SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation The Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Zach Oates, and each week I get to chat with an industry expert 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 is actually happening in your restaurant from your office or home. Learn more at ovationup.com. And today I'm excited we have a friend, someone who is an amazing speaker, amazing businessman, James Bonano. He is the founder and CEO of Upstream Hospitality Group. I mean, he has got tap room, bango bowls, he's got some cool seasonal restaurants that where they import palm trees and just like create such a vibe. James, welcome to the podcast, man.

SPEAKER_01: 0:52

Zach, what's up, buddy? Thanks for having me. And thanks for the intro. And yeah, let the listeners know we're based out of Long Island, New York, and excited to be on here. So thanks.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

Yeah, and I've had the privilege of going in there a while and going into your restaurants and like you've got such great operations. Like you've just got to nail down. But before we get into operations, I do have a serious question for you. What is the weirdest way people have mispronounced your last name?

SPEAKER_01: 1:16

Banana, obviously, is an easy one. But no, it's honestly not too frequent. Not too frequent.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24

Once you give it two looks, you're like, oh, that's not banana. That's well, very cool. I'm just excited to chat because one of the things that we talk about a lot is from a marketing perspective, if you don't have your operations buttoned up, what actually is happening is you are paying for people to come in and have a one-star experience. Once they have that experience, they share it online because they're three times more likely to share a negative than a positive. So you may actually be marketing, spending dollars to lose money because you're going to lose 26 guests for every negative experience you have. And so talk to me about the importance of operations to you and how that relates to the guest experience, in your opinion.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07

Yeah, sure. I mean, my director of marketing says it all the time. You know, we can have all this crazy marketing and local store marketing in the community and these segmentations and driving frequency and foot traffic. But if we're not nailing the operations in the guest experience, then it's all for nothing and we're spinning our wheel here. So the guest experience is the biggest piece of the puzzle here for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 2:28

And what do you look at to when you're thinking about the guest experience and you're thinking about the operations aspect of it? If you were to go in and let's say that you buy a 10-location restaurant tomorrow, what are some of the low-hanging fruit that you would go to to look at, hey, is this brand doing well or not? And what can we do to improve it?

SPEAKER_01: 2:47

Well, if I were to buy a 10-year chain, that's a good question. If I not knowing a chain and being, let's say, out of market, I mean, similar to any guest, right? Like I'm gonna go online and look at their online reputation and kind of figure out is there recurring themes? Is this place maybe have great food, but just they're missing on service or they're missing on cleanliness, or what's making that brand miss on their promise to their guests? So I think looking at the guest experience, I mean for me operating a little over 20-something restaurants, and I could have all SOPs and training. It's all about the leader in the restaurant, it's all about the GM in the restaurant who is setting the tone for that store. And you can see it within a brand, uh, underperforming store within that brand. A lot of times it traces back to that leader of the store. So they're the ones that are setting the tone of the culture in the store, which when the rest of the team in that store, they're gonna permeate just how that person is leading the store. If there's drama, if there's clutter, if there's harassment, or people aren't just enjoying their time being there, that's gonna permeate to the guests. So I think having the right GMs, we're putting a lot of focus and attention to make sure we have the right leaders in the stores, making sure we're hiring A players. Because I mean, every step of that guest experience, whether they're calling the store, approaching the store, the ambience of the store, the temperature, the lighting, our taper and brand sports is very important to us. So as their sport games throughout the week, if we don't have the right game on, we could have the best food in the world. But if we don't have the right game on, that's a poor guest experience, right?

SPEAKER_00: 4:32

Yeah. I mean, if the Giants are playing the Niners and you got on the Eagles-Bears game, no one's gonna care.

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

Being a diehard Giants fan, they're on tonight. Maybe they would rather if they're not being on.

SPEAKER_00: 4:42

It's been a it's been a tough, it's been a tough road the past uh 10 or 15 years. So I'm gonna hang out with a former uh Giant legend tonight, actually, a man that you met. He's flying out here to Utah. So anyway, but I think that looking at this, one of the things that we've always said on this podcast, and we've heard it numerous times, and it's said all over the place, but it's so true, the guest experience cannot exceed the employee experience. And the number one factor of is that employee happy or not is based on do they have the tools, the training, the support to be successful? And if you're giving it to them, they're gonna be happy. And I love how you said we got to bring in a players. I'd love to get your thoughts on this because I've been doing a lot of thinking on what an A player is. What do you look for in an A player? How do you know if someone is an A player, if they got it or not?

SPEAKER_01: 5:32

Sure. You know, I just think I our hospitality group is upstream hospitality, right? So the name where that comes from is we're looking for people who don't want to be average or don't want to settle and kind of go take the easy road and go downstream. But we want people to be great and we want them to fight the current, and they we want them to be in that top 5%, that top 1%. So, like that's gonna take you to fight upstream. That's where our whole hospitality group name came from is we're looking to find leaders and people in this organization who want that upstream mentality to fight upstream. So we're just looking for people who are willing to put in that extra effort. We'll show you the functional tools of your job to do your job, but having that mentality where you're willing to put in that extra effort, that's harder to teach. That's something that comes from within them.

SPEAKER_00: 6:27

And one of the things that uh I 100% agree, and I I love that. And one of the things I've seen is that the way that you can tell is I feel like you look at A players, and every A player that I know is trying to become an A plus player. They're always trying to do things different. B players are usually okay being B players. You may have a few that you can coach up to be an A player, but a lot of them are just like, they're okay being a B player. The C players, the problem is they think they're already A plus players. We have C and when you think about that, it's like you look for those telltale signs of what are they doing to improve from an engineering standpoint. When I find engineers that I'm like, hey, what do you do on the weekends? And they're like, oh man, like I coded up this thing that was looking at this, or I'm I'm vibe coding with AI, test that out. Those are a players because they're trying to sharpen the saw all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 7:20

Totally on their own time, they're home and they're trying to learn how to take that next step. And I love some of our team members say, Hey, you know, I've been you mentioned AI, I've been messing around with AI, and they're exactly what you said, they're sharpening their tools because their DNA is A players, they're trying to progress. And when we're a growth company and and growing, we need leaders to grow with us, right? So just love people who want to put that effort in.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

So in your interview processes, highly recommend like asking about that, asking about what else they do to unwind, what are they reading, what are they listening to, what are they doing to try to expand the horizons? I think that's so important. And what are some tactics that you've used to improve the guest experience?

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

Sure. I think we'll go into speaking about having the right leaders is are we developing those leaders? What are we doing to assist and supplement them to sharpen their tools? And just even recently in the past couple weeks, we have really kind of dove into AI. I mean, just AI and what it can spit out and save so much time. We've really been developing more curriculums, trainings, having them look at different styles of leadership and giving examples of hey, if you're a manager, if a dishwasher shows up, but you're a leader if you're developing them to become a line cook, right? So like totally different stuff like that. It's like, hey, you know, you're kind of just going through the motions, you're managing your store if you're doing XYZ, but to become a leader and progress and take that next step. Here's some things you could be doing that helps develop you as well as your people. So, you know, to answer your question, AI is helping a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 9:09

And that's something that we've been really excited about at Ovation. Like we've put out a lot of stuff with AI, but I think the future is becoming crazy. I mean, we're working with some of the foremost experts on AI and building out these incredible tools, and it is mind-blowing what is going to become so normal over the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_01: 9:34

Yes. I mean, I couldn't agree more with you. Like all this stuff, even like today, I was just thinking a year ago, people would these very low-level things, they'd be like, oh, this is how we're using AI. And now it's like that's just common practice in so many people's lives, and it's just progressing them. And it's just exciting to see kind of where it's all leading to.

SPEAKER_00: 9:54

Yeah, and and we're really excited to be launching some new stuff and excited to share that with you. But right now, you guys are using ovation. So I'd love to get your feedback. We're a feedback company. What do you think about ovation? How's ovation been helpful for you?

SPEAKER_01: 10:06

Huge, huge tool. Not just saying that. I've been a huge fan. You've known that. I've told other brands about it. As a multi-unit operator, and when you have a few stores, you inevitably have your hand on the pulse. When you start getting to your fifth store, 10th store, 15th store, 20th store, 25th store, I personally physically can't be in all the stores. I can't personally see every guest experience because it's just not possible. So to have a tool like ovation, where in real time I'm getting real-time feedback and it's giving me insight and not that to just a problem, but a platform that gives me the ability to kind of hone in on different areas of the guest experience, whether it's cleanliness in a store or food quality, order accuracy, all those different things allows my above-store operators to be able to really get in there, assist the stores for me to have a pulse of what's going on, and then for us to have the ability to recover that guest instantly. When at the end of the day, the guest, in my opinion, feels like they're really like sending an email to the corporate headquarters. But in reality, is our management is texting them back within 20 minutes. I mean, that type of service is just incredible. So I just love seeing all the guests we recover when we have a situation.

SPEAKER_00: 11:23

So it's been a great and you and your team are just so on it. And it's crazy to see when you have that fast response time, just the amount of loyalty that that builds with the guest to know that they're cared about, they're seen, they're known. And then all of a sudden it's not tap room, but it's like, oh, this is like this is my spot. This is where the manager texted me. I like I got it in.

SPEAKER_01: 11:47

I saw one come through the other day, and someone just said, the fact that you care to respond and responded that quickly, thank you. I know stuff happens. You got a guest for life. I'm like, oh wow, amazing, right? Like that's what the tool is supposed to do, and it doesn't.

SPEAKER_00: 12:00

So awesome. I love that. And are there any like operational things that you've changed as a result of the feedback that you've received?

SPEAKER_01: 12:07

Uh, sure, yeah. I mean, you talk about it kind of highlighting order accuracy in a world where delivery takeout, it just grows every single year. When I'm able to kind of pinpoint one store that might have an order accuracy problem, then it allows me to go in there and see kind of what's happening, whether it's a team member related or they're kind of just following a different process, or maybe even their our kitchen layout. We kind of had to tweak a kitchen layout just because their the amount of takeout really spiked and they were just having trouble with the physical space, which is causing inaccuracies during peak period. So it allows us to catch things quicker.

SPEAKER_00: 12:47

And that's something where, again, it is amazing to be able to recover guests. And I'm so proud of the team and everyone that we've been able to work with that we've crossed the threshold of a million guests recovered. A million people who had an unhappy experience were able to get a response from someone using ovation and come back in, verified, spend that money. And that's amazing, but it's only the just like just scratching the surface. Our vision is we want to save a hundred million guests and elevate this entire industry, but we only do it in partnership with people who care because we talked about sharpening the saw earlier. We're a saw, but it takes people like you who truly care about the guest experience, who truly want to make it better and are trying to make a mark in helping people's day get better and building that community that that's what elevates everything. And so just it's an honor to be partnered with you, James. And I'm grateful that we're learning a lot from you using the tool. No, it's been a great tool.

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

It's helped build our business, and I'm grateful for that. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 13:53

Well, James, who is someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry?

SPEAKER_01: 13:58

So there's a great local brand here in Low Island in Queens, New York called French Workshop. They're um French bakery, just putting out they're they're part of a much larger international group, but they put out an incredible product and something you should check out next time you're.

SPEAKER_00: 14:14

Oh wow, this place looks bougie. Look at oh, they got you didn't tell me they had desserts there, too. Oh, it's yes, okay. And look at those macaroons. I'm so about this place. Oh my gosh. I'm just all right, I'm gonna spend the next like 10 minutes just yeah, there's okay. I uh save in this spot. Um, and by the way, for all listeners, whenever you hear of a location like that, make sure to save that location. Go to Google Maps and click save and say, James Banana told me to come here because then next time that you go anywhere around Queens, you could see that place and be like, Oh yeah, let's go here. Anyway, just something that I do because I get so many restaurant recommendations. And I don't usually do this, James, but I also want to throw out an ovation at Kathleen Wood, who the first time that we met in 3D, that was at your place at her conference, right?

SPEAKER_01: 15:09

Yeah, I mean, I think we might have met at a conference or two, but as far as the first time you came into one of our restaurants was at a uh event she was hosting. And we've been working with Kathleen for it's actually five years. It was fall of COVID 2020. Been an amazing experience. Can't say anything more positive and highly of anyone I've ever done business with. She's been an amazing asset working with us. So grateful for her too.

SPEAKER_00: 15:32

Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, where can people go to find and follow you and your bevy of brands?

SPEAKER_01: 15:38

So, of course, LinkedIn, but for the brands, upstreamhg.com for taproom, specifically taproomovny.com.

SPEAKER_00: 15:46

Well, James, for showing us the hospitality is something that's worth swimming upstream for. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Givenovation. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Zach. Thanks for joining us today. If you like 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 ovationup.com.