SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give Novation, the Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Zach Ot, and each week I get to chat with an industry expert to get 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 exactly how to improve while driving revenue. Learn more at ovationup.com. And today I have the man, the myth, the logo, Greg Zamaphotis of Gregory's coffee. They are just blowing up all over the country. New York City-based coffee brand. If you're in New York, you know Gregory's. And now they're in malls in different locations all around the country. So Greg, thanks for joining us on Giving Ovation. How are you? Hey, happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 0:51

And yeah, doing great. Thanks for that intro.

SPEAKER_01: 0:53

Well, and we have been working together for almost four years now. So this podcast is a long time coming, but I'm such a big fan of what you've built and what you're building. And um recently acquired, partnered with Craveworthy. It's a pretty big deal. How has that been?

SPEAKER_00: 1:12

That's been a journey. Like everything I do, it's always interesting. So, as you mentioned, we've grown substantially over the last couple of years. We worked on the Strategic Partnership Assignment Property Group, which was sort of the real kickoff to that, where we converted a number of Starbucks in their properties to Gregory's. They just happen to be around the country where our whole store base was based in the sort of the New York and DC metro markets. So it was something different for us. We were now in Florida, Nashville, Phoenix, California, Tacoma, some really cool markets. So we knew going into it that once we opened these stores, we're going to want to open plenty more after that and fill in these markets with more traditional Gregory's, not just sort of mall property locations. So the thought was, are we going to grow these corporate or were we going to franchise them? It sort of became very obvious to us very quickly that franchising would be the preferred way to grow just because we want to get density in these markets much quicker. And Cray Worthy is a group that had been interested in partnering with Gregory's for a long time. The timing wasn't quite right until more recently when we said, you know, we're ready to do this. And they bring tons of prowess when it comes to leveraging franchising as a lever to grow. So we came together and they're helping us do that now. So we're kicking off that process and hope to be franchising in 2026.

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

That's awesome. And you know, I've got a lot of respect for Majewski and what he's built over there. And he's had such an incredible career, and it's amazing what he's done because he and I are like almost the same age, and I feel like he's lived like three lives. So it's great to see that. Now, by the way, are you originally from Jersey?

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

Originally from Brooklyn, but then I moved to New Jersey. I think I was like 10 or 11 years old. So okay.

SPEAKER_01: 3:06

Well, just because the way you said mall sounded very Jersey, a little less New York.

SPEAKER_00: 3:10

And so my father had a Panini Press sandwich shop in a mall in New Jersey, and that's where I really, you know, while I worked for him my whole life, where it really sort of cut my teeth. And is it in high school is when I started working most of my weekends and breaks for my dad at his place in a food court in the Freehold Raceway Mall in New Jersey?

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

Okay, yeah. So is that where you learned your love for Cinnabon as well? Because I feel like that was back in the day when Cinnabon and Chick-fil-A were just like mall spots.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

Yeah, yeah. Cinnabon was huge. Auntie Ann's pretzels, you find them in many mall properties for sure. We used to have like a Nathan's hot dogs next to us, Sabaro Pizza, all the hits, everybody was in there.

SPEAKER_01: 3:52

Yeah, I love that. Now, one thing that I really want to clear up for our listeners, if you look up, and by the way, Gregory's Coffee is one of the few stickers that I actually have on my laptop because it's such a cool logo. And it really is. If you've never seen it, you had to look it up. And especially if you can watch the clip of Greg here because it really is him. It's like his glasses and his hair. And what happens, Greg, when you want to like change your style up? What happens when you want a new hairdo?

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

Oh man, you know, I get this question a lot. So unsurprisingly, I have more than one pair of glasses. They just tend to be thick rim. The shape has changed over the years. My hair, I guess the main thing is just I hope I don't go bald because I think that's where the problem comes in right now. As long as it's kind of like up there doing some bit of a mess, then uh it kind of ties in. So I am a little bit pigeonholed, but it's been working for me for a while.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

Yeah, well, yeah, obviously. So good for you on that one. And the other thing I want to clear up though, is there is, and this is something that we always train our people on when they start up at ovation, and if they're gonna be working with you, there is no apostrophe. This is the plural of Gregory's. There are a lot of Gregory's, it's not his coffee shop, right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:09

It's not mine, it's yours. That's part of it. The other part was we just liked how it looked b looked better without the apostrophe when we were building our first sign in 2006. But hey, Starbucks doesn't have an apostrophe, right? That's named after Starbucks from Moby Dick.

SPEAKER_01: 5:23

So Oh, I actually didn't even know that.

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

Yeah, come on, man. Starbuck, I guess he was the first mate in Moby Dick.

SPEAKER_01: 5:30

Oh my gosh, I've read two books about Starbucks, and I never even like either I missed it in those books or they didn't talk about it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:44

But they don't really talk about it that much, but that's part of the lore, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 5:48

Okay, because as I was prepping for this podcast, I wanted to make sure that listeners knew that there was no apostrophe because that was a hot job. Keep it queen, man. Yeah. And it does. I mean, the logo looks really slick, and I think that like having that apostrophe in there would just like kind of like throw it off.

SPEAKER_00: 6:05

Yeah, the grammar heads out there are never gonna be happy with the decision, but make it work. It's like, you know, the famous place, the ear in lower Manhattan. It's like it was a neon or a sign that said originally said bar, but part of the B like broke off, so it looked more like ear. So they just started calling themselves ear in just because the sign got messed up. They're like, yeah, instead of changing the sign, we'll just change the name.

SPEAKER_01: 6:30

Sure, there we go. You know, some things change organically, some things never change. Like you go to McSorley's. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a big light or dark. Yeah, exactly. Light or dark. For those of you who don't drink alcohol, if you ask for non-alcoholic beer there and they say light or dark, they're not asking you what kind of non-alcoholic beer you want. I unfortunately had the experience of asking for non-alcoholic beer and they brought me out real beer and I quickly realized it. But then when I asked for it, he's like, Well, what do you want? A soda? And I was like, Yeah, I'd love what. And so they brought me out a lukewarm can of ginger ale that he cleaned with his t-shirt and then put on the counter. So anyway, if you're in New York and you after you get some coffee, you want a beer, McStorley's is great. If you don't drink, uh McStorly's is not great, but it's still historic. So let's talk about that whole vibe, the whole guest experience. What do you think, Greg, is one of the most important aspects of guest experience nowadays?

SPEAKER_00: 7:25

Some things never change. I think it's sort of respecting the guests and their time, why they're there, and then sort of solving backwards for it, right? Like, what do we have to do to meet the customer where they're at? I was raised in a foods and service family, right? My father had fast casual concepts in New York City my entire life, and it was drilled into me from a very, very young age that we needed to crush the lunch rush. That's how you made your money back in the day. Uh, you still do in many restaurants in New York City, but the only way you're gonna do that is you gotta be fast, you have to be really great product, great service, your restaurant has to be clean. You know, do all those things in a really busy setting because again, that was what that customer wanted. The lunch customer in the busy parts of New York City, those are the elements that are super important to them. If you could do all those things well, you'll tend to have a great business. So that always sort of resonated with me and stuck, which is why when we launched Gregory's, our point of view is different than a lot of the other specialty coffee concepts out there, because everybody was just honed in hardcore on quality and product, which is right, and they should do that, and we do that too. But they sort of turned a blind eye to a lot of other things that I think people really value in their experience. No matter who we talk to or what surveys we do, convenience is almost always at the top of folks' list when it comes to coffee. It might not always be their first preferential item, but it's always an important factor. Access to the location, speed. Now we know obviously drive-throughs are popular for a reason, the most convenient thing. You don't have to get out of a car. So we said, well, why can't we do both? Why don't we focus on throughput, but also not sacrifice quality? So that was our point of view 20 years ago, and that's remains our point of view today is why does a customer have to sacrifice just because they're getting something quicker, right? So we put systems in place, we use tools, we train our people, we do all these things to ensure we can deliver super high quality in the fastest amount of time possible. Not everybody is actually looking to rush, we don't want to rush them, but I would always say, why not give that time back to somebody? So if they say, hey, I'm I don't mind if I get my product in two or three minutes or seven or eight minutes, but if they could get it quicker and then they could choose what they want to do with those extra minutes, they could stay, have their coffee, hang out, they could get on their way and going. But I never wanted people to say, well, there's a floor, right? It's always going to be 10, 15 minutes to get my product, whether I'm coming in rush or non-rush. Because I would think about it, well, if I've got a lunch break, 30 minutes, by the time I get out of the office or whatever I'm doing, I get to where I need to go. If it takes to take 15 or 20 minutes to get my product and then I have to turn around and go, all of a sudden that kind of eats up my entire ability to take my break. I'm not going to come to back to this place anymore. So I'm saying, why don't I try and execute at a higher level than what other folks were doing, specifically those that were focused on quality and solving for it that way, because again, I'm looking at what do I want? Again, and that's also maybe another element to this is selling to myself and making sure whatever I'm doing or we're doing as a company resonates with me as well. I am the classic New Yorker. I look in and I see a busy line at a place. If I don't feel confident they can move a line, I just I don't do it. I'm not the guy that waits in long lines or or 45 minutes for a slice of pizza. Just I'll never do it. So I don't want to be turning off customers that are like me that say, like, oh, I wouldn't, I want to feel like I'm going to be serviced in a relatively reasonable amount of time. You know, it doesn't have to be instant, but it also doesn't have to feel like you're watching paint dry, which is what it could feel like sometimes waiting in some of these lines.

SPEAKER_01: 11:08

And I think that you have such an interesting balance. There's a story that I have told dozens of times. I've told your story dozens of times. I'd love to hear it from you. But it to me shows uh such a discipline, and it shows that you really care about the guest experience more so and like you have this balancing act of like, okay, I want to create efficiencies to create a great guest experience, but that means I'm gonna have to sacrifice something else. And I would love for you to talk through how you thought about getting rid of the donuts because this to me was so powerful because I know how special that recipe was to you and your family. And so, yeah, do you want to tell us that story?

SPEAKER_00: 11:52

Yeah. For it's certainly not the only time we've had to make a decision like this. So we have a central commissary where we prepare roast our coffee, also where we prepare most of our foods. And for the majority of the time here at Gregory's, every single baked good was made from scratch, baked fresh at that commissary overnight, and then delivered to our cafes, our stores to be used in the morning. One of the results of COVID was we had to think through production, making use of our space, but also we're growing. It was becoming harder and harder for that facility to make product, all those products every single day. But one of our most popular or a number of our most popular pastry items were our donuts. We had a classic sourdough glazed donut, a whole wheat chai donut, and an apple fritter. So we had those three donuts, which were probably three of our top five selling bakery items. All three were recipes from my father's first business. He dropped out of Brooklyn College in the 70s to take over the donut shop he was running in South Brooklyn. So again, these are 55-year-old recipes that he always loved, and we started using them at Gregory's. At some point, people loved them. They stood the test of time. But the problem was once we decided we wanted to move the baking and production in store as opposed to the commissary, we could no longer do donuts. Donuts are fried, right? So at least the way that we were doing them, we weren't going to put fryers and hoods in all of our stores. We had ovens, convection ovens, so we could bake off fresh. So we felt like this was going to be a huge upgrade for our guests by being able to deliver an even fresher product. So while we were still making the products from scratch, baking it in our own facility, it was still baked at a remote facility, and it was probably 12 to 18 hours before. Whereas now, when you get a croissant at Gregory's at 7 a.m., it was baked 30, 45 minutes ago, right? It's a fresh product. So it was a hard decision to say, well, are we going to eliminate some of our customers' favorite items? But you know, we truly believed in the decision that we were going to elevate the experience for the guests. They would appreciate the fact that they were getting a truly fresh-made product. They were able to see it. The ovens were right behind the pastry case. They're watching that product coming out. Honestly, the smell, too. Like you can't get away from you open the oven door when you're baking fresh croissants or fresh chalkage or cookies. I mean, it's intoxicating. So it was another side benefit of having that in the store. But we thought that while the customers might bristle at this overall, it was going to be a better experience, better product, and a better overall target for what the customers think we're going for, which was how can we make our bakery program rise closer to the level of our coffee program, which we felt was elite, amazing. People love it. But obviously, they're watching us make that product right on the spot. So we want to do that with the baked goods too. So unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to those donuts. The recipes are still there. We could use them maybe at some point, but right now that's not in the cards.

SPEAKER_01: 14:51

That discipline of taking that family recipe that meant a lot to you. And, you know, you could have sat there and argued, like, no, this is Gregory's coffee. Like, this is part of our DNA. But uh Gregory isn't the part of the DNA. It's the guest experience that's part of the DNA. And I love that you were able to kind of pull out your desires and your wants and put the guest first. And that really, I think shines through. Like when you when you go to a Gregory's coffee, like it shows that the guest experience is paramount.

SPEAKER_00: 15:25

Yeah, that's 100% true. I just had this sort of reminder yesterday about how much our people matter, not just our guests, but our team. Um, I was in our our DC, and one of my favorite team members of all time, uh, team member named Cindy. She's one of our team leaders down one of our DC locations. And it's like, again, talking about baked goods. Anytime I'm at a store that Cindy is at, the pastry case is undeniably perfect. I couldn't set it up better myself. And she truly gets it and cares with putting that little extra love as to how you're baking. Like you could bake, it's like, hey, 20 minutes is the recommended time for these cookies. Make sure you take it out. Then there's also people that say, like, well, I want to check and I'm not gonna take it out until 20 minutes and 30 seconds because I don't see the proper amount of browning and the texture isn't right. Like, she truly gets it and cares, and it's like something about her little touch. But again, that comes back to she cares, she's such a good person. She's a native Spanish speaker, and she always struggled early on speaking English. So she never felt like she could move up at Gregory's or any other business because of her limitations with the language. But I had told her supervisor at the time, I'm like, you know what? I don't even care about that. This is a person you need to reward. She works so hard. She's honestly a bright light anytime I'm in. She's maybe not the most confident English speaker, but she definitely can communicate effectively with her team and with guests. And she's never let me down ever. So again, we continue to move her up. I was got to see her yesterday and chat a little bit. Again, like clockwork, I go in, the patriot case looks absolutely perfect, and she's just rocking and rolling. So I believed in her, even when maybe she didn't believe in herself. And that's also just something that for me is just how we think about this business. It comes back to the people, not just the people we serve, but the people we serve with, alongside with, shoulder to shoulder. And for me, I never put anything beneath me. You'll see me plunging toilets, you'll see me sweeping and mopping. You probably see me behind the bar because I just love making coffee, so I can't help myself. Sometimes to my own detriment, if I'm dressed nicely, I have a meeting, I have to meet with a lawyer or for whatever reason, I have to wear a white shirt and a tie, and I might wind up getting a splattered espresso on me because I was behind the bar for 20 minutes helping the team out is just something that I can't help myself. I just genuinely love the product. I love serving the guests, being shoulder to shoulder with our team. And whether it's doing any of those things or if something just needs to get done, I wouldn't ask anybody to do anything I wouldn't do myself. And I think my team truly believes that because I show them that every single day. So that's sort of the kind of organization I always wanted to set up and how I wanted people to feel. So you're not just going to see me sitting on the side counting money or not paying attention to folks. Like I really want to be rubbing shoulders and digging in with the team. And it sort of creates that culture of that's how we think about the world. We want to help each other. It tends to lead to better experiences for the guests. You know, not you don't have to tell them treat that person right. But people tend to do those things when they're in a great culture or a great environment and they feel good, right? If they're feeling like they're beaten down or that kind of supervisor or boss who doesn't make them feel good or yelling, they're not going to then turn around and be smiling and giving the best experience to a guest because they don't want to be there. I still would love to figure out how to be doing like daily NPS scores with our team. So, like, how do they feel when they come in the shift and how do they feel when they leave the shift and really see how are we meeting them where they're at, right? Like it's it's just as important for me to serve our guests as to like make our team feel they're great and have enjoying the time on the shift. If they start the shift at a nine and leave at a six, that's something's wrong. Like, what did we do? Did something one-off happen with a guest, or is it something that we're doing that's not making their experience with us positive? So these are some of the things I think about too. Again, I know you're into the data and all that stuff too, and certainly with customer sentiment, but team sentiment is something that I think is almost as important because it they go hand in hand. You can't have a great customer service if your team isn't loving it.

SPEAKER_01: 19:23

Well, we should talk about that, Greg, because I'd love to even just like run an experiment with you on leveraging because we have a kiosk survey as well that we don't normally use for front of house anymore, but something that we should definitely try on the back of house. I mean, I know that you guys are the reasons that we have a call-to-tech solution. I mean, we met with you uh three years ago, right? We're about a year after you guys started working with us, and we're like, hey, we're thinking about doing something different with our phones. And so we built that together. And that's been an amazing solution and solving a lot of problems. And over the years, I think you guys have been instrumental in providing a lot of feedback and just really appreciate your partnership and talking about getting in the weeds. I mean, like, usually at your size, there's a lot of CEOs that don't really care about the guest feedback. I read those things. I care about this stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:10

So I'd love for you to just tell me like how has ovation been helpful for you to kind of keep a pulse on things. I mean, it's just exactly that. I actually read the emails, I actually read the feedback. It's important to me to understand what's working and what's not. Nobody likes to read bad reviews, right? It doesn't help, it doesn't make you feel good, but better to know than to have the blind spot, right? Like just say, like, well, what are we going to do about this? It's like a free secret shopper report to understand what are the guests saying. And I remember way back in the day when Yelp was first starting out and reviews, you know, online reviews didn't really exist. I remember the first time I got a review posted on Yelp about our first store. It might have been a three-star review because I think the something was like the guest was upset that there was crumbs on the table when they got there. And I remember trying to reach out to Yelp to be like, take this thing down. Like, I don't know why this, why are there things about posted about my business that I have no say in, or like, and I it was new at the time. It was like 20 years ago, it didn't exist. I'm like, no, sorry, we can't take it down. And then I sort of realized what it was, which is sort of like a window into the store. And yes, every not every person is going to be giving a fully accurate or whatever description is their own personal experience. But that person felt that kind of way, so it drove them to leave a review. So it should just sort of drive us to be better at what we do to sort of make less reasons for somebody to not want to leave a five-star review, right? So that's the goal. And getting more data points, more information just helps us strengthen and become a better company, a better service model, better team. So for a lot of things, we don't have the data, we don't have the information. It's hard to understand where the opportunity is. But using a tool like ovation, having those insights come in so frequently across the portfolio, you can dive in and truly get a sense of what's going on. Again, as you scale too, it's another challenge. You have one or two stores, maybe you might not realize how much you're missing, but you might have a pretty good sense of what's going on just by being in the store or the restaurant all those hours and paying close attention to how things are feeling, even though sometimes, again, as you know, customers don't always say it. They might write it to you, but they wouldn't tell you to your face. But as you scale, it becomes much harder. And that's what I found. As we started going from two, three, five, ten stores, it was impossible for me to really understand how the customers are feeling across the portfolio. So to have this at your disposal is sort of non-negotiable at this point. It's like if you don't really know how your customers are seeing you, then you're just flying blind. Yeah, you might be doing well. And I've spoken to other operators or restaurant groups that are doing well. But there's certainly opportunities or things that could be better. And I think that's what I've seen. There's maybe my one of the bigger lessons I learned was over the years, you can't ever relax because things change and things change quickly. And you don't want to be caught flat footed because, like, we had some stores that were killing it so busy. But in the back of my mind, I always knew there was some the leader, maybe wasn't as strong as I would have hoped. There was issues at the store, but I didn't really want to mess with it because the store was doing so well. But the real reason probably was the fact that it was a great location. There wasn't as much competition around. So we had this sort of like monopoly situation going on where there was nowhere else to go. And the minute a competitor opened nearby, like, oof, like things just dropped because we just weren't strong enough for operating at the level that I knew we should have. So I never wanted to have that happen again. I'm saying, like, you know, now when there's smoke, you got to make sure there's no fire. So whether it's poor reviews or some slippage on KPIs or whatever it is, some negative sentiment, let's just try and zip that out as quickly as possible because you never know, right? Like things might be great today, but things change in a blink. And you don't want to be caught not being resilient enough or able to withstand challenges for either macroeconomic challenges or direct threats, right? People are ruthless, right? I have coffee shop competitors that like out of a whole city, however many tens, hundreds of thousands of locations, like they'll open up next door to you. They just don't care. But again, I would also say that only tends to happen if people perceive you as not so strong. I wouldn't open up the next to somebody if I thought they were a great operation, because I'm like, well, why would I do that? But so if I'm ever perceived to be weak, that's another thing to say, like, well, why would this company come near me? They see an opportunity because they think they can take my market share. So from a competitive standpoint, is how do I continue to build a moat or how do I make people say, like, I don't want to go anywhere near a Gregory's because they're doing such a great job, right? So you have to have that mentality too. And like all these things, like, you know, iron sharpens iron, right? Like, you know, by taking the hard feedback, taking a deep look at what's going well, but also like an even deeper look at what's not going well. And how do you tighten that up and make sure there's visibility and ovation is a great tool to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01: 24:56

Well, appreciate that because I think that like it is sometimes hard to eat crow and it's tough to sit there and like read some of the feedback that's negative, realizing that it's a much smaller percentage of the total feedback, but that negative feedback is stuff that needs to get take action on right now, right? And that's why, you know, when we send the the daily and weekly emails, we like to remind people of, hey, here's how many positive surveys you got as well. But I think at the end of the day, it's like yesterday, for example, I'm counting my calories right now, and last night as I was going to bed, I had three like uh gummy bears and a York peppermint patty, and I didn't put those in my calorie tracker. But guess what? It doesn't change the truth. It doesn't matter what my data shows, yeah. Right. It's like the truth is the truth. And so to your point, it's much better to know what's going on so you can act on it as opposed to hoping that it's not happening.

SPEAKER_00: 25:51

Yeah, it's being honest with yourself, right? You're not doing yourself any favors by not seeing the truth, right? So whether it's putting the accurate things in, because then when you look back, like, oh yeah, I only I did, I was on track. Like, no, you weren't. I deviated and I'm sort of the cheating, right? So, you know, if I'm only looking at the positive reviews, what am how am I gonna learn? How am I gonna get better, right? That's that's just not how how I would approach it or how others I would recommend taking that free feedback as much as you can and using it as a tool to improve.

SPEAKER_01: 26:17

Love that. Well, Greg, how can people find and follow you in Gregory's Coffee?

SPEAKER_00: 26:22

So, Gregory's Coffee, you can find at pretty simple uh Gregory'sCoffee.com. Our handle is at Gregory's Coffee on all the channels. Again, no apostrophe. So at Gregory's Coffee on all those TikTok, Instagram, X, I guess you call it now, Facebook, et cetera. Me personally, you could find me my first name and my last name at Gregory Zamphotis. I'm probably most, uh although I'm not very active on on many of the channels, I'm starting to become a little bit more LinkedIn, Instagram X. So I'm on Twitter. I mean, I'm on TikTok. I just haven't posted or done anything just yet, but I'm there and should probably be on Substack soon, so you'll could probably find me there too. But yeah, maybe Instagram is probably the most likely place to find me right now that I'm actually doing stuff on.

SPEAKER_01: 27:07

Love it, man. Well, Greg, despite being the logo for always putting the guest above yourself, today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Giving Ovation. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. 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 estimate-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.