Welcome And Sponsor

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give Novation, 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 exactly how to improve while driving revenue. Learn more at ovationup.com. And today we've got the founder and CEO of Wright Work, Will Stewart. And Will does not come from the traditional restaurant tech background. He was actually a data scientist at Starbucks prior to starting this company. So this is a guy who is in data, who is in FB, and I'm excited to have you on the podcast, Will.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Zach.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So for those who aren't familiar, give us the quick overview of what Right Work does.

Understaffing Turns Reviews Toxic

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, sure. So we started mainly from a labor forecasting and scheduling perspective and have kind of evolved into being a bit more of a labor optimization platform. But really what we do is help make sure multi-unit restaurant chains are scheduling labor when they need it. So making sure they are able to provide a great guest experience to their customers and do so profitably. So yeah, that's kind of the overview core of the product.

Why Guest Feedback Strengthens Scheduling

SPEAKER_01 1:26

And I love seeing the back end data of how you're pulling in the ovation data into our mutual customers and giving them really good insights into understanding what is happening when different people are on shift, what's going well, what isn't, how does that affect my time of day, when managers are on, when they get off? Like there's just so much information because as we've talked often about on this podcast, is that the guest experience cannot exceed the employee experience. And so you gotta have, you gotta understand how that works. And I actually remember a story one time of someone who'd signed up with ovation and they were like, I'm gonna take my first Friday night and be at home because they had a couple of restaurants and they were always in the restaurants, and so they were at home, and all of a sudden they get a ding that said service was slow. They get a ding, long wait. They get a ding, the long wait, and then they get another ding. By the end of the night, the ding was terrible service. Our waiter was so rude. Now, why? Because turns out they were understaffed for that day. So that experience at that at that location that evening started off with long waits, and then customers got grumpy, and then the server got grumpy, and then by the end of the night, the server was just totally wasted and angry and created a terrible experience because they weren't staffed appropriately. And I'm sure that you see that a lot in what you're looking at.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, no, exactly. And that is one of the reasons why we wanted to kind of build the integration with ovation is to have some of that kind of supporting data of the reviews and the guest experience kind of back up some of the labor recommendations that we're making. Because I mean, oftentimes I think there's this kind of conception in the industry that like labor is a cost, right? And we like to think of it more of an investment because you are investing in the employee experience, you're investing in the guest experience, and being able to highlight exactly what you mentioned of when you are understaffed during your peak dinner rush, that is affecting both of those things, both the employee experience, not wanting to take that shift in the future, as well as the customer experience. They're not likely to return. So being able to not just like cut labor, right? We talk about optimizing labor, and that can mean both investing at at peak or trying to streamline things off peak when when um that labor is not needed. But looking at the entire equation and how labor is responsible for impacting kind of those experiences is what we try to do. And that's why we're super happy to uh be able to pull in that data and provide some of that additional visibility to our customers.

From Starbucks Data Science To Founder

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Now, as you look at this, what was it that had you say, I need to start this company? Because you're obviously you're at Starbucks, you're looking at all this data. What does that look like for the journey to starting right work? Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I mean, I I had a tremendous experience at Starbucks. I was there for five plus years, still have a lot of good friends there. And yeah, got to see some very interesting parts of the business. I was on operations engineering, which was helping with the functional design and layout of our stores, um, or Starbucks stores, I still say are. And then I was on kind of an operations analytics team, mainly focused on on labor and kind of optimizing that. And then I was also on a real estate strategy and analytics team helping to determine where stores should go. Throughout that whole process, I kind of saw first and foremost, like how data can be very helpful for making these decisions. And I kind of got to see it across the life cycle of how a store kind of comes to life, of where a new store is gonna go, how it needs to meet the needs of the customer segment that it is serving, and then how that store ultimately comes to life from a functional design perspective. And then also how it gets operated with managing labor and your team and whatnot. And so through all of that, and part of the um, I would say the majority of the time was spent in the kind of operations analytics realm. And I actually helped to kind of build some of the internal tools and systems that Starbucks uses to manage labor across 10,000 plus stores. And so we had kind of looked at some of the tools in the market and had ultimately decided to build some of it in-house and had some fairly sophisticated tools when I was there. And it it was a couple things that kind of made me uh eventually venture out on my own there. I mean, when I kind of had the entrepreneurial itch, I saw some of these problems that we were solving at Starbucks and kind of realized there were needs across the rest of the industry. And then also I just became very passionate about building products and being able to go into a store and kind of see your products being used was just one of the most fulfilling things. So ultimately I decided to yeah, kind of venture out with some of those learnings and wanted to bring some of those capabilities to kind of a broader audience. So I focused on the kind of labor and scheduling side of things because I felt like that was the most impactful opportunity I could have to help restaurants be profitable and manage their operations more efficiently.

Practical Labor Advice For Operators

SPEAKER_01 6:44

And as you've looked at the data that you've seen over the last few years of running this and working with restaurants, what would you say are is some advice that you would give to people who are like, hey, I want to improve my labor? Obviously, uh, number one advice is use right work. What would be some other pieces of advice you'd give?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

I would say the first thing that we often see is just managing labor at kind of too high of a level. So looking at like a monthly budget and how the store is performing relative to that monthly budget or even weekly. And that just you lose a lot of the nuance, and a manager may just be scheduling the same amount of people all throughout the day when in reality you are understaffing your peak and overstaffing your off peak. So I think providing that kind of more granular view into the business, like that's the first thing we say. We just want to create visibility into where we think the opportunities are and then determine how we can help capture those with recommending improved schedules. So that's kind of the first thing is just being able to go into a little bit more granularity to understand where the problems may be, and that you are, yeah, understaffing that Friday dinner rush and you are losing customers and it is affecting the guest experience. And then the other thing I would say is treating every location like it's the same and deserves the same labor budget, because that also is not the case, in that your higher volume stores are going to have a little bit more leverage, and also the different channels that we see growing particularly fast with pickup and delivery, and especially for full service, those can have kind of different labor profiles associated with them. So the needs of each location within a multi-unit operation can be slightly different. So we want to help represent the nuances of those different locations and make sure each manager is receiving kind of recommendations that fit the needs of their business as well as the needs of their team.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

And what correlation have you been able to draw between scheduling and guest experience? Because obviously I've got dozens of anecdotal stories of miss shifts or people coming in late or people calling out sick or last-minute no shows and what happens to the guest experience. Is there any data that you've been able to see of how any correlation?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some correlation, and you can see if you have kind of a more aggressive labor model, you are inherently kind of sacrificing a little bit on the guest experience. So it's about kind of finding that right balance, obviously. So so there's like, yeah, definitely some data to support that. But I would say just the most compelling thing that that are like customers now using both right and ovation C is looking at like the intraday charts of like the previous days. Cause once a day happens, we like do the kind of retrospective analysis of all right, this is when you were understaffed, this is when you were overstaffed. And then now with the ovation data, we are able to layer in like when the reviews actually happened. And like the first view that we took at that after pulling in the ovation data, you could just clearly see, okay, there's a three here, three-star review that is talking about speed of service. And they were two or three people understaffed at that period. So like these visuals are just very compelling. And you can see, like, okay, we're we're a bit red here. Um, we're understaffed, and that is directly showing up in the guest reviews.

The Profit And Service Sweet Spot

Scaling Standards Across Locations

SPEAKER_01 10:22

So and it was interesting because I I saw some of these charts, and you have these really interesting, it's like when someone gets on and when someone gets off. And so you have them kind of stacked on when they were on shift, and it was like when there was multiple people there, it was like five stars, five stars, five stars, and then like three people left, and it was like two stars, one star, and then more people came back on. It was interesting because I know there's a balance, and I do this session where we go through every single initiative that you may have in a restaurant falls into one of two buckets. You're either working to increase profitability or you're working to improve the guest experience. And yes, would it be ideal if we could have be double staffed every single shift? Yeah, then like absolutely if I could have two people on expo triple checking what was made, and then I'd have no issues with order accuracy. If I can like serve Will and I could be with Will the entire time and make sure that everything he needs is great, so I could like get him napkins before he needs them, great, but like that's not gonna be profitable. And on the flip side of it, if you try to cut down, try to improve profitability too much, your guest experience could suffer. So the balance of profitability and guest experience is so key. And I look at what you're doing at Rightwork as such a way to optimize and to find that sweet spot of where you can maximize profitability and the guest experience. Because there's an intersection there where they both reach a peak, and having a company like Rightwork really helps to manage and to analyze that ideal point, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, definitely. I mean, we we like to say we want to give managers and operators like the confidence in the plan going into the day that it is going to yeah, kind of uh efficiently serve their customers. And yeah, I mean, it it starts with kind of the guest experience. And we we like working with with companies that already have good reviews. And as they are trying to scale, one of the difficult parts is maintaining that service standard as you open up new locations. And in a lot of these kind of restaurants, you may have a like a superstar general manager that is able to write a perfect schedule and create a great guest experience for their team and for their customers. But it's kind of hard to scale that. You're not spending tons of time recruiting like the best general manager. So we try to help provide the tools and resources to kind of raise the floor of capabilities and kind of provide some guardrails and recommendations to make sure that all of your locations can kind of be performing at the level or capability of your highest performing GM. Because GMs are super important, obviously, as you know, in the business and have a correlation or relationship with the reviews of the location as well. So um, that's one of the things, like as as companies are scaling, like how do you maintain that service standard? And as you open up a new location, like your attention to the guest experience right out of the gate, like that's critical, right? Like we are, we want you to optimize towards that. Like, and that means scheduling a few more bodies on the floor, particularly as they're getting trained up. And then how do you like kind of control those lefters of profitability as you have a trained team and and as you're moving kind of more into uh profitability and sustainment? So it's an interesting balance. Yeah, it really is a balance. And how do you help kind of find the right balance in for the company and like what the company values too? Because they may want to provide a much superior guest experience where another may focus more so on convenience. So how do you like kind of expose those levers and just create more visibility to the process and yeah, ultimately providing them the ability to serve their customers as as best they can?

Shout Outs And How To Follow

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, absolutely. Love that. Will. Well, Will, I know we could sit here and talk for hours about the guest employee experience, but we're out of time here. And so I'd love to understand just who is someone in the restaurant industry that you think deserves an ovation? Who's someone that we should be following?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

I have to give a shout out to probably David DeSantos over at uh Kazuki Ramen and Izakaya. They also have a number of kind of other brands, Supreme Dumplings under them, and they're actually currently using the ovation rate work integration. But we've been with them from the start, yeah, since since day one of Right Work, and they've been super critical into helping kind of guide our product roadmap, as you do with your guest reviews and experience that creates kind of the tight feedback loop between the restaurants and their customers. Like they kind of do a similar uh role for us of providing that quick feedback loop to make sure what we are um building in the product resonates with the customers or the operators. And so gotta give a shout out to them. And then um another kind of recent customer, Nora from Moto Pizza, is a phenomenal brand. I love them out of the Pacific Northwest as well. So they are scaling and building in kind of the systems and standards and processes to um enable that brand, which is super exciting.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah, love, love both those brands. And yeah, I mean, great shout-outs there. And Will, how do people find and follow you and Write Work?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

We're still building out our social media presence and whatnot. I have been more active on LinkedIn as of late, so that's probably the best place to reach out to me. Yeah, either either Will Stewart or WriteWork is our LinkedIn. And then yeah, we have uh an Instagram channel as well, right? I believe is is the name of that. So we're we're building out some of those social media presences a little bit more deliberately here moving forward. Love that.

Reviews And Final Call To Action

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Awesome, Will. Well, for reminding us the guest experience always starts with the employee experience. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Given Ovation. Thanks, Zach. I 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 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.