Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Zach O'S, 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 AI 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 am excited because we have a pillar of the pizza industry. David Cole, VP at EFRTelli Pizza. He has been involved since day zero, 38, going on 39 years slinging pies. How does that feel, David? Makes me old. Feel old. Makes my hand expert, man. Oh, your hands are. Well, David, I'm really excited to chat with you. We met because we're both on the Texas Restaurant Association board, and David has been such an amazing personality, someone who's really you meet him and you just want to give him a hug. He's just one of these friendly, happy guys, lifts everyone up around. And so, David, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast, not just because you're a great person, but because you got a great business. So, for those who aren't familiar with Ifratelli, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Okay, so first of all, Ifratelli means the brothers in Italian. So it's myself and my three brothers, George, Mike, and Daryl are my brothers that we're in business with. And we started at 22, 24, 26 years old back in 1987. We had a little bitty 60 seat restaurant that and grew it a little bit bigger than 92. We started in the pizza delivery business. And so now we're up to 16 locations.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

That's amazing. And what do you feel like has been the reason that you've been able to make a family business work, whereas so many others haven't? Any tips that you would give to people who are in family business right now?

Making Family Business Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Well, one of the first biggest lessons we learned was four brothers that were young working with each other. My father, which my parents put in a little at nest egg to get us going back in 1987. And my dad called the meeting, and he called it at seven o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, and it was because George and Daryl weren't getting along. So we had to get up early and go have a meeting. And then once that meeting was over, then we had to work our full day. And so we all had a meeting, just us, kind of like a team, a players-only meeting, and said, okay, don't let mom and dad know anything about the relationships. We have to get along, we have to get this done. So I think it is the relationships with who you're a business with, whether they're family members or partners, whatever, relationships is everything.

Complaint Strategy And Perceived Value

SPEAKER_01 2:56

I love that. I think that's so important. And especially nowadays, one of the things that is so true is the relationships matter, but also the relationship with your guests, right? It's great to have these wonderful relationships with your business partners, but when you look at the guest, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Well, a lot of times we're a pizza delivery. So for a long time, our relationship was only over the phone. So the customer didn't get a good understanding of what kind of company we work until something negative happened. And that's when we can pull out all the stops. And we call it complaint strategy, and that's how we fulfill their needs by taking care of their complaint or whatever went wrong. Now everything is electronic. So we get a lot of orders on the app or through ordering apps and that sort of thing, third-party delivery. So I think perceived value has to be the most important whether they see you or they don't see you. They have to be able to feel that they're getting a product and a valued product for them to continue doing business with you because there is so much competition out there.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Oh, yeah. Pizza is a very competitive market. I mean, there's so many people who are in the space and so many big boys that you're competing against. And so you've got to make them feel special, right? You've got to make them feel like I've got pizza written on my shirt, but you've got to have that pizza written on their hearts. And obviously, if you can't tell by this big neon sign behind me, like, you know, I love pizza. But the thing is that where am I going to go? If I could go someplace that has great pizza or someplace that has really good pizza, you know, because that's the benchmark. You can't have okay pizza anymore. But if I'm going to choose great or really good, I'm going to go where I know they're going to treat me well. And I think that's what really matters, is because you got to have that benchmark for product, but then you got to actually get in there. And one of the things that we've seen, David, and tell me if you've seen this as well, when you just look at the dollars, right? A guest who is recovered versus an average guest, they spend five times more money in a given year than the average guest because they know that you're going to take care of them, that you're going to, you know, that you've got their back and they've got that relationship with you.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Sure. I agree with you 100%. The big thing for our industry is prior to 2020 and the COVID-19 scare, was there were two different restaurants that delivered pizza and Chinese. Now it's everybody, it's convenience stores, it's everybody is delivered. So we our competition really came into play around 2020, 2021 when the third-party delivery really got popular. I mean, there were five-star chefs that wouldn't even do to go orders because they didn't want their food in a container. And now they're on DoorDash. You know, so their people are spending$175 on a prime rib dinner to get to be delivered in a container in their house. So, yes, you're right. They have to know that they're going to get the product that they're ordering. And we just talked about the electronic apps. And you can ask anyway, if the pictures on the apps don't look like the pizza when they come, they call and complain about because they're basing it on the images. They've never tried it before. So they're basing it all, they're valuing your pizza on what it looks like from a food photographer compared to what it's going to look like when they get home. And hopefully, and greatly that our pizza does look the same. And it smells a lot better than the pictures do.

Corporate Orders Follow-Up Systems

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Amen. Yeah, I think that that is something that is so key is you can't just dial in anymore, right? You got to get make sure that your team understands exactly what it should look like, what they're doing well, what they're not doing well, and you got to train and then track and then track what you trained and train what you track, right? Exactly. And it's this cycle. So as you're thinking about tactics that you've used to improve the guest experience over the years, what are some things that you would recommend? What are some tactics that you would recommend to other restaurant operators and how they can improve their guest experience?

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Okay, so one aspect of our business is we do a lot of corporate lunch business during the day. We would rather base our products on doing three and four hundred dollar orders and ten dollar orders during the day. So we really go after the corporate and we place our locations in an area that does have a vibrant commercial business type. We're in based in Las Calinas, which is one of the biggest master plan developments in the country. So there's a lot of Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies in our area. That's who we go after. So anyone that orders over$100, they get a or any big order after lunch gets a personal phone call from the manager on duty asking how the order went and how the pizza delivery driver went and all that sort of thing. At the same time, we're able to ask them, hey, you have any other meetings the rest of the week to try to get more orders. Plus, those people get what we call a C note and they get sent a handwritten thank you note every week sent to their office. Now, our let's say residential customers, now most of them order off the app. So then we text them. So they get a text an hour after they ate, how was it? Please give us a Google review and all that sort of thing so that we can keep in touch with them after the aspect of their order is complete. And who do you use for your online ordering now? We go through Hunger Rush, is our point of sale system. So it goes through them.

Getting Managers To Stay Consistent

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Got it. Yeah, I think that's so powerful. And as you look at that follow-up and that connection with the guest, that is just critical to build that relationship and to make sure that everything's okay. Because if someone dines in, you're gonna go up, David, and be like, hey, how was everything? Sure. Right? But when they're off-prem, it's really tough to do. Now, one of the things is I I love that you have your manager call and follow up. My question is, how do you incentivize the manager to do that? Because it seems like that's something that would a manager would do for maybe two weeks and then like stop doing it. Like across 16 locations, how do you make sure that your managers are actually following up with these larger orders?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Well, the first thing we have is we have what we call an outgoing email. So they have to email the corporate office all who those customers were, the name of the customer, the company they were, and what their comments are. And then we get a list of all those orders, and then we can spot call people, say, Hey, did you get a call? But we've been in business so long that we do get calls and texts from people that we know saying, I got the greatest phone call from your manager the other day. So we know some of them probably just say, I sent some voicemails, you know, I left voicemails because not everybody answers the phone, but we have to spot check them. And I mean, it's just like you have to make sure your kids brush their teeth. You can't just expect them to do it. So you sometimes you got to stand over them and watch them do it.

Location Strategy For Smart Growth

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yeah, I go through that. I feel like every single night of like, did you brush your teeth? Yeah. All right, well, let's just let's just check that over real quick. And yeah, I think it's a it's a go fill the toothbrush, see if it's wet. Yeah. And obviously, you've been at this now for coming up on 39 years. What's something that growing restaurant brands typically get wrong? Like, if you were to go in and consult a growing pizza chain in Denver, what are some things that you would look at and say, hey, here's some low-hanging fruit that you should work on improving?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Well, first of all, I would location. Probably they're choosing their location. We try to put ours, we stair step them. So they're just right outside the delivery area of the one we already have open, because you may have customers that can't get delivery in that area that will instantly become customers. Plus, if they see your they may drive around that area and they see your delivery vehicles with the car signs lit up, so they may already be familiar with your product but hadn't had it yet. And the other thing is if they get busy, you have a sister location or a location that's close to that can help out if they get busy or they run out of product or something, then you have someone that can help. So I would instead of put one in Dallas, one in Houston, I'd put them right next to each other, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah. You've chosen to kind of go corporate, right? You don't you don't franchise. No, we have eight franchise stores. Oh, eight franchise stores. So how does that work in terms of like, you know, let's say that there's one franchise store that is a little bit swamped and they send over some business to the other franchise store. Do the franchisees play nicely with each other? Or does that have you found that that can cause some contention?

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah, mostly some of the franchise have opened stores close to theirs or close to one of ours that is already. So it's like, hey, we want to go out here. No, you put one close to one of ours that's been open for 10 years. Then you already have business brought in, then they'll put theirs next to that, and then we will put a corporate store on the other side so they're sandwiched in between us. So because our guys have a little bit more experience that can help those guys.

Franchising Without Losing The Brand

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Got it. That makes sense. And are you glad that you went the franchising route? Do you ever wish you would have stuck it out with just owning all the stores yourself? Or do you think franchising is a is a good route to go? What advice would you have for someone who's on the fence about what to do with their brand?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Well, franchising isn't easy, so it is very expensive to do it because you have to have everything that is was our products. We had to make sure they're made and sold to them. You just don't give everybody your pizza dough recipe because then they would steal it. So we developed a dough mix so they can mix the dough with the water and the oil and make it without knowing how much flour, sugar, water, yeast, that sort thing. So the pizza sauce is the same thing. It comes in the bag in a box now, which we used to make it ourselves and just take it to different locations. So, and you have to make sure that you have every aspect of your operations written down and bind it so that they can read that so that they can't go off their own on their own and make decisions that are not like the way that you want your companies run, correct? So then, but it's hard because everybody has personalities and they want to do business under the fertility name, but they may want to stretch out and I want to serve balsamic vinegar dressing, and we have to slap hand and say, no, no, no, we have two kinds of dressing, and they're in the manual, and you stick with those. So you have to watch them a little bit. We have great franchisees, so we get along with all of them, and we want to support them. They're actually we consider them as customers of ours because they paid us to do that, and we're in business together.

Innovation Shoutout And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Yeah, totally. And I I think about this. I I went to a pizza restaurant last week, and it's a nationwide pizza restaurant, and you know, they got a couple hundred locations, and I walked in there, and it was weird because the pizza is like it's a very American traditional New York pizza, and I see these Brazilian flags everywhere, and then I look over, and there's like another point of sale where you can order açaí bowls and you could order different kinds of meat and everything like that. And I'm like, this feels really weird. And my guess is that they just didn't feel like they were getting enough revenue from pizza, and so they just were like, okay, we're gonna start like a Brazilian shop inside of this pizzeria. And I just look at that and I'm like, man, that is like totally watering down the brand because you go into this very New York pizza, and it's like you're getting Brazilian food, right? So I think those are some of the challenges that you're probably talking about about like how do you have that good balance there, right? Yeah, exactly. I love that. Well, David, what who is someone that deserves innovation? Who's someone that we should be following?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, someone there, the staff of the restaurant Texas Restaurant Association had at our past board meeting where we saw each other was Adam Guild, the co-founder and CEO of owner.com. This is a 20-something-year-old, I call him a kid because I'm in my 60s, and he's been an entrepreneur since he's been 12 years old, and he's really making some people a lot of money with the way that he's doing things. People need to reach out to him to find out what his secrets are because I'm not gonna give that away. But man, I mean, there's a lot of old restaurateurs in that meeting that we were in, and he opened a lot of their eyes. And I've talked to a lot of them, and he's got some business from them as well, because we didn't grow up with computers, so we don't know how to gain new sales while we're sleeping. And Adam knows how to do it, and I didn't get to talk to him personally, but I admire the heck out of him. He's someone that if you're getting in the restaurant business, I would follow him and figure out how he came with that area of expertise and call him and see if you he'll give you some of his secrets.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Yeah, I've known Adam for a long time. I think he's he's a great guy. I think he's doing some interesting stuff, and so yeah, great call out there. Well, David, how do people find and follow you and E Fratelli?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

So it's E Fratelli is spelled with an I, so not an E. So the I is the masculine plural. So it's I Fratelli Pizza. So it's Efratelli Pizza on Instagram, it's eFratelli Pizza on Facebook. We have a LinkedIn page, and I'm David at Efratelli Pizza on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Awesome. Well, David, for showing us that both family and franchisees can work together for good. Today's ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Givenovation. Hey, thanks, Zach. Appreciate you having me on. 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-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.