Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome together to Give and Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I'm your host, Zach Coach, 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-day 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'm excited because we have Dylan McDonald, who is the founder and CEO of Foodini, which is a really cool company. I'm gonna let him talk about it, but South by Southwest speaker. He's a mentor at the Founder Institute and just an overall awesome guy. And not because he's got a cool accent, but because he's a cool person. Dylan, welcome to the podcast, man. Hey, Zach.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So there you go. You got your traditional LA accent. Um glad that you could be joining us. So for those who aren't familiar with Fudini Dylan, and by the way, Dylan has done, I think one of the marks of a great CEO is the team that they build. And Dylan has put together just such a cracker jack team. And I've had the privilege of meeting quite a few people on his team. And so just kudos to you, Dylan. I think it speaks volumes of what you're doing and who you are. So for those who don't know, why don't you tell us a little bit about Fudini?

The Scale Of Allergies In America

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, 100%. So my but just my really quick background as well for context as to how it ties in here. As you gave away LA accents uh via Ireland, uh, but I was a corporate lawyer before this, before I came into the restaurant industry. But what brought me in was food allergies. So I am celiac, diagnosed when I was a kid. And just over the years, I got more and more and more frustrated with just how difficult it was to navigate dining out of home, be that in a restaurant, a stadium, university, wherever it might be, with a food allergy. So I essentially created Foodini to help bridge that communication gap between restaurants and food service and consumers who have food allergies and dietary needs. So what Foodini does, we partner with restaurant groups, we take your menu, recipe, and inventory data, we tag it with the correct allergy, dietary information, and then we power a personalized menu experience for consumers across 150 different food allergies and dietary needs. So not just the major nine, but everything from vegan, vegetarian, keto, paleo, low thought map through to garlic, onion, cilantro, tomato, whatever it might be that someone either needs to avoid or wants to avoid. And that's what we do.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

And especially my wife's family, I saw this meme one time, and it was like there's scientific evidence that people, there's actually a gene that makes people allergic to cilantro and makes them complain about it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

And soap, I think, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

That's how my wife's family is. Yeah. And I grew up with cilantro and everything. On the flip side, it's like I'm not allergic to onions, but I have a strong emotional allergy to onions, but I'm super allergic to some dairies. And so it's really dangerous for me when I eat out. And I've almost had to go to the hospital before because there was some whey or milk powder in something that it didn't say it. And even though it looked like it's a totally normal, safe dish, I'm sitting there for hours, like not being able to breathe. And so this is a personal thing for me as well. I get it.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Zach, 100%. And it's funny, I feel like we all can live on our little island and we think I have these problems with my family, but like it's isolated. It's just us. Most people don't have this problem. And that's kind of how I was initially. I didn't really know that many. I knew a few other celiacs, but not that many. But like when you dwelve into the numbers, it's actually mind-blowing. You have 33 million Americans who have a diagnosed food allergy. One in 10, diagnosed food allergy. You have about another 50 million Americans who are more your bucket of like color food intolerance. When I eat this food, I react negatively to it. It mightn't be a medically diagnosed allergy, but like I do not want to eat that dairy because I'm going to be feeling quite unwell after it. And then you have another 70 million Americans who have a lifestyle diet they're following. And that's the vegans, the vegetarians, the whatever. So it's nearly half the country that falls into the bracket of either needing to or wanting to avoid certain foods.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

And then because the question the real question though, Dylan, is who's the most annoying group?

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Listen, mate. It's so ironic because I was the person who was so cognizant of not wanting to be annoying. I was the person at the table who like, I didn't want to be the annoying, like, and by the way, I've this, this, this, like, cause a scene at the table. I just wanted to order my food like everybody else and my drink and get on with my night. Like, you know, I didn't want to be the center of attention. And now ironically, it's all I talk about every day. Yeah, yeah. No one who knows me knows I'm a celiac now, and no one would have known before I started this company.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

So, like, you can't do like fish and chips though.

Restaurant Challenges And Trust

SPEAKER_00 4:48

No. I have Guinness, Zach, because Guinness, like, I can't have the first person who can't drink Guinness, isn't that shocking? Oh, wow. Yeah, no, it's not good. It's not good.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Hey, next time we go to Dublin, I'll eat at Leo Burdock's for you. Uh you order and I'll eat it. So that way I don't feel so fat placing two orders.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

There you go. Deal. But but you hit on another very interesting point there, which was I think it's important to flag, which is like I have huge empathy for restaurants in this space as well, right? Because a lot of consumers are like, oh, bloody restaurants won't tell me what's in the food. I keep making mistakes. Like, why is this happening? And for the most part, it's not restaurants' fault. Like, this is really hard to do. It's hard to get the proper information together. It's hard to keep it up to date. It's hard to have your staff be experts on every ingredient in every menu item and every allergy and communicate that all the time in an ever-evolving world where manufacturers change products and recipes change and suppliers run out of one soy sauce, so they swap in another soy sauce. These are the realities, as we all know, of working in restaurants. So it's really, really hard to do. And that's, I think, one of the things here where we're really trying to like do this heavy lifting and this hard work for restaurants to like protect them from the backlash of consumers being frustrated as much as to protect the consumer in terms of giving them accurate information.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

And it's not just about because this is absolutely critical for the guest experience. And it builds that trust, which is so important, right? Trust builds loyalty and loyalty builds brands. And if you can do things that are going to increase the trust of your guests coming to your restaurant and feeling safe with their family, because what often happens is it's not everyone in the family that has the issue, right? And so you need to go to a place that can accommodate the one person who has those issues. And if you can be that place, then great, right? If you could add another couple tables a month to your bottom line, awesome. We call it the veto vote.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yes, that's it. Yeah. If you lose me, the celiac, you lose my family, my friends, my co-workers, my everything. Because if I can't come here, none of my circle can either.

Compliance Arrives: California SB68

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Well, and it's like I think about the peanut allergies and how about five percent of Americans are allergic to peanuts, and five guys went all in on peanuts, and it works for them because the rest of the stuff is pretty good. But there's a lot of people who just they're allergic to that, and so that means the whole group can't go. Now, granted, I think the majority of people are just allergic to expensive hamburgers, but sure, I think that's another story. But at the end of the day, when you look at this, Dylan, it's not just about the guest experience, this is about legal compliance. And as we all know, I mean, as as we kind of joked, you're you're based in LA right now, and if there's one thing we can say about California, it's that they love to let businesses just be businesses and stay out of the way. Is that right? Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I uh maybe, maybe not so much.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Uncle Gav, he just like lets us let people do what they do, you know, and I think that's great. No, there's some regulations that are coming out that are it's not just about experience, it's about compliance.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

100%. Listen, I don't know how a lot of businesses do business in California. I'd be the first to empathize it is pretty brutal in terms of the lot a lot of the things out here. However, for once, I feel like something that is worthwhile has come through, not just because selfishly it's good for my our business, but because I really, really truly, as someone who has the problem, believe it's the right thing to do it. Europe's been doing this for 10 years. You can't open a hot dog stand in in Ireland without labeling for food allergies for the last decade. Like that's the law there. And so to your point, what has really shifted in this space is prior to October last year, there was not one regulation in the United States as related to food allergies in restaurants. There's nutrition, which was the you know, 20 plus locations, FDA, you have to label for calories and whatnot, but nothing for allergies. But Gavin Newsom in October signed a bill called SB68, which for the first time mandates that any restaurant group with 20 plus locations nationally, where at least one of those locations is in California, must label their physical and digital menus with the major nine food allergens by 1 July this year. So four months time. They gave a pretty tight implementation window, seven, eight months to kind of get it done. But this completely changes, I suppose, the the landscape in that now the vast majority of national and mid-market chains, if they have any kind of California presence, are now required not just to document it, but to label it on their menu. But there's two ways they can do it. Either one, they can, beside each menu item, say like cheeseburger contains gluten, egg, soy, beef burger contains blah blah blah. Or they can have a QR code that links out to a digital allergen menu. And that's of course what we do. Uh and we make sure that was explicitly included in the language in the bill as well. So pretty much every operator we've spoken to has said, you know, strong preference to have a QR code linking out, then completely redesigning and destroying their menu with, you know, a lot a lot of language on every menu item.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

And to your point, you switch, you know, Cisco runs out of something, then they add something back in that has milk powder in it, and now all of a sudden your allergens change.

Digital Labeling And QR Strategy

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Exactly. And the problem then is, right, in the old way of doing it, let's say even you were doing a good job in this space and you had PDFs and menu boards, whatever, now you have to like reprint everything, redistribute everything across all of your locations. Like it just doesn't make sense. It's so hard to keep up to date and current in venues, and it's expensive to do. So we have one central source of truth that powers this information everywhere that the consumer can access it. So in venue, it's generally via QR code. Online, it's a button on the website. Because again, don't forget, most people with food allergies will review a menu before they go to the location to make sure that there's something there they can eat. So it's very important that the consumer can access this allergy information in your website as well. We also, even the groups that do this well, it's a PDF. PDF is a dead end. Where does the consumer go from the PDF? We, in our experience, in our personalized menu experience, have an order button on every menu item, which brings them back to the ordering experience, again, just making sure that it's seamless for the consumer to actually place the order and not just give the information. But the other thing to add over the top of that is we knew that the California regulation was going to be the first domino, and it has proven to be the case. So since that bill passed, even as in the last three weeks, Maryland, Michigan, and New Jersey have all commenced the same regulatory process mandating allergy tagging. Two of the bills have effective dates before the end of this year, and it's all restaurants, not just 20 plus locations. Every restaurant in those states in the current draft of the bill. And that's actually what California was meant to be up until the 11th hour, and they made a decision at the 11th hour to start with 20 plus. And the plan is for the senator is going to go back and make a mandatory across the board. So I think what I'm trying to say is this is coming. This is going to be by the end of this, by the end of this year, I would I think that about half the states in the country will have actioned this, started this process. And so the reality of the landscape is going to be in about it two years' time, I think most restaurants in this country will be required to have this information on their menus. And why not get ahead of it?

The Domino Effect In Other States

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Because this isn't just like, as we talked about, there's two sides to this. I think the regulation, yes, you want to be compliant, and then the guest experience is yeah, you want to have a better guest experience. But the thing is that because people are going to check out the menu, uh, they're more likely to come into a place if they know that they can choose that meal. Like I think about how many times I've gone to a fast food place and ordered what I found on some blog is like keto-friendly, or here's a hack if you're on a GLP one to get your protein intake. Those are things that if you could see that outside of, you know, if that's what I'm doing with like user-generated content, own it. Do it, put it on your website and make sure that people know that what you serve and and how you can cater to them.

Personalization, Transparency, And Conversion

SPEAKER_00 12:48

It's a no-brainer. 100%. And I I probably was remiss, I forget, Zach, that you know what we do, but a lot of your listeners don't. But when when someone actually scans our QR in venue or clicks the, you know, accesses the menu digitally, the first option they take is they create their dietary profile. So they choose from those 150 different options I mentioned gluten, vegan, keto, tomato, save. Instantly, what we do with that personalized menu, it actually shows them exactly here's what you can eat, that's an exact match for your dietary profile. Here's what you can eat that can be modified to be made suitable for you, i.e., the venue can remove this, this, this, or can swap in this, that, the other. And here's what you can't eat and why, because this item has X, Y, and Z baked into it and it cannot be removed. So, like the menu is completely and utterly personalized, dependent on the dietary profile that the consumer creates. And I think to your uh point you made earlier, the two things in terms of the guest experience that we're really driving are one personalization that's completely personalized, and two, transparency. The modern day consumer wants to understand what is in their meal. You know, that's I think just a trend across the board, uh, not even allergy related, more health-related. And so we're really helping provide that transparency to consumers as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

I love that. Love that, Dylan. Well, who is someone in the restaurant industry that you feel like deserves ovation? Who's someone that we should be following or celebrating?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

I'm gonna give a shout out to Derek from Grouchos, Delhi. Oh, we love Derek. He has a child who has food allergies as well. And we connected on that level, and and we've been kind of working with them now for a number of months. But he also, I do a lot of work with Fair, who is a Food Allergy Research and Education Society, and he also joined and started supporting there and is really, I think, making a push to not just help as an operator, but also help the industry. And so as a customer and as someone who's just doing the right thing, I'm gonna give him the shout-out because he's just a good guy.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

I remember I actually reached out to Derek about you, and he was like, Yeah, I love Foodini. Because I was like, hey, this seems like something that you would like. And he was like, heck yeah, it's something I would like. Anyway, he's such a great operator, very sharp guy. I actually something I rarely do, but I went and like gave him a whole shout out on LinkedIn because uh he's just someone who's been so helpful to ovation over the years and given so much feedback and somebody just sharp guy. So yeah, yeah, 100% love that.

Shoutout To Operators Leading Change

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah. And I think as well, like as a smart operator, it's funny, even just repeating part of the conversation with him. Like a lot of people think allergies, and again, it's not necessarily always the sexiest topic, right? But in terms of the advantages of doing this right, forget compliance for a second. As we talked about, attracting new customers who are the most loyal customers, bear in mind. People with food allergies, when they find somewhere they like, they keep going back. It's speeding up operations, it's less questions for staff. But the risk mitigation, Zach, is so critical as well. The amount of things we're seeing with customers who end up reaching out to us, it's one staff member in one location forgot that there was no sesame in the hummus. And next thing there's someone on the ground having an anaphylactic event, it's a lawsuit. You have to settle, like or else if it goes, if it if it gets to like public domain, you're in trouble. That's massive brand damage. And there was a lot of big cases that happened in the last year where it's been really damaging, but like that's all it takes. One slip up can really, really set you back. Have one source, even if you don't want to work with Fudini, document your food allergies, make sure your staff have access to a source of truth. Because how can staff protect you, the restaurant, from these incidences if the information isn't there for them to access to answer the question in the first place? So that's just my main thing is please do any restaurant or make sure you have it documented somewhere that your staff and customers can access. If you want to go manual, no problem. But if anyone obviously wants to go more the digital route, that's where we come in.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Well, and it's been, I can't tell you how many times I've asked a question about if something has dairy in it, and they literally go to the back and they get a box and they come out with the box and they read through the ingredients. If you're looking. If you're looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

So yeah, uh, Dylan, how do people find and follow you and Fudini? Sure. So website is foodini.co. So you can find us there more information uh about us and what we do in different segments we work in, including sports and education and stadiums and all sorts of different places as well. Me personally, LinkedIn is generally a pretty good place, Dylan MacDonald. Um, my email is Dylan at getfoodini.com. Um so always happy to speak to anyone who who's interested, be that on the consumer side or the restaurant side. That's how you find me.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Man, well, Fudini, man, you can't make allergies disappear, but it does feel like magic, right? So for helping restaurants cater to the needs of annoying people like me and turning hives into high fives, today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Given Ovation.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

I appreciate it, Doc. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

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 get feedback platform built for multi-dunning restaurants. If you'd like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better get experience, visit us at ovagenup.com.