stick. I think Mine's pretty easy. You got some vowels and consonants in there together that make it tough to say for most people.

Speaker 2: 1:09

My mom always used to say it sounds like some strange disease, but you got it.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Well, I love it. When I saw your last name, I was like I wonder if this guy is a Jersey boy. And then I saw that you went to Rutgers and I'm like all right there. And so anyway, turns out, justin and I have the same area code for a mobile number. So that's a big deal. There's not too many of us out there and unless someone cracks the code, I'll leave that a secret in terms of what it is. But for those who don't know Justin, I mean obviously everyone's familiar with Papa John's and CKE.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Talk to us a little bit about Deliveract and what you guys do. Yeah, a hundred percent. Listen, the first shout out certainly the East Coast, and pasta and people and pizza, of course. Deliveract is just this amazing company. I was so excited to join a few months back.

Speaker 2: 2:01

For me, my passion is food personally, professionally, quite honestly, I love to eat. I think about it all the time. When I got into restaurants maybe a decade ago, zach, I honestly was a little cautious about entering the industry. I hadn't been in this kind of industry before franchise and there's a lot that goes into, as you know, a lot that goes into making a successful experience for people each and every day, and within a year, I was hooked and I said I never want to leave. Deliveract is, to me, one of the most exciting stories in food tech today. We're in 52 countries, the team itself. We're in about 12 countries around the world, but our founders, Zong and the other co-founders, have built this amazing distributed culture where, 24-7, we're taking care of customers and brands throughout the globe. A big part of my focus is obviously my home, right here in the US, and we'd love to chat more with you today, certainly about how we're driving digital outcomes for our customers.

Speaker 1: 2:59

What are the problems that you're solving for your customers?

Speaker 2: 3:03

Let me take on a little bit of a journey of a company quickly. I mean, we're about six years old. Where we started was connecting really as many channels and point of sales as we could. That's the problem that DeliverX set out to solve. This was right before the pandemic and most of those channels at that time were aggregators. So today there's over 100 aggregators in the world that we connect and over 400 point of sales. There's over 100 aggregators in the world that we connect and over 400 point of sales.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Pretty rapidly the company got into dispatching. So think about maybe your own website or a phone order or your own app. How do I dispatch that? Either through my own courier fleet or, more commonly, through really large players like DoorDash, uber, et cetera. A few years back, about three years back, our customers and partners. One of the partnerships is how the company was built. They said listen, you're solving these things menu building, order injection, upsell, etc for us on third party. Can you take some of that same tech and that same team and apply it to our first party problems? So things like kiosks, things like voice, ai, things like websites, apps, and so that's what we started to do. That's been the journey the past few years and really we're just getting started in the US market. We only started focusing on this market a few years ago and it's been amazing what we've been able to achieve with our partners and especially our customers. We have some really exciting brands that I've been privileged to visit and privileged to partner with.

Speaker 1: 4:22

It's amazing because when you really focus on and this is something that I've been learning about but Blockbuster, everyone talks about Blockbuster and the other day, someone brought up something that was actually like a novel idea about Blockbuster that I hadn't considered before. Why did they go out of business? And they didn't go out of business just because Netflix came along or Redbox. They went out of business because they stopped focusing on their customers' problems and what were they actually trying to solve? What were the problems they were trying to solve? And it wasn't a rental right, it was home entertainment for families and individuals. And if they would have focused on that and been obsessed with how do we constantly evolve this home entertainment business and helping families and individuals to find enjoyment at home on the weekends or on the weekdays or needing a break, like they would have gotten to that red box Netflix idea sooner or at least would have understood what that meant for them.

Speaker 1: 5:23

And I think that in any company, be it a restaurant, be it a tech partner, it's about understanding what are the problems that you're solving and how do you constantly use new evolutions, new technologies, new insights to solve that problem better? And I think that's where people often get confused is that they focus too much on the solution and not on the problem, and I think that with every restaurant, it really comes down to the guest experience. Right, Everyone's trying to balance the two aspects of I want a more profitable brand with a better guest experience, and sometimes those things come in conflict. But it's like how do you do that? And so in your experience, especially focusing on technology, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

Speaker 2: 6:10

Yeah, One thing that's really hard for restaurants and I've only been on this side of the table for a few months and I love getting to partner with all these different varieties of restaurants but, having been in this space for about a decade, on the brand side, it's just in that decade it at the top of the funnel. You think about marketing technology or marketing media, right. And then you work your way down through the funnel into ordering experiences and think about all the different ways folks can order food today, all the different ways folks can sort of physically acquire that food Someone bringing it to them, curbside, drive-through, walk-in, qr code, table side, etc. And then post-order. There are so many things now that can go wrong and I'm not saying that many of those things didn't exist in the past, but the complexity of the interactions have really stepped up.

Speaker 2: 7:09

If you're in a restaurant, it's a low-margin business. You're on your feet all the time. I've had a bunch of kids Zach and three of them are teenagers and they've all worked in restaurants. You're going, going, going. And if you're a GM most important job in the industry, right. Typically we think of as the GM you now are confronted with a whole set of problems or exceptional cases that you didn't have before, and again, a lot of those, I think, are linked to this explosion and diversity of technology enablement, and that same enablement is making our life great right and we're so thankful for it as consumers and then certainly in the restaurant. A lot of that same technology is making your life easier, but it's also made it very challenging. I think that's a unique problem that for all of us in this industry we get to help solve. I think it's a privilege.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Yeah, I love that and when you focus in on that and when you focus in on what is this doing for the guest and how do we empower the GMs to be just a hospitality machine? That is something that I feel like is so critical and I think, if you're looking at any piece of technology for your restaurant, the question is always how does this help my GM to create that better guest experience or to improve profitability? Because the GM really is where the rubber meets the road. I love how you call it the most important position in a restaurant brand, because it totally is. That's where you make or break each of the guest experiences of restaurant brand because it totally is.

Speaker 2: 8:36

That's where you make or break each of the guest experiences. They are the hub, the lifeblood, and the culture that the GM builds, I think, cascades to everyone else. So how can we make them really successful and allow them to do what they do best, which is focusing on their team and focusing on their guests? I was pulling up on my phone here, so this is blind luck, but this morning I'm sitting there drinking coffee Zach, I probably drank way too much coffee, but I'm flipping through LinkedIn and colleague Sean over at Freddy's he runs technology over there. He posts on LinkedIn this amazing three sentences.

Speaker 2: 9:09

This morning I'm on a ladder back house I'm just reading it, back house in a restaurant, elbow deep in networking equipment, getting the cable in place, with my teeth trying to get everything open on time. Why, so we're open in time to serve guests. I share this as a reminder. Not everything we do is glamorous. In fact, very little is. Keep working hard, my friends.

Speaker 2: 9:27

That encapsulates a lot of what I think is important for technologists that are trying to understand how to serve restaurants and also what makes a great GM, are trying to understand how to serve restaurants and also like what makes a great GM back to GM. The details matter and when I think about our mission, both when I was a CTO and now kind of having the privilege of leading this region for DeliverAct, it really comes down to how do I make it easier? It has to be easier for a restaurant to scale profitably and for us, a lot of our focus is on digital scale. We have some things related to accuracy solutions and other solutions for the restaurant, but a lot of it is all around first-party and third-party digital scale. But if it's not easier, it's not gonna be good for the restaurant because, again, it's one of the hardest industries out there and one of the lowest margin industries out there. And I think again it's the problem with the proliferation of solutions that we haven't quite solved yet is how to actually make it easier for restaurant operators.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Man, well, you sold me on this industry. I feel like to be in this industry. We got to have a couple of screws loose because there are so many things that are tough about this industry, but the thing that I have found to be universal of people who love this industry like we do is that we care about people, we care about hospitality, we want to create these great experiences and to have people leaving filled and fulfilled and like that is what it comes down to and like a place of connection, and I think when you focus on that and the hospitality of it, all everything else falls in place. To that end. I'd love to hear anything that in your experience, some tactics that you've seen to improve the guest experience.

Speaker 2: 11:09

One is and I did make it sound like an insurmountable problem it's definitely not. It's just knowing the challenge and being excited by it like an insurmountable problem, it's definitely not. It's just knowing the challenge and being excited by it. One tactic is recognizing that everyone can be an analyst and should be an analyst, and this is where I think we're really just getting started. Our ski tips are headed down the slope in terms of analysis.

Speaker 2: 11:29

Years back, I used to work in finance and insurance healthcare industries B boring right. Well, that's what my kids said 100%. They're a lot more happy with what I'm doing these days, but you have hundreds, thousands of analysts cranking away at data. This stuff was really complex. Of course, data's still pretty complex, but the technology and the platforms it's like unbelievable to me how much they've evolved in just 10, 15 years and getting to the buzzwords with AI here, but certainly with the last two, three years, what we've seen. And so anyone can be an analyst. How does that connect to the guest experience?

Speaker 2: 12:09

I really encourage people to look at what you already have. Guests are implicitly telling you something through data that is recording or being emitted by the platforms that they're engaging in, and you want to balance that with what they're telling you through a platform like Ovation or a separate platform, right, and you look at those things together and be curious, be curious. When I was working the other side of the fence, a lot of times we just weren't curious. We'd see like the outcome metric and we wouldn't look at what was going into it. Why did that happen? And so you know the whole five whys. Yeah, kaizen, baby, if you ask why, enough, you get to the root cause. So yeah, number one thing be curious, be an analyst, and we can do it and we can do it.

Speaker 1: 12:56

I love that. That curiosity is part of that, excitement is part of that, love is part of that journey to always be fulfilling the brand promise and making sure that the guest feels seen, feels heard, feels that unreasonable hospitality. To come back and to share that experience and to make their day a little bit better. Because I love Kelly McPherson.

Speaker 1: 13:17

She was the CTO of Danny Myers Union Square Hospitality Group and I've been working with her now for coming up on five years and she is just a phenomenal person and she's been CTO of huge brands and led technology at hard rock and planet hollywood and oracle and just and, and and and one of the things that she says.

Speaker 1: 13:42

And I bring all that up just to say that this next quote from her is something so interesting. She goes we're not performing rocket surgery, we're delivering hot food, hot and cold food, and the thing I love about that is like she's able to take all of that and just break it down to the fact of like it's not terribly complicated but there's so many things that can make it complicated and there's so many factors that go into it, but at the end of the day, it's about delivering on that experience. It's about delivering on that feeling and I love that we're talking about feelings, and here I am a guy who's been finance and IT and CTO, and here we are talking about feelings because we're hospitality folks, right, and that's what it's all about.

Speaker 2: 14:31

An old boss at Papa John's, our CEO. He had this quote that just stuck with me. He's like where else do you get the privilege, but also the responsibility, of giving someone food? So for us, a lot of times that was literally at their door. A stranger is coming up to your door, knocking on your door and giving you food that you're taking into your family. That's like a pretty special moment. Right, that's something that you're going to ingest. That Food is a shared experience often. You're right I mean what Kelly said it should be simple at the end of the day, and that's why I think back to like just being in the restaurant.

Speaker 2: 15:05

For those of us in tech or data or marketing or product or whatever, your role is, maybe above store, to just make the time to go in and be a customer, be a consumer. But also, if you have the chance or the privilege, work in a restaurant. You know, every once in a while it's like the best way to build empathy that might be. My second suggestion is just work in there for a little while. You know a fast, casual concept, pretty different than fine dining, pretty different than an off-prime or delivery type business. But we would encourage and actually, in some cases even mandate our folks, like you have, to take a tour in the restaurant One of the best things, I think, for our team.

Speaker 2: 15:46

The third thing I guess that I'd say as a recommendation, zach, is maybe peek around the corner a bit at some of those interaction formats that don't have necessarily the sex appeal or all of the attention on them but are still highly trafficked. So if I gave just one example, to me it's the most glaring. It's drive-through for QSR and increasingly some of the fast casual world. Think about how much attention we put and money we put into the digital experience on a website, as we should, or a search engine optimization, search engine marketing, as we should, or an app experience. But think how many consumers are going through your drive-through.

Speaker 2: 16:30

For a lot of drive-through concepts it's often 50 to 70%, at least you know. Depending on day part it might be even higher. And a lot of times those speaker posts aren't great, the audio quality isn't great If there is a digital menu board, maybe glitchy or glaring, and there's like a whole lot of like physical and digital things and human things in that experience. It's just one example, but like back to like loving the problem, like that whole drive through interaction, that whole space. That's a problem. I think we could love you know some more in our industry, because it's a complex one, but I don't know if we've paid it enough attention.

Speaker 1: 17:10

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that there's some really interesting solutions out there. But I think it's a matter of be the consumer, because there are so many times that, like, I'm using my iPhone and I'm like does Tim Cook know the iPhone does this? Is he using this? Are people using the iPhone? Because if so, how did they miss that up? There's just things like that, that I find, and so the more that you're a consumer, the more that you can see from your guest's eyes. But that's the whole reason that we started Ovation right Was to help you see through the guest's eyes in a way that doesn't require you to go every single day. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't go. There's different avenues to get that feedback. So, justin, now you've had a great career still having it.

Speaker 2: 17:58

But you know a lot of people who is someone that we should be following. It's the end of summer and I don't really want to end, zach, so I'm going to chat out to some of my favorite summer foods here. We've got two amazing customers in the dessert space. One is one started in Brooklyn so I'm a Louisville guy but originally from Jersey and the New York city area and Van Leeuwen if you're familiar with their ice cream and thousands of grocery stores, I think at this point, and a lot of retail outlets. The founder of that company. He is obsessed with product quality and he's obsessed with everything we've been talking about, which is like the basics matter, the details matter, so shout out to them. I think it would be great to fill their doors before the summer ends. And listen, I'm a cobbler guy Peach Cobbler Factory is near and dear to my heart and shout out to our friends at Peach Cobbler.

Speaker 1: 18:41

Awesome.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Well, Justin, how do people find and follow you? I'm on LinkedIn like everybody else. Our Deliver Act. Linkedin is pretty easy to find as well. Give us a shout. We'd love to hear from you. But, most importantly, we love to celebrate restaurants. So that's where it's at, and, zach, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Yeah, man, well, like toppings and cobbler. Thanks for showing us that tech and hospitality go together, and for that today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us and give an ovation, justin. 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.