SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Zach Ot, 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 is actually happening in your restaurants and exactly how to improve while driving revenue. Learn more at ovationup.com. And today I have a good friend, a partner, and just a fellow CEO battling in the restaurant tech space, Rachel Nemuth. She is the CEO at Opus Training. And one thing, Rachel, that I always tell people is that the second craziest people in the world are those who open restaurants. I think that they are just like absolutely nuts. But the first, the absolute craziest people in the world are those who build tech to sell to those crazy people.

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

Yeah. I knew the second that came out of your mouth, I was like, I don't know exactly what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01

Yeah, yeah. Because you know, you got to have a couple of screws loose to open up a restaurant because it's really, really hard. But to say, like, hey, I want to sell to those people, you got to have a couple of shelves loose. So anyway, I am so glad that you're joining us in this podcast. We've tried to record this before, but we just have too much fun talking. And so when we got on, I was like, all right, Rachel, no small talk. We're just hitting record because we're gonna we're gonna take the whole time catching up. For those who aren't familiar, there may be a couple of people. We talk about Opus all the time on this podcast. For those who might be listening for the first time, explain to us what Opus is.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34

Opus is a training operating system that is designed for businesses with a large distributed workforce. Our favorite customers are multi-unit restaurant groups. And Opus is designed to work with those brands to help them achieve the consistency they need in order to scale. And we just firmly believe that training is the foundation of really great guest experiences and more fluid growth opportunities.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05

And I love that because when we think about training, what does it mean to train? It's so much more than just like, hey, here's a sheet of paper that you should look at when you first onboard, right? And the way that you do it, and I actually had my first experience being an employee of sorts of Opus because I was at a trade show that they utilized Opus to let people know where to go, what they were supposed to do, what sessions they were supposed to be in. It was so easy and so useful to go in there and just know exactly what I'm supposed to do.

SPEAKER_00: 2:39

Yeah. It's interesting. You meant was this the um CraveCon?

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

CraveCon, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 2:44

Yeah, total blast. And what's interesting, that particular use case is Opus is a training system, right? Where it's a native AI platform that's designed to help get employees the information and the knowledge they need in the moment that they need it. You just referenced paper. That's 70% of the restaurant industry. Even folks who are using some sort of legacy learning management system or LMS, part of their training is still usually on paper, we found. And that's usually the back of house teams or the folks who don't speak English. Opus is designed to be a fully inclusive app. In order to get in, as you experienced it, you use a phone number, you put in first and last name, and you're in. It's linked to a location, it automatically translates all of your training and all of your documents into 130 languages. And the goal is that training is finally accessible for the first time. One of the biggest barriers that restaurants see is not training completion. It's training adoption. That's actually the biggest issue. You can talk to any restaurant operator and they can't tell you if 100% of their team is completing training. They can probably only tell you that, yes, all of our servers did it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:59

Well, what about everyone else? We did it at a pre-shift meeting and Joe wasn't there, but we did it, right? So Joe just needs to like figure it out as we go.

SPEAKER_00: 4:08

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:10

And the reason I that we're such big fans of ovation, of Opus and Ovation, I guess, but isn't just I love what you do, but also there's an awesome integration that we have that we recently launched. And talk to us about what that means on your end. Because obviously collecting guest feedback is so critical in that guest connection, but then closing the loop with that training to make sure that the right people are getting the right training. So talk to us about how you're leveraging AI and the feedback that we're collecting.

SPEAKER_00: 4:39

Yeah. So we've been using AI since the founding of Opus, which was over five years ago, but the vision was always bigger than using AI for translation and content generation and agentic AI for asking questions. What I love about the partnership that we have with Ovation is that we're really entering an entirely new chapter with Opus around AI anomaly detection and intervention. Those are just fancy words for basically saying we can integrate with any operations platform you have in order to identify any issues that are happening with your front line and intervene and fix them with training before they become a crisis. So the status quo, and anyone who's listening knows this, is that all training is scheduled. It's reactive, our sales are down, so we're gonna push this training out. It's we had a bad guest experience, so we're gonna push training out. Well, what if you could actually detect those trends early and wedge in training before it becomes a revenue issue? So that's why I really love the work that we're doing to kind of power all of that data from ovation and turn that into meaningful training outcomes.

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

Because it's not just about training your team. And it's not just about tracking the guest experience. You have to train and track and track and train and train what you track and tracked what you trained. You've got to be able to have this cycle of this handoff in this virtuous flywheel between tracking and training. Because the whole reason that you spent all this money hiring someone, bringing them in, training them, the music, the ambiance, everything that you do, the ingredients that you pick, how do you have your restaurant set up, the furniture? It's all for the guest experience. But so much of that guest experience is about the employees, are your team members who actually have that last, that last we talk about the last mile. This is really the last inch. When they're giving that food to that guest, that handoff is the key of the experience. And I love that you have that ability to actually make sure that they are getting trained on the exact things that the guest is saying that they need based on how we're tracking. And so I think that's what I love about this. And I, you know, I've had a slide talking about training and tracking for so long. And so when our teams first started connecting about this, I was like, yes, because this is what it needs to be. It's all one thing, which is the employee experience, the guest experience, and then the profitability of the restaurant. And that's what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_00: 7:16

And we see so many operators who invest so heavily, if not overinvest, in decor and then underinvest in staff enablement. And you have to ask yourself, okay, if I had to reallocate 10% of my CapEx, OpEx from Ambiance into employee tools, where would I put it in order to make the guest feel good immediately? It's gonna be in training. It's gonna be in evoking that really amazing experience. You know, I saw behind you of unreasonable hospitality. We hear this all the time that that the missing link between a good and a great guest experience is the human experience. But that requires training and coaching. And the best training and coaching happens in the moment when it's relevant and people can respond to it and talk about it. Not when it's just like, hey, Joe Schmoe, just in case this happens one day and you have a customer who's had a bad day, here's what you should do. What if it can be entirely responsive to what's happening in the business? So I love what you guys are doing. I think you've already found a way to sort of intervene in really meaningful ways to create better guest experiences. And now we're trying to find a way to fold in the frontline teams, the majority workforce into that experience as well with ovation.

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

And I think it's so beautiful because one of the things that is so critical is this concept of markerations, which is like, how does marketing operations connect?

SPEAKER_00: 8:50

And I was like, all right, I don't know where this is going.

SPEAKER_01: 8:55

But the thing is, is that if you don't have your operations buttoned up, guess what's gonna happen when you spend all of this money to get a guest in the door? They're gonna have a bad experience because either service or accuracy was wrong, and then they're not gonna come back. And so not only are they not gonna come back, but what if they go leave you a negative review? Then you've got 26 customers that you just lost there. I look at that like you could be paying to have people have a negative experience, and then you're actually losing money because you paid to have someone come in and have a bad experience. Let's imagine that you go and you like have a first date, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna go to a nice restaurant, we're gonna spend all this money, I'm gonna invest in this date. Then you're super rude on the date. Does it matter that you asked the person? Does it matter that you scheduled the reservation or that you showed up or that you got the right food? No. What matters is you were rude and you're not getting a second date. Right. And I think that's something that is so key. And so as we're talking about the guest experience, as we're talking about this, what what are some tactics that you've seen that have improved the guest experience, Rachel?

SPEAKER_00: 10:05

So well, uh I think two things. And and the first is actually in response to what you were saying before. I think we see this really tight loop between marketing and training. And if marketing brings in promises, training has to arm the frontline worker to deliver on them. So those have to be kind of inextricably linked when you think about how to run your business. So, in order to create kind of better guest experiences, I'm biased, but it has to come down to great training for your frontline team. If accuracy dips during an LTO, we can push a two-minute refresher training at pre-shift and measure review lift or whatever sort of metric you're trying to move. We want to help be the driver to do that because the people who are on the front line are the people who are delivering on that promise. So I think that has to be a constant reminder for operators that marketing is a brand promise and you have to find ways to deliver on it. It's not just about the product.

SPEAKER_01: 11:12

Oh my gosh. Because uh especially when it comes to like things like LTOs. Yeah. Right. When I go in and I'm like, hey, I saw this ad. I I came in to try this thing, and they're like, ah, I don't know what that is. And it's like, oh, well, this is silly. Um, right. And by the way, Rachel, data shows that if you want to create a one-star experience, it is actually not about the food. The food will create three-star experiences, four-star experiences, like, uh, it was good, but chances are you have a good product. You wouldn't be in business if you didn't have good food. And the food might be made a little bit wrong, might be a little slow, whatever, but it is about the number one thing that is going to create a one-star review is service. Service, service, service. How do they feel about it? The second thing is gonna be accuracy. And guess what those two things are uh can be solved with?

unknown: 12:08

Training.

SPEAKER_01: 12:08

Maybe training.

SPEAKER_00: 12:10

But I want to add though that it's not just training, it's real-time response training. I think one of the biggest gaps that's happening today is when I talk to operators and especially VPs of training, all of these folks who are really championing training. This is not a knock on departments. It's just the reality of the world we live in where marketing gets the data or ops gets the data, and then it takes months to get that information down to your training team so that they can act on it. Well, you don't have three months to react to an order accuracy issue or a service view. That's actually the difference between somebody coming back into your store and not. So you have to find ways to respond, either against the franchise, the location, the individual, so that you can intervene it and resolve it quickly. So that's why I love thinking about ways that you can get a tighter, faster feedback loop. I don't know about you, but at Opus, actually internally, just our own culture, we have what's called a working with me document. Every time we hire a new employee, we ask them 16 questions on how they like to work best. How do you like to take notes? How do you like to do X, Y, and Z? And we always ask, how do you like to receive feedback? 100% of the time, people say, I want it direct and in the moment. It's never varied. No one ever says, I want you to wait three weeks and tell me what I'm doing wrong then. Frontline teams want that too. Your hourly team wants to know and wants to be better. That is why they're there. It's they're there to succeed and they're there not just to take home a paycheck, but to be good at their job. That's just the human experience.

SPEAKER_01: 13:52

I love that. And because at the end of the day, one thing that holds true in any company is that the customer experience cannot exceed the employee experience. And if you want your employees to feel empowered to make changes and to know exactly what they need to do to do a good job, you need that real-time training. A lot of people who listen to this podcast are founders, they own their own restaurants. And it's sometimes hard as a founder, as a leader, because we don't have our training manuals. We don't know exactly what we need to do to succeed, but we just go and figure it out. We cannot expect our team to do that. So we have to be able to realize that for them to succeed, they need to know what do we want them to do to succeed. For us, it's all in our brains because okay, I want to do this and I'm gonna do it, and then I'm successful. But when you're dealing with employees who aren't inside of our heads who don't know, it's like we got to make things a lot clearer for them to make sure that they know how to be successful. And I think you will be shocked at how many of them truly do want to be successful. That person that you think is a B player, maybe they're just a B player because we haven't given them the pathway to become an A player.

SPEAKER_00: 15:10

Right. And sometimes being a B player is just fine, but you still need to be a good B player. I was talking to Jason Morgan, the CEO of Original Chop Shop, great guy, very smart. And he's talking about the kind of reality of frontline training. And he says, listen, if my team, I'm parsing his words, but he's basically if my entire frontline team, if 70 to 80% of them are all B players, that's fine. If that's the best we can get and they feel great at their job because they're gonna go home and have kids and second jobs and commutes, that's okay. They don't need to be anything more than just a good brand ambassador. And that top 10, 15%, let's create opportunities for them to grow. No matter what, the through line between those A and B players is they all wanna know what good looks like so that they can go to work and feel successful, whatever success means to them.

SPEAKER_01: 16:04

I love that. Love that, love that, love that. Rachel, you are just a pillar in the industry. You know so many people. Who is someone that you feel like deserves innovation?

SPEAKER_00: 16:14

The person who actually comes to mind today, because there's a lot, is Andrew Packer, chief strategy officer at Bahama Bucks. If you don't know Andrew, you should. Just incredible operator, incredible thinker, incredible energy. Zach, you guys would match energy-wise.

SPEAKER_01: 16:34

Well, I I love Bahama Bucks. They're such a such a great brand.

SPEAKER_00: 16:38

Great, great, great product. And Andrew has always found a way to kind of meaningfully blend employee experiences and operations to run a very successful franchise operation. I think there are 120 units and growing right now, but I love what they're doing and Andrew's worth knowing, and so is Bahama Bucks.

SPEAKER_01: 17:00

Absolutely. Love that shout out. And how can people find and follow you and Opus Training?

SPEAKER_00: 17:06

To check out Opus Training and actually try out the app if you want, go to Opus.so. If you want to follow me on LinkedIn and talk about the industry, it's just Rachel Nemith on LinkedIn. We are on all socials as a company, Insta, Facebook, you name it. And yeah, don't be a stranger. I love to talk about the industry. I'm very active on LinkedIn and I try to respond to every comment.

SPEAKER_01: 17:33

Awesome. Well, Rachel, for showing us that being good starts with training well. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Give Itovation.

SPEAKER_00: 17:41

Thanks, Zach, very much for having me. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

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.