November 6, 2025 • 37 mins
Survey data show third-party delivery ads are hitting a saturation point and 45% of chains expect to invest less in the channel in 2026, Bikky Co-Founder Abhinav Kapur tells Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode of Choppin’ It Up, Kapur sits down with BI’s senior restaurant and foodservice analyst, Michael Halen, to discuss the findings of Bikky’s chief marketing officer survey. He also comments on US consumer spending, loyalty promotions, personalization and shrinking marketing budgets.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Chopping It Up.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm your host, Mike Hanlon, the senior restaurant and food
service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Our research and that of
bi's five hundred analysts around the globe can be found
exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal. If you enjoy the pod,
do me a big favor and give us a five
star review on Apple or Spotify.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It'll help us in the algorithm.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Today we're joined by Abanov Kapor, founder at Biki. Bickie
helps restaurant chains use data to increase customer frequency and
reduce chern.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Abanov, Thanks Mike, like I said, like I was saying
in the print. First time caller, long time listener, So
thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, man, I appreciate your support. Yeah, I'm glad you
like it. What inspires you to create Biki?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, happy to so. Vicky is a customer data platform
for restaurants. You know, like many entrepreneurs, it started from
a very personal problem and very personal passion, not too
disimilar for you. My I don't have a formal restaurant background.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
My training was in Wall Street investment banking.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
For a while equity research worked at the FBI sa
ter in the financial crisis. That was my first That
was my first job out of college. But my mother
in law was a restaurant operator here in New York City.
She created one of the first fine dining Indian restaurants
to star New York Times raided ran it for twenty years.
And you know, being a good son in law and
having an office around the corner from her restaurant, I
(01:35):
would go in and get free lunch every now and then.
And I walked in one day. I'll never forget it.
She's she's looking at a Grove Lub delivery tablet. Now
these don't really exist anymore, but you know, gen Z
has no idea what is delivery tablet is, but for
us older heads, we certainly know. And she was looking
at a Grabo delivery tablet and she had a pen
in one hand notebook in the other.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
I was like, what are you doing. She's like, oh,
I recognize.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
This person's name on the tablet, so they're obviously a
loyal gut some writing down their phone number. And I
was like why, and she's like, I just want to
call them and see if they had a good experience.
I was like, that's baller, Like, I've never received a
phone call after a delivery order before, so that first
off blew me away.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Two days later, r at our house.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
And she's like, help me with something on my computer
and she flips around her laptop.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I was like, what are you trying to do?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And she's like, well, all these people made a reservation
on open table this week. I just want to email
them and see if they had a good experience. And
I think those two moments back to back are where
it all sort of triggered this obsession where it's like, literally,
the restaurant business is probably more so than any business
needs to be customer centric, guest centric, just truly understanding
who their customers are, what drives their behavior, what makes
(02:41):
them come more often, less often, et cetera. And you know,
it didn't matter if I was speaking to a single
unit operator like my mother in law, or you know,
brands with thousands, you know, with thousands of units, they
would all say, look, we have all this data in
all these places, and we don't really know anything about
the person behind the transaction. And so that you know,
has really driven us since day one, is just aggregating
(03:03):
all that data, building profiles on the guests, and then
giving operators the ability to understand when they pull a
lever to grow the business on the marketing side, on
the menu side, on the op side, right, Like my
mother in law would do Restaurant Week and she would
always say, look, I'm doing this prefix menu, but I
have no idea if I'm getting a new guest on
that prefix menu, or if I'm taking a loyal guest
(03:23):
and just pulling their visit forward. And if I am
pulling their visit forward, am I getting that incremental visit
when they normally would have come anyway? And you look
at this sort of value conscious environment where people are
doing loyalty promotions, people are trying to be segmented marketing
people are doing ltos, they're doing value bundles, They're pulling
all these levers to fight for traffic and attention and share.
(03:44):
And I guarantee you the vast majority of brands that
are executing these initiatives, the only real metric they're looking
at is p mix or top line sales, And if
sales is going up or if it's four percent of mix,
they're like, hey, I guess it's working. But what's missing
is really the input of those metrics, the real insight
into traffic, frequency, retention, lifetime value, the things that ultimately
(04:06):
drive percentage of mister percent or total sales in the
first place. So it's been a fun journey. You know,
we work with brands like Daves Hot, Chicken, Longtown, Silvers, Bojangles,
Like I think we are the largest and fastest growing
company exclusively focused on you know, CDP for restaurants and continuing,
you know, to see great momentum as as brands increasingly
think about adopting data driven decision making and thinking very cool.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You're used to working on the pressure first gig out
of school fd I see during the GFC, man, that's wild.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I mean one of the yeah, one of the like,
one of the tasks was one of the projects was
helping my mentor at the time build the model to
project to project the number of bank failures and the
drain on the deposit Insurance Fund to figure out what
the special assessment tax should be, that one time tax
that the FDIC implemented to basically replenished the deposit insurance
(05:01):
fund ahead of failures. And like, you know, I was
fresh out of college and I was just like I'm
grow lucky to find a job first and foremost in
two thousand and eight, you know, I think Indiemac failed.
Like July, it was like right before I started, and
so just fortune to find a job and then fortunate
to find something that was relatively close to the nerve
(05:21):
center of everything that was happening. So there was definitely
a little bit of pressure.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I was junior.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I would say the people above me probably a lot
more pressure than I did.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
But I was happy to be a log for the ride.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Very cool. And your mother in law, what was the
name of a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, it was called Umma on fifty first between second
and third close for a second Avenue. And you know,
I take a lot of inspiration from how she was.
And she came to this country when she was like
nineteen years old, didn't know the language, didn't know the culture,
recently married, and her and my father in law were
just they just started businesses together. They had gas stations,
they did import export, and I was thinking about this,
(05:59):
I'm thirty nine now.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
My wife and I were talking this.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
They started the restaurant when they turned forty, and so
they just went into like they saw a need. I
think Doubbla with Union Square. Hostiality was maybe the only
other truly upscale, white tablecloth Indian restaurant at the time,
and so they saw a need and like we want
to be one of the first, we want to be
the best. And with no previous restaurant background, they they
just created this.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
You know, she still gets text from people.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You know, they closed the restaurant a few years ago,
she still gets text from people. It's like, I wish
I'm always still open. I need a place like in
midtown eies Ron the upperside just bring my family on
a Sunday night and like have a relaxed a relaxed
environment and a relax meal.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And you know, it's amazing, Like this industry is so.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Unique in that way where you can go years without
having been to a restaurant and you can still be like, man,
I wish I could go back there, or man, I
still remember when I used to go there.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It's so it's so unique and so rare.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I think one of the things that again like
sparks my passion for like why why can't they have
the same tools, Why can't they have the same level
of data access insight technology to grow their business the
way every world class business operates. And so that's again
very much or to our mission, Epicky.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I love that. What makes Bicky different from other data
platforms out there?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, I mean historically, you know, like the way we
think about it is, restaurants have never really had true
customer level insight when it comes to data. You know,
they've had if you zoom out like the two sort
of imperfect like of course necessary but imperfect approaches to
solving what we do has either been the loyalty program,
(07:37):
which for most brands is only ten to twenty percent
of the customer base or sales, and sales is a
very noisy, output driven metric, right like launching a menu
item and saying it's four percent of sales. It doesn't
tell you if you're bringing a new guests, if those
guests are coming back, if they're coming back more frequently
than a new guest to order a core menu item,
if it's changing the frequency of your existing guess, if
(07:58):
it's cannibalizing something else on the then you like, there
are so many sub questions that are just not answered
not able to be answered by top line sales data
on the loyalty program it's only against small sample size,
and it's great first party data, but the behavior of
those guests isn't actually biased, right. They're either going to
be your most frequent guests or on the other end
(08:20):
of the extreme, they're going to be your most discount
oriented guests. And so you're also not going to get
you're not going to get great insight into you know,
when you when you run some of these initiatives, what's
actually moving the needle because you're just looking at.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
A small bias sample of data.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And so I think what makes us different is we
have integrations out of the box with all the major
point of sale as well as payment providers, as well
as online ordering, as well as loyalty as well as
a few other channels, and so we can bring all
of the digital and non digital guest data together and
then really help brands understand instead of the twenty percent
(08:55):
of guests in their loyalty program, up to ninety percent
of their guests, and when you are making this decisions
about your business with up to ninety percent visibility on
how your decisions impact their behavior, it just changes how
you operate the business full stop. So I would say
the breath and the death like being restaurants specific because
there's so many nuances, there's so many edge cases consumer
(09:17):
you know, this consumer behavior it can be so noisy,
you know, and so like just having focus on this
problem exclusively is as I think made our data model better,
has made our analytics easier to understand and more intuitive.
We have a perspective when you make a decision. We
give operators our perspective on how they should be analyzing
the success of these initiatives. So I think all of
those things kind of are underpin our secret Sauce as
(09:40):
a data platform specifically for restaurants.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, to your point, it's so important to figure out
what that eighty percent of your customer base that's not
in the loyalty program we're doing because the people in
the loyalty program act very differently than everybody else.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, I will give you another again.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We have like four hundred million customer profiles in our system,
and something that we seen at a high love. We
did this study a couple of years ago and I
think it's I think it's held up since then. Eighty
percent of guests typically don't come back after the first visit, right,
and so like, yes, and so like eight out of
ten guests. And if I think about myself as a consumer,
that makes sense, right. I have four or five items,
(10:17):
four or five brands in my rotation. Sometimes I will
go outside that rotation and try something new, and it
might not even be a bad experience. But if it
doesn't blow me away from a value standpoint, from a
taste standpoint, from an experience standpoint, from a convenience standpoint,
if it doesn't blow me away, it's really hard to
replace what's currently in my rotation. Yeah, and so you know,
(10:38):
and so again, like if eighty percent of guests don't
come back, it goes to the three key metrics that
we talk to operators about is how many new guests
are you getting per stored per week?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Number one?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Number two, how quickly are you getting them to a
second visit? And number three, when they when they are
on a regular cadence they come daily, weekly, multi quarterly,
are you making sure that you are keeping as any
of them as possible? We call this late late guests?
Are you constantly recovering late guests? There's just a naturally
high degree of churn just given the industry, because there's
a lot of choice out there, and again there's a
(11:09):
lot of price sensitivity in this environment, and so it's
just getting new guests, getting it to come back for
a second visit faster because the probability that they keep
coming back after that goes up dramatically, and then reducing
the amount of later urn guests that you have.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Those are the three most influenceable parts of the fund.
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So in my world, you know, the world of publicly
traded restaurants, the chains that are outperforming on sales and
traffic are doing it in a variety of ways this year,
but we are seeing certain themes pop up over time.
What keeps cropping up in your data?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, I think the one thing that's interesting this I
did this analysis earlier in the year when I was
looking at brands and how they are our clients and
how they're performing relative to some industry benchmarks. And the
things I found were brands that were very very value
you conscious, like before, like they are not they don't
(12:02):
need to necessarily discount because they're already value oriented, are
doing well right now. Number two, brands that are super
indulgent are doing well right now. And so like you know,
because people, if people want to spend on restaurants. They
will go with something that they know taste good, is affordable,
but sometimes they want to they want to splurge, they
(12:23):
want to treat, and this is this is this doesn't
necessarily mean dessert. Like this could be you know, a
hot chicken concept that feels indulgent, that feels experiential, but
it's still a fast casual brand as an example, and
has a naturally higher average check. They may have a
twenty eight dollars average check instead of a traditional you know,
QSR which is fifteen bucks or lower. And so like,
(12:46):
those are the things that that we've seen do well.
I will say, like when it comes to a consistent
theme that we see brands that work with bicky, A
consistent theme that in way in terms of how they're
using the data to improve through to improve traffic is
menu optimization. I think a lot of the brands that
are doing well today have tighter menus. They're just easier
(13:08):
to execute. And then from a consumer's perception standpoint, they
know who they are, they stick to what they are,
and in the mind of the consumer, they're like, if
I want X, I'm going to go to that brand,
right because I know that that's what that brand stands for.
And so we're seeing a lot of people start to
rationalize their menus and cut and basically just shrink the
number of items to try and one more clearly differentiate
(13:31):
who they are in the marketplace. And then two, I
think easy operational burden on frontline teams and their franchisees.
So I'd say those are like a few of the
emerging trends that we've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, operations has been huge, and with the large national chains,
you know, nailing those operations, you know, because people are
more discerning with their dollars and if they have a
bad experience, they're not likely to come back, and so
you really got to got to nail those options. Yeah,
and it's interesting, indulgent and value. That's you know, during
that you mentioned the GFC. During the GFC, that's the
(14:03):
similar themes we saw.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, But I think, look, I think if you look
at this is this is.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
A hypothesis I've had for a while.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I don't I haven't like revisited it, and I don't
necessarily know how it's playing out, but it's something that
feels true, which is, you know, if you look at
the history of retail, people either went experiential or they
went convenience, and like like they anchored on one of
those two axes, and the middle your traditional department stores,
pretty much everything in the mall except the Apple store
(14:32):
just got hollowed out and did not exist. And it
feels like as the restaurant business goes increasingly digital and
this consumer choice increases and competition increases and cost pressures increase,
it feels like the restaurant business is going in that
same direction. It's either going very experiential and indulgent or
(14:53):
it's going super super convenience oriented. The thing that breaks
that a little bit is third party delivery, honestly, because
those I feel that that is a consumer that is
just not cost sensitive at all and can basically they
have enough discretionary income to kind of gravitate between those
two axes.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Whenever they want, how are they want or.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Get the indulgent thing in a convenient way, which again
like breaks that a little bit, which you know, food
is just a naturally different use case than traditional e
commerce or retail. But that's the way it has felt
for a while where it's like if you're in the
middle and you don't know who you stand for, and
you try to be all things to all people, you're
starting to get hollowed out, especially as the environment gets tougher.
(15:36):
And I think that again, like that ties into a
very like practical tactic of hey, maybe we need to
rationalize the menu because our messaging on literally our product,
our most valuable thing that we serve our guests, is
a little muddled here, you know. And so I think
that's the It's interesting how people start to use the
data again to before it was pmix and now it's
just like, Okay, what what does this do from a
(15:57):
retention standpoint?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
What does this do from a traffic standpoint? And so
we're happy to play a part and helping them make
some of those decisions.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and I would agree with that hypothesis.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I mean it really sure seems that change that are
focusing on one of those seemed to be outperforming. But yeah,
maybe we'll get together and dig up some data see
what's going on.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, we gotta do some site visits together. I think
that's the thing that sounds fantastic. I'm down you're in Jersey.
There's some good cut salad house. One of our partners
in Jersey I'll go to a salad house.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
With you and I have to check that out. Yeah yeah,
all right, cool. Why have so many loyalty programs failed? Man?
And who's doing it? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I think it's it's tough the loyalty program, the loyalty
program ecosystem, Like you had this sort of post pandemic,
You had this wave of adoption, right because by necessity,
it was like, I'm never going to see these guests
because literally, especially in major cities, like people are working
(16:59):
from home home, and so I need to build a
digital ecosystem to attract them.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
In terms of why, I felt there's a lot of
different layers. So that one is third party delivery had
already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building their
own digital ecosystems for years prior to restaurants. Decidedly, we're like,
we're going all in and we need and we need
our own loads from our loan and our own digital ecosystem.
(17:25):
I think from there, if you just look at like
maturity curve from e commerce standpoint, restaurants are just now
starting to hire for a role like the chief digital officer,
which is someone who is exclusively focused on digital channels,
whereas again previously, like to a certain extent.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
They were just playing.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
There were three years behind the game. Yep, you know
when it came to actually building a digital ecosystem and
beyond that, you're not thinking when you're three years behind,
you are not thinking about You're just thinking about how
do I go from zero to one?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
You are not thinking about how.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Do I make this experience as frictionless as possible, how
do I help someone go from search to click to
food to purchase to food in my hands as quickly
as possible versus like the third parties again for years
have been thinking about that and spending time on that
and spending money on that, And so I think that's
number one.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I think number two.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Also, there are a lot of brands just don't have
differentiation from a loyalty standard, Like it's very hard to
get on someone's home screen on their phone, Like I
don't think like you know, I download apps all the time,
but nothing really things make it to the back panels
of my phone.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
You have to swipe, slide side flighted flights. It's very
ready to get on that front screen.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And if you are not on that front screen, you're
not consistently top of mind, and so I think that's
that's another thing.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
It's just like it's hard to break through that noise.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
The third thing I will say also is a lot
of brands didn't necessarily invest in differentiation of their loyalty program.
Like what we tell folks back in twenty nineteen or
twenty twenty is like you got to either be more
competitive unpriced, more competitive on menu offerings, like literally the
menu items that you offer on first party are exclusive
to first party and can't be on third party, or
(19:12):
the loyalty program incentive structure needs to be so strong
that it is a viable hook for a consumer to say,
if I want Jersey, I'm just throwing this out there,
if I want Jersey Mikes, I'm gonna go to the
Jersey Mikes at because I need my short points because
I can do things. And to your question about who's
doing well, because I can do things like earn rewards faster,
(19:35):
So in terms of who's doing it well, I think
Dominoes was one of the first to do this where
they just lowered the threshold for redeeming things and so
they basically shorten the feedback loop, like if I got
to spend ninety nine dollars to get nine bucks, I
need to be ordering Dominoes four times a month to
get one reward a month.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
And I don't know about you, but like as I like,
I'm a New Yorker. I have my on Dono's pizza.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
But i still eat Domino's pizza because it's the cheapest
way to feed a family in this environment.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
But I'm not ordering it four times a month. And
so something that they did.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Very strategically a year ago was they just lowered the
threshold to redeem them to redeem an incremental reward, and
that drives a flywheel. Again going back to what I
said earlier, which is how do you shorten the time
between visits? And if you use your awards program as
an incentive to shorten the time between visits because you
are getting something free faster on that next trip, that
(20:31):
is some That is a strategy that we are seeing
work really well. Another thing is the marketplace of rewards concept,
which instead of you defining you hit this tier and
you get X, it's you hit this tier and you
can choose from these three or four things, and so
you're giving the consumer a little bit, a little bit
of choice, and it could be a food item, it
could be a piece of swag. And again, so you're
(20:51):
redeeming more, you're offering more options to the guests unredeemables,
and you're letting it happen faster. And I think those
are the things that are really out from a loyalty
program standpoint, that are working and you know, like it's
paying off. Like I look at our data, we see this.
We have like a little chat GPT style tool called
data as System where it's just chatcheept on your bikie data.
(21:12):
One of the more common questions that we get is
what is the frequency of my loyalty guests versus my
non loyalty guests, And anecdotally, just looking through some of
those questions, typically what we see is it's six to
eight ats higher, meaning like a loyalty program guest will
come six to eight times more often than a non
loyalty guest. So the value is certainly there, the ROI
is certainly there. It's just making it just having a
(21:35):
good enough incentive to get somebody into the ecosystem in
the first place, and then structuring the rewards and redeemables
in a way where you are repeatedly incentivizing getting that
dopamine hit of incentivizing them to keep coming back more quickly.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And it's interesting you said, you know, giving people the
rewards they want, because on a recent episode, one of
the guests was talking about giving people discounts that they
actually want.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, yeah, I was talking.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I literally have a conversation this morning with h They're
one of the first concepts that I've heard of this,
But I was talking to a publicly traded brand their
CTO this morning and he was like, look, when you
when you come to the Kiosk and you type in
your phone number, We've engineered it in a way where
you're the rewards that are when you enter your phone number,
the rewards that show up in the in the experience
are tailored to you. They are your personalize like and
(22:25):
they are the furthest and now they it's it's recently launched,
so it'll be interesting to see how how it evolves.
But that is the furthest end of the spectrum that
I've seen in personalization, and it feels like, obviously like
a worthwhile investment because to your point, making it personalized,
leveraging data to speak on a as close to a
(22:46):
one to one basis with that guest that you've seen.
And this ties into, you know, the CMO servery that
we did recently. Like that level of personalization is what
every brand is looking for. The rob is you need
a tech team to implement it and get to that point,
which most still it has but just fascinating. I think
could position them as one of the leaders and offers
and loyalty to come.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So, yeah, that's very cool. And let's switch gears.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Let's talk about your recent survey of fifty chief marketing officers.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What are their views about consumer spending next year.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yeah, I think it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Like the thing that and this is even the survey,
you know, I think this was the only I believe
this was the only response on the survey where the
majority of people all voted on the same thing. And
that was the thing keeping them up at night. Is
further softness in consumer spending. I can tell you I've
been at a lot of industry trade shows over the
(23:43):
last you know, four weeks. I've been to like four
or five in the last four weeks, and that's all
everybody talks about. On the conference floor, which is we're
really worried about the consumer environment. It looks like there's
cracks starting to appear in the macro environment. We are
gearing up to grapple with that. You know, when we
(24:03):
do our budgeting, we're thinking about how do we optimize
or spend, how do we do more with less? You know,
the best way we summarize it when we talk to
folks is flat is the new.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Up in this environment. Right Like, if you are flat
right now, you are killing it.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
And flat from a from a you know, that could
be some folks that's flat on traffic, some folks that's
minus two percent on traffic plus two percent on price.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
But flat seems to be the new up.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And I think this is something that we started hearing
at the start of last year.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And you know, so we're we're two years in to this,
you know, worries around the macro environment.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But I can tell you that where eighteen months ago
it was probably the most forward thinking operators who are
talking to me talking to me about this, now I
can tell you it's much more pervasive and widespread where
people feel like the next six months in particular is
going to be tougher from a macro and consumer standpoint
than it has been in the past.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I find that interesting because we you know, in the
first quarter, we're lapping you know, two years of week
first quarters, so you know, and then you know there's
going to be some some help from the big beautiful bill,
I think when it comes to tax time.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah yeah, So from and then you know, I look
at the economic data from from where I look, I'm
I'm probably thinking it gets better before it gets worse.
I think we might be interested in the clear for
the next three quarters, but the second half I think
of next year. I mean, it's so hard right now
to predict this industry. It's been the most volatile year
(25:43):
in restaurants and restaurants stocks that I've seen, with all
the ups and downs.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But but even Dominoes is saying, like you know, we
were talking about Domino's earlier. I think, you know, I
think they were saying that two four is off to
a softer start than they expected. Right, you can correct
me if I might be misquoting that, but I know
that was like what drove some of theirselves off. And
you know, I look at McDonald's and it's like they're
discounting core menu items now, which is like a position
I don't I haven't been in this industry long enough,
(26:09):
but I don't know when the last time they were
doing that. And then on the flip side, like you
go to you look at someone like Taco Bell, which
is doing well and because it appeals to all occasions,
right like if you want if if you want a
bean burrito on your own or something from the value menu,
you can do that. If you want to feed the family,
you can do the deluxe craving socks. But you can
like trade up and down the menu and basically hit
(26:32):
every consumer use case in a reasonably affordable way, and
that drives the value perception. And so it's super It's
to your point like it's hard to predict. It just
feels like there's going to be the halves are going
to get better and the have nots. There're gonna be
a lot more of the have nots than there.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That's what will continue to see that that gap continues
to wide in between the winners and users.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Man.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
But yeah, I'm you know, usually we do a year
ahead out look, I don't know if I can predict
all of next year, I may only go as far
as the first first half.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Man, It's it's the wild West out there right now.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, especially with the stocks are even crazier than the stocks.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah, I'm hoping your optimism peaks through, so I won't
take your pessimistic pessimism on the back half.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
I'm rude for your optimism on the front half.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Man, Hey, listen, if you know me long enough, you
know I'm not afraid to be bearish too.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
All right, So consumer spending, they're afraid of weakness. Where
are they finding success right now?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah? I think it's funny.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
There's this, uh, there's this two sides of the same coin,
the yin and yang. But the highest roy initiative uh
in this year, at least for them, has.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Been loyalty promotions.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Actually, loyalty promotions have been the highest roy lever for
brands to pull on. You know, we're seeing, we're seeing,
just anecdotally, we're seeing some brands who are doing things
like giving up giving a free burger before your first
loyalty visit. But then, you know, franchises might complain about
discounting or might complain about like these are deal seekers,
(28:10):
but when they look at the data, they find that
it's activated. It's getting trial right, it's getting new guests
into the loyalty program and the retention rate is acceptable enough,
and then it drives enough repeat visits through the loyalty
program where the lifetime value again is you know, five
to eight x higher over the long term lifetime value
(28:30):
of that guess. So it's like giving up if like
I'll give away a ten dollars burger if I'm going
to make one hundred and fifty bucks over the lifetime
of the guest long term.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
And so we're seeing brands start to i think.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Strategically leverage promotions through their loyalty program to drive ro y.
It's not blanket discounts. And I think this is the
other nuance. It's not blanket discounts. It is being data driven.
It is being smart.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
About measuring which offers are driving incrementality. That's really working.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
The number two place where they're finding where they're seeing
our local store marks, which I think is a little
you know, has been historically overlooked in sort of this
data or the digitization of the restaurant business. It's so
funny It's like the two things that are getting ROI
are first party one to one offers and local and
location based messaging and local store marketing. It's like it's
(29:19):
still a it's still a human to human.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
And a local business.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
The thing that people are worried about with the growth
in loyalty offers is the slippery slope to becoming a
discount brand. Like that's the thing that they are especially again,
like you tie in the consumer worry, It's hey, this
is working.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
It's driving ROI.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
First party digital is actually growing faster than third party
this year for the first time, which is which I
think was surprising for me. And so it's clearly working
that flywheel is working of incentive first party transaction, targeted offers,
targeted messaging, driving more first party transactions.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
But people are worried, like, am I just pulling the
discount lever a little bit too much?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
But discount rates are not I think how to whack
historically with where people want to be right now, So
overall folks are fine, it's more just keeping an eye
on it. I think the thing that surprised me the
most from the survey tying into ROI is people feel
like third party ads in particular, are hitting a saturation point.
You know, we've heard, you know, the third parties have
(30:20):
been pushing ads increasingly because look, it's like it's a
zero marginal call. Like it's pure margin for them, you
know what I mean, if you run it, if someone's
running an AD on third party platform, why and take
why not take the economics of the delivery business model,
which have been historically tough, and layer on something that
is pure margin on top of it, plus your commission rate.
(30:41):
I mean, that just might make the entire model possible.
So the third party have been very incentivized in getting
brands to run third party ads, and I think a
lot of folks have done that over the last eighteen months.
You know, I think DoorDash DoorDash ads is already north
of a billion dollar run rate, billion dollar wherever you
run rate. But I think folks are like now every
(31:02):
now the only way I can get a third party
transaction is if I offer a discount. And so again,
playing into that fear of the channel becoming increasingly promotional.
It's hard to stand out even when you're offering ads
because everybody is offering ads, and so folks are one
investing less. I think forty five percent of the cmos
we surveyed are investing less than third party ads next year,
(31:24):
and two it ranks below some of the other.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Options I mentioned in terms of ROI.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So we're starting to see what feels like saturation and
some pullback in performance marketing on that channel specifically interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So in terms of overall marketing spending, you know, for
our chains it's it's increased material and materially over the
last couple of years. What does the survey suggest about
twenty twenty six?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Flat is the new up? Like even even marketing budgets
are flat. I think this is the hard thing that
this is the hardest thing for me to grapple with
in the survey.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
You know, we were with a brand and.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Last week and they basically said, look, when we buy software,
especially the stuff that you guys do, it comes out
of the marketing fund. I used to be able to
rely on sales going up three to five percent each
year and funding any new tech initiatives out of that
incremental three to five percent. But if my sales are flat,
(32:21):
my marketing fund, my AD fund, my marketing dollars are flat.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
So if I'm going to buy your thing.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
I got to make tough calls on cutting other things
in order to fund your tool. And so most most
operators expect their marketing budgets to be flat next year.
Circling back to this is the hardest thing that you know,
I felt like I had to grapple with was they say,
you can't cut your way to growth, and so, like
I jokingly said to somebody on my team, like, can
you neutral your way to growth? Like I don't know,
(32:47):
Like you're asking people to unlock. You're asking people in
an increasingly tougher environment to basically maintain their level of growth.
We know the other variables are changing. We know people
feel like consumer spending is going to get tougher, We
know that the marketplace is going to get noisier and
more competitive. And yet you know, we're asking restaurant marketers
(33:09):
to maintain flat to slightly down on traffic with the
same exact budget when everything else is getting harder. And
it's like it was hard for me to square those
two things. Like that doesn't feel like a recipe for
success for next year for those brands. But you know,
if sales are flat and you got marketing fund to work,
(33:31):
with you know, it follows that your budgets are going
to be flat as well.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, well, you know, you know, to your point, we've
seen casual dining chains who cut back all of their
marketing and the pandemic and really kept it very very
low in there. You know, first couple of years post
pandemic really turned on the marketing. You know, in the
last twelve months, you know, you think, yeah, Brinker Chili's
at Brinker. Yeah, you think about Darden and Red Lobster, right,
(33:58):
I'm sorry the copster no longer Red Lobster Olive Garden,
and they've done really, really well. So to your point, marketing,
you know, those dollars are working for a lot of
change working.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
You just got to know what's incremental.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And I think you know to to that point too,
from a full service like, something else happened right where
it's like consumers were like, oh, maybe I should be
going out to eat, right, Like, I think that's the
thing too. It's like they cut back and it certainly
hurt them on the compside, but a moment in time
happened where people didn't want to just spend thirty bucks
(34:33):
on the couch anymore. They wanted to go sit down
and have a drink, spend thirty bucks with a group
of friends, and so they time that they tie. They
strategically timed it very well, I would say, And that's
I think that's part of the reason. There are a
lot of things that that Chilis in particular has done
that have helped drive their growth.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
But I feel like that's part of the reason. Also
is just they threaten the needle, like just right.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, all right, So what we're winning cmos do next
year to outperform.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
This is I mean, uh, the biggest the biggest answer
and the biggest takeaway was personalization, segmentation using data. You know,
I know I'm great my own homework a little bit
when I when I say that, but I think it's true.
You know, like when I when we think about personalization,
I think one of the things I've learned from the
(35:18):
operators that we work with is personalization doesn't just mean
right message, right person, right off, or right time. It
means things like we are going to launch ltos that
we know historically have done a great job at bringing
in new guests. One brand we worked with is like
we launched Pastrami last year. We saw a huge spike
(35:39):
in sales. You know what, like we are going to
launch Pastrami again this year because it had a lot
of new guests, and we're going to retarget those people
watered Pastrami last year and haven't been back to the
brand since and say Pastrami's back. And that one campaign
which they ran increased the ROI on their SMS messaging
by seven x like literally, and this is like not
(35:59):
it's not a lot of like you know, fine cuts
getting down to one to one messaging and so literally
who ordered this item at this time last year? Have
they been back since?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Let's hit them with messaging saying it's back.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
And so personalization is goes into the menu, right, like
are we literally building the menu items that map to
the parts of the funnel where we want to grow,
whether it's bringing that laps guest, bringing a new guests
of course is segmentation and targeting through the loyalty program.
It's also like figuring out what offers actually drive a
(36:31):
new guest acquisition and incrementality. And so I think like
the big theme that we saw of what people will
do is and this is this goes outside of Vicky
is just get better at using data, get better at
understanding that their guests are, get better understanding what they
care about, and then get better at leveraging that data
to do things like drive greater efficiency and spend an
(36:51):
ROI and of course the ultimate growth traffic.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
All right, good stuff, man, I think that's the perfect
spot to wrap it up.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
You're great man, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me and always
a big fan. So it's an r B here and
thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I want to thank the audience for tuning in. Check
out biki dot com to find out more about what
Abanov and this team are up to. If you liked
our discussion, please share with your friends and colleague. Check
back soon for another interview on Chopping it Up.
Welcome to Chopping It Up.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm your host, Mike Hanlon, the senior restaurant and food
service analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Our research and that of
bi's five hundred analysts around the globe can be found
exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal. If you enjoy the pod,
do me a big favor and give us a five
star review on Apple or Spotify.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
It'll help us in the algorithm.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Today we're joined by Abanov Kapor, founder at Biki. Bickie
helps restaurant chains use data to increase customer frequency and
reduce chern.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Abanov, Thanks Mike, like I said, like I was saying
in the print. First time caller, long time listener, So
thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, man, I appreciate your support. Yeah, I'm glad you
like it. What inspires you to create Biki?
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah, happy to so. Vicky is a customer data platform
for restaurants. You know, like many entrepreneurs, it started from
a very personal problem and very personal passion, not too
disimilar for you. My I don't have a formal restaurant background.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
My training was in Wall Street investment banking.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
For a while equity research worked at the FBI sa
ter in the financial crisis. That was my first That
was my first job out of college. But my mother
in law was a restaurant operator here in New York City.
She created one of the first fine dining Indian restaurants
to star New York Times raided ran it for twenty years.
And you know, being a good son in law and
having an office around the corner from her restaurant, I
(01:35):
would go in and get free lunch every now and then.
And I walked in one day. I'll never forget it.
She's she's looking at a Grove Lub delivery tablet. Now
these don't really exist anymore, but you know, gen Z
has no idea what is delivery tablet is, but for
us older heads, we certainly know. And she was looking
at a Grabo delivery tablet and she had a pen
in one hand notebook in the other.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
I was like, what are you doing. She's like, oh,
I recognize.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
This person's name on the tablet, so they're obviously a
loyal gut some writing down their phone number. And I
was like why, and she's like, I just want to
call them and see if they had a good experience.
I was like, that's baller, Like, I've never received a
phone call after a delivery order before, so that first
off blew me away.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Two days later, r at our house.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
And she's like, help me with something on my computer
and she flips around her laptop.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I was like, what are you trying to do?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
And she's like, well, all these people made a reservation
on open table this week. I just want to email
them and see if they had a good experience. And
I think those two moments back to back are where
it all sort of triggered this obsession where it's like, literally,
the restaurant business is probably more so than any business
needs to be customer centric, guest centric, just truly understanding
who their customers are, what drives their behavior, what makes
(02:41):
them come more often, less often, et cetera. And you know,
it didn't matter if I was speaking to a single
unit operator like my mother in law, or you know,
brands with thousands, you know, with thousands of units, they
would all say, look, we have all this data in
all these places, and we don't really know anything about
the person behind the transaction. And so that you know,
has really driven us since day one, is just aggregating
(03:03):
all that data, building profiles on the guests, and then
giving operators the ability to understand when they pull a
lever to grow the business on the marketing side, on
the menu side, on the op side, right, Like my
mother in law would do Restaurant Week and she would
always say, look, I'm doing this prefix menu, but I
have no idea if I'm getting a new guest on
that prefix menu, or if I'm taking a loyal guest
(03:23):
and just pulling their visit forward. And if I am
pulling their visit forward, am I getting that incremental visit
when they normally would have come anyway? And you look
at this sort of value conscious environment where people are
doing loyalty promotions, people are trying to be segmented marketing
people are doing ltos, they're doing value bundles, They're pulling
all these levers to fight for traffic and attention and share.
(03:44):
And I guarantee you the vast majority of brands that
are executing these initiatives, the only real metric they're looking
at is p mix or top line sales, And if
sales is going up or if it's four percent of mix,
they're like, hey, I guess it's working. But what's missing
is really the input of those metrics, the real insight
into traffic, frequency, retention, lifetime value, the things that ultimately
(04:06):
drive percentage of mister percent or total sales in the
first place. So it's been a fun journey. You know,
we work with brands like Daves Hot, Chicken, Longtown, Silvers, Bojangles,
Like I think we are the largest and fastest growing
company exclusively focused on you know, CDP for restaurants and continuing,
you know, to see great momentum as as brands increasingly
think about adopting data driven decision making and thinking very cool.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You're used to working on the pressure first gig out
of school fd I see during the GFC, man, that's wild.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I mean one of the yeah, one of the like,
one of the tasks was one of the projects was
helping my mentor at the time build the model to
project to project the number of bank failures and the
drain on the deposit Insurance Fund to figure out what
the special assessment tax should be, that one time tax
that the FDIC implemented to basically replenished the deposit insurance
(05:01):
fund ahead of failures. And like, you know, I was
fresh out of college and I was just like I'm
grow lucky to find a job first and foremost in
two thousand and eight, you know, I think Indiemac failed.
Like July, it was like right before I started, and
so just fortune to find a job and then fortunate
to find something that was relatively close to the nerve
(05:21):
center of everything that was happening. So there was definitely
a little bit of pressure.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
I was junior.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I would say the people above me probably a lot
more pressure than I did.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
But I was happy to be a log for the ride.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Very cool. And your mother in law, what was the
name of a restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, it was called Umma on fifty first between second
and third close for a second Avenue. And you know,
I take a lot of inspiration from how she was.
And she came to this country when she was like
nineteen years old, didn't know the language, didn't know the culture,
recently married, and her and my father in law were
just they just started businesses together. They had gas stations,
they did import export, and I was thinking about this,
(05:59):
I'm thirty nine now.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
My wife and I were talking this.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
They started the restaurant when they turned forty, and so
they just went into like they saw a need. I
think Doubbla with Union Square. Hostiality was maybe the only
other truly upscale, white tablecloth Indian restaurant at the time,
and so they saw a need and like we want
to be one of the first, we want to be
the best. And with no previous restaurant background, they they
just created this.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
You know, she still gets text from people.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You know, they closed the restaurant a few years ago,
she still gets text from people. It's like, I wish
I'm always still open. I need a place like in
midtown eies Ron the upperside just bring my family on
a Sunday night and like have a relaxed a relaxed
environment and a relax meal.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
And you know, it's amazing, Like this industry is so.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Unique in that way where you can go years without
having been to a restaurant and you can still be like, man,
I wish I could go back there, or man, I
still remember when I used to go there.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
It's so it's so unique and so rare.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
And I think one of the things that again like
sparks my passion for like why why can't they have
the same tools, Why can't they have the same level
of data access insight technology to grow their business the
way every world class business operates. And so that's again
very much or to our mission, Epicky.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I love that. What makes Bicky different from other data
platforms out there?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, I mean historically, you know, like the way we
think about it is, restaurants have never really had true
customer level insight when it comes to data. You know,
they've had if you zoom out like the two sort
of imperfect like of course necessary but imperfect approaches to
solving what we do has either been the loyalty program,
(07:37):
which for most brands is only ten to twenty percent
of the customer base or sales, and sales is a
very noisy, output driven metric, right like launching a menu
item and saying it's four percent of sales. It doesn't
tell you if you're bringing a new guests, if those
guests are coming back, if they're coming back more frequently
than a new guest to order a core menu item,
if it's changing the frequency of your existing guess, if
(07:58):
it's cannibalizing something else on the then you like, there
are so many sub questions that are just not answered
not able to be answered by top line sales data
on the loyalty program it's only against small sample size,
and it's great first party data, but the behavior of
those guests isn't actually biased, right. They're either going to
be your most frequent guests or on the other end
(08:20):
of the extreme, they're going to be your most discount
oriented guests. And so you're also not going to get
you're not going to get great insight into you know,
when you when you run some of these initiatives, what's
actually moving the needle because you're just looking at.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
A small bias sample of data.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
And so I think what makes us different is we
have integrations out of the box with all the major
point of sale as well as payment providers, as well
as online ordering, as well as loyalty as well as
a few other channels, and so we can bring all
of the digital and non digital guest data together and
then really help brands understand instead of the twenty percent
(08:55):
of guests in their loyalty program, up to ninety percent
of their guests, and when you are making this decisions
about your business with up to ninety percent visibility on
how your decisions impact their behavior, it just changes how
you operate the business full stop. So I would say
the breath and the death like being restaurants specific because
there's so many nuances, there's so many edge cases consumer
(09:17):
you know, this consumer behavior it can be so noisy,
you know, and so like just having focus on this
problem exclusively is as I think made our data model better,
has made our analytics easier to understand and more intuitive.
We have a perspective when you make a decision. We
give operators our perspective on how they should be analyzing
the success of these initiatives. So I think all of
those things kind of are underpin our secret Sauce as
(09:40):
a data platform specifically for restaurants.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yeah, to your point, it's so important to figure out
what that eighty percent of your customer base that's not
in the loyalty program we're doing because the people in
the loyalty program act very differently than everybody else.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Yeah, I will give you another again.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We have like four hundred million customer profiles in our system,
and something that we seen at a high love. We
did this study a couple of years ago and I
think it's I think it's held up since then. Eighty
percent of guests typically don't come back after the first visit, right,
and so like, yes, and so like eight out of
ten guests. And if I think about myself as a consumer,
that makes sense, right. I have four or five items,
(10:17):
four or five brands in my rotation. Sometimes I will
go outside that rotation and try something new, and it
might not even be a bad experience. But if it
doesn't blow me away from a value standpoint, from a
taste standpoint, from an experience standpoint, from a convenience standpoint,
if it doesn't blow me away, it's really hard to
replace what's currently in my rotation. Yeah, and so you know,
(10:38):
and so again, like if eighty percent of guests don't
come back, it goes to the three key metrics that
we talk to operators about is how many new guests
are you getting per stored per week?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Number one?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Number two, how quickly are you getting them to a
second visit? And number three, when they when they are
on a regular cadence they come daily, weekly, multi quarterly,
are you making sure that you are keeping as any
of them as possible? We call this late late guests?
Are you constantly recovering late guests? There's just a naturally
high degree of churn just given the industry, because there's
a lot of choice out there, and again there's a
(11:09):
lot of price sensitivity in this environment, and so it's
just getting new guests, getting it to come back for
a second visit faster because the probability that they keep
coming back after that goes up dramatically, and then reducing
the amount of later urn guests that you have.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
Those are the three most influenceable parts of the fund.
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
So in my world, you know, the world of publicly
traded restaurants, the chains that are outperforming on sales and
traffic are doing it in a variety of ways this year,
but we are seeing certain themes pop up over time.
What keeps cropping up in your data?
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, I think the one thing that's interesting this I
did this analysis earlier in the year when I was
looking at brands and how they are our clients and
how they're performing relative to some industry benchmarks. And the
things I found were brands that were very very value
you conscious, like before, like they are not they don't
(12:02):
need to necessarily discount because they're already value oriented, are
doing well right now. Number two, brands that are super
indulgent are doing well right now. And so like you know,
because people, if people want to spend on restaurants. They
will go with something that they know taste good, is affordable,
but sometimes they want to they want to splurge, they
(12:23):
want to treat, and this is this is this doesn't
necessarily mean dessert. Like this could be you know, a
hot chicken concept that feels indulgent, that feels experiential, but
it's still a fast casual brand as an example, and
has a naturally higher average check. They may have a
twenty eight dollars average check instead of a traditional you know,
QSR which is fifteen bucks or lower. And so like,
(12:46):
those are the things that that we've seen do well.
I will say, like when it comes to a consistent
theme that we see brands that work with bicky, A
consistent theme that in way in terms of how they're
using the data to improve through to improve traffic is
menu optimization. I think a lot of the brands that
are doing well today have tighter menus. They're just easier
(13:08):
to execute. And then from a consumer's perception standpoint, they
know who they are, they stick to what they are,
and in the mind of the consumer, they're like, if
I want X, I'm going to go to that brand,
right because I know that that's what that brand stands for.
And so we're seeing a lot of people start to
rationalize their menus and cut and basically just shrink the
number of items to try and one more clearly differentiate
(13:31):
who they are in the marketplace. And then two, I
think easy operational burden on frontline teams and their franchisees.
So I'd say those are like a few of the
emerging trends that we've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, operations has been huge, and with the large national chains,
you know, nailing those operations, you know, because people are
more discerning with their dollars and if they have a
bad experience, they're not likely to come back, and so
you really got to got to nail those options. Yeah,
and it's interesting, indulgent and value. That's you know, during
that you mentioned the GFC. During the GFC, that's the
(14:03):
similar themes we saw.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Yeah, But I think, look, I think if you look
at this is this is.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
A hypothesis I've had for a while.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
I don't I haven't like revisited it, and I don't
necessarily know how it's playing out, but it's something that
feels true, which is, you know, if you look at
the history of retail, people either went experiential or they
went convenience, and like like they anchored on one of
those two axes, and the middle your traditional department stores,
pretty much everything in the mall except the Apple store
(14:32):
just got hollowed out and did not exist. And it
feels like as the restaurant business goes increasingly digital and
this consumer choice increases and competition increases and cost pressures increase,
it feels like the restaurant business is going in that
same direction. It's either going very experiential and indulgent or
(14:53):
it's going super super convenience oriented. The thing that breaks
that a little bit is third party delivery, honestly, because
those I feel that that is a consumer that is
just not cost sensitive at all and can basically they
have enough discretionary income to kind of gravitate between those
two axes.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
Whenever they want, how are they want or.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Get the indulgent thing in a convenient way, which again
like breaks that a little bit, which you know, food
is just a naturally different use case than traditional e
commerce or retail. But that's the way it has felt
for a while where it's like if you're in the
middle and you don't know who you stand for, and
you try to be all things to all people, you're
starting to get hollowed out, especially as the environment gets tougher.
(15:36):
And I think that again, like that ties into a
very like practical tactic of hey, maybe we need to
rationalize the menu because our messaging on literally our product,
our most valuable thing that we serve our guests, is
a little muddled here, you know. And so I think
that's the It's interesting how people start to use the
data again to before it was pmix and now it's
just like, Okay, what what does this do from a
(15:57):
retention standpoint?
Speaker 4 (15:58):
What does this do from a traffic standpoint? And so
we're happy to play a part and helping them make
some of those decisions.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, and I would agree with that hypothesis.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I mean it really sure seems that change that are
focusing on one of those seemed to be outperforming. But yeah,
maybe we'll get together and dig up some data see
what's going on.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah, we gotta do some site visits together. I think
that's the thing that sounds fantastic. I'm down you're in Jersey.
There's some good cut salad house. One of our partners
in Jersey I'll go to a salad house.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
With you and I have to check that out. Yeah yeah,
all right, cool. Why have so many loyalty programs failed? Man?
And who's doing it? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
I think it's it's tough the loyalty program, the loyalty
program ecosystem, Like you had this sort of post pandemic,
You had this wave of adoption, right because by necessity,
it was like, I'm never going to see these guests
because literally, especially in major cities, like people are working
(16:59):
from home home, and so I need to build a
digital ecosystem to attract them.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
In terms of why, I felt there's a lot of
different layers. So that one is third party delivery had
already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building their
own digital ecosystems for years prior to restaurants. Decidedly, we're like,
we're going all in and we need and we need
our own loads from our loan and our own digital ecosystem.
(17:25):
I think from there, if you just look at like
maturity curve from e commerce standpoint, restaurants are just now
starting to hire for a role like the chief digital officer,
which is someone who is exclusively focused on digital channels,
whereas again previously, like to a certain extent.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
They were just playing.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
There were three years behind the game. Yep, you know
when it came to actually building a digital ecosystem and
beyond that, you're not thinking when you're three years behind,
you are not thinking about You're just thinking about how
do I go from zero to one?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
You are not thinking about how.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Do I make this experience as frictionless as possible, how
do I help someone go from search to click to
food to purchase to food in my hands as quickly
as possible versus like the third parties again for years
have been thinking about that and spending time on that
and spending money on that, And so I think that's
number one.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
I think number two.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Also, there are a lot of brands just don't have
differentiation from a loyalty standard, Like it's very hard to
get on someone's home screen on their phone, Like I
don't think like you know, I download apps all the time,
but nothing really things make it to the back panels
of my phone.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
You have to swipe, slide side flighted flights. It's very
ready to get on that front screen.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And if you are not on that front screen, you're
not consistently top of mind, and so I think that's
that's another thing.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
It's just like it's hard to break through that noise.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
The third thing I will say also is a lot
of brands didn't necessarily invest in differentiation of their loyalty program.
Like what we tell folks back in twenty nineteen or
twenty twenty is like you got to either be more
competitive unpriced, more competitive on menu offerings, like literally the
menu items that you offer on first party are exclusive
to first party and can't be on third party, or
(19:12):
the loyalty program incentive structure needs to be so strong
that it is a viable hook for a consumer to say,
if I want Jersey, I'm just throwing this out there,
if I want Jersey Mikes, I'm gonna go to the
Jersey Mikes at because I need my short points because
I can do things. And to your question about who's
doing well, because I can do things like earn rewards faster,
(19:35):
So in terms of who's doing it well, I think
Dominoes was one of the first to do this where
they just lowered the threshold for redeeming things and so
they basically shorten the feedback loop, like if I got
to spend ninety nine dollars to get nine bucks, I
need to be ordering Dominoes four times a month to
get one reward a month.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
And I don't know about you, but like as I like,
I'm a New Yorker. I have my on Dono's pizza.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
But i still eat Domino's pizza because it's the cheapest
way to feed a family in this environment.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
But I'm not ordering it four times a month. And
so something that they did.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Very strategically a year ago was they just lowered the
threshold to redeem them to redeem an incremental reward, and
that drives a flywheel. Again going back to what I
said earlier, which is how do you shorten the time
between visits? And if you use your awards program as
an incentive to shorten the time between visits because you
are getting something free faster on that next trip, that
(20:31):
is some That is a strategy that we are seeing
work really well. Another thing is the marketplace of rewards concept,
which instead of you defining you hit this tier and
you get X, it's you hit this tier and you
can choose from these three or four things, and so
you're giving the consumer a little bit, a little bit
of choice, and it could be a food item, it
could be a piece of swag. And again, so you're
(20:51):
redeeming more, you're offering more options to the guests unredeemables,
and you're letting it happen faster. And I think those
are the things that are really out from a loyalty
program standpoint, that are working and you know, like it's
paying off. Like I look at our data, we see this.
We have like a little chat GPT style tool called
data as System where it's just chatcheept on your bikie data.
(21:12):
One of the more common questions that we get is
what is the frequency of my loyalty guests versus my
non loyalty guests, And anecdotally, just looking through some of
those questions, typically what we see is it's six to
eight ats higher, meaning like a loyalty program guest will
come six to eight times more often than a non
loyalty guest. So the value is certainly there, the ROI
is certainly there. It's just making it just having a
(21:35):
good enough incentive to get somebody into the ecosystem in
the first place, and then structuring the rewards and redeemables
in a way where you are repeatedly incentivizing getting that
dopamine hit of incentivizing them to keep coming back more quickly.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
And it's interesting you said, you know, giving people the
rewards they want, because on a recent episode, one of
the guests was talking about giving people discounts that they
actually want.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, yeah, I was talking.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I literally have a conversation this morning with h They're
one of the first concepts that I've heard of this,
But I was talking to a publicly traded brand their
CTO this morning and he was like, look, when you
when you come to the Kiosk and you type in
your phone number, We've engineered it in a way where
you're the rewards that are when you enter your phone number,
the rewards that show up in the in the experience
are tailored to you. They are your personalize like and
(22:25):
they are the furthest and now they it's it's recently launched,
so it'll be interesting to see how how it evolves.
But that is the furthest end of the spectrum that
I've seen in personalization, and it feels like, obviously like
a worthwhile investment because to your point, making it personalized,
leveraging data to speak on a as close to a
(22:46):
one to one basis with that guest that you've seen.
And this ties into, you know, the CMO servery that
we did recently. Like that level of personalization is what
every brand is looking for. The rob is you need
a tech team to implement it and get to that point,
which most still it has but just fascinating. I think
could position them as one of the leaders and offers
and loyalty to come.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
So, yeah, that's very cool. And let's switch gears.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Let's talk about your recent survey of fifty chief marketing officers.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
What are their views about consumer spending next year.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Yeah, I think it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Like the thing that and this is even the survey,
you know, I think this was the only I believe
this was the only response on the survey where the
majority of people all voted on the same thing. And
that was the thing keeping them up at night. Is
further softness in consumer spending. I can tell you I've
been at a lot of industry trade shows over the
(23:43):
last you know, four weeks. I've been to like four
or five in the last four weeks, and that's all
everybody talks about. On the conference floor, which is we're
really worried about the consumer environment. It looks like there's
cracks starting to appear in the macro environment. We are
gearing up to grapple with that. You know, when we
(24:03):
do our budgeting, we're thinking about how do we optimize
or spend, how do we do more with less? You know,
the best way we summarize it when we talk to
folks is flat is the new.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Up in this environment. Right Like, if you are flat
right now, you are killing it.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
And flat from a from a you know, that could
be some folks that's flat on traffic, some folks that's
minus two percent on traffic plus two percent on price.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
But flat seems to be the new up.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
And I think this is something that we started hearing
at the start of last year.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And you know, so we're we're two years in to this,
you know, worries around the macro environment.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But I can tell you that where eighteen months ago
it was probably the most forward thinking operators who are
talking to me talking to me about this, now I
can tell you it's much more pervasive and widespread where
people feel like the next six months in particular is
going to be tougher from a macro and consumer standpoint
than it has been in the past.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I find that interesting because we you know, in the
first quarter, we're lapping you know, two years of week
first quarters, so you know, and then you know there's
going to be some some help from the big beautiful bill,
I think when it comes to tax time.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
So yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah yeah, So from and then you know, I look
at the economic data from from where I look, I'm
I'm probably thinking it gets better before it gets worse.
I think we might be interested in the clear for
the next three quarters, but the second half I think
of next year. I mean, it's so hard right now
to predict this industry. It's been the most volatile year
(25:43):
in restaurants and restaurants stocks that I've seen, with all
the ups and downs.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But but even Dominoes is saying, like you know, we
were talking about Domino's earlier. I think, you know, I
think they were saying that two four is off to
a softer start than they expected. Right, you can correct
me if I might be misquoting that, but I know
that was like what drove some of theirselves off. And
you know, I look at McDonald's and it's like they're
discounting core menu items now, which is like a position
I don't I haven't been in this industry long enough,
(26:09):
but I don't know when the last time they were
doing that. And then on the flip side, like you
go to you look at someone like Taco Bell, which
is doing well and because it appeals to all occasions,
right like if you want if if you want a
bean burrito on your own or something from the value menu,
you can do that. If you want to feed the family,
you can do the deluxe craving socks. But you can
like trade up and down the menu and basically hit
(26:32):
every consumer use case in a reasonably affordable way, and
that drives the value perception. And so it's super It's
to your point like it's hard to predict. It just
feels like there's going to be the halves are going
to get better and the have nots. There're gonna be
a lot more of the have nots than there.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
That's what will continue to see that that gap continues
to wide in between the winners and users.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Man.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
But yeah, I'm you know, usually we do a year
ahead out look, I don't know if I can predict
all of next year, I may only go as far
as the first first half.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Man, It's it's the wild West out there right now.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, especially with the stocks are even crazier than the stocks.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yeah, I'm hoping your optimism peaks through, so I won't
take your pessimistic pessimism on the back half.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
I'm rude for your optimism on the front half.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Man, Hey, listen, if you know me long enough, you
know I'm not afraid to be bearish too.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
All right, So consumer spending, they're afraid of weakness. Where
are they finding success right now?
Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah? I think it's funny.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
There's this, uh, there's this two sides of the same coin,
the yin and yang. But the highest roy initiative uh
in this year, at least for them, has.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Been loyalty promotions.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Actually, loyalty promotions have been the highest roy lever for
brands to pull on. You know, we're seeing, we're seeing,
just anecdotally, we're seeing some brands who are doing things
like giving up giving a free burger before your first
loyalty visit. But then, you know, franchises might complain about
discounting or might complain about like these are deal seekers,
(28:10):
but when they look at the data, they find that
it's activated. It's getting trial right, it's getting new guests
into the loyalty program and the retention rate is acceptable enough,
and then it drives enough repeat visits through the loyalty
program where the lifetime value again is you know, five
to eight x higher over the long term lifetime value
(28:30):
of that guess. So it's like giving up if like
I'll give away a ten dollars burger if I'm going
to make one hundred and fifty bucks over the lifetime
of the guest long term.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
And so we're seeing brands start to i think.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Strategically leverage promotions through their loyalty program to drive ro y.
It's not blanket discounts. And I think this is the
other nuance. It's not blanket discounts. It is being data driven.
It is being smart.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
About measuring which offers are driving incrementality. That's really working.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
The number two place where they're finding where they're seeing
our local store marks, which I think is a little
you know, has been historically overlooked in sort of this
data or the digitization of the restaurant business. It's so
funny It's like the two things that are getting ROI
are first party one to one offers and local and
location based messaging and local store marketing. It's like it's
(29:19):
still a it's still a human to human.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
And a local business.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
The thing that people are worried about with the growth
in loyalty offers is the slippery slope to becoming a
discount brand. Like that's the thing that they are especially again,
like you tie in the consumer worry, It's hey, this
is working.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
It's driving ROI.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
First party digital is actually growing faster than third party
this year for the first time, which is which I
think was surprising for me. And so it's clearly working
that flywheel is working of incentive first party transaction, targeted offers,
targeted messaging, driving more first party transactions.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
But people are worried, like, am I just pulling the
discount lever a little bit too much?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
But discount rates are not I think how to whack
historically with where people want to be right now, So
overall folks are fine, it's more just keeping an eye
on it. I think the thing that surprised me the
most from the survey tying into ROI is people feel
like third party ads in particular, are hitting a saturation point.
You know, we've heard, you know, the third parties have
(30:20):
been pushing ads increasingly because look, it's like it's a
zero marginal call. Like it's pure margin for them, you
know what I mean, if you run it, if someone's
running an AD on third party platform, why and take
why not take the economics of the delivery business model,
which have been historically tough, and layer on something that
is pure margin on top of it, plus your commission rate.
(30:41):
I mean, that just might make the entire model possible.
So the third party have been very incentivized in getting
brands to run third party ads, and I think a
lot of folks have done that over the last eighteen months.
You know, I think DoorDash DoorDash ads is already north
of a billion dollar run rate, billion dollar wherever you
run rate. But I think folks are like now every
(31:02):
now the only way I can get a third party
transaction is if I offer a discount. And so again,
playing into that fear of the channel becoming increasingly promotional.
It's hard to stand out even when you're offering ads
because everybody is offering ads, and so folks are one
investing less. I think forty five percent of the cmos
we surveyed are investing less than third party ads next year,
(31:24):
and two it ranks below some of the other.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Options I mentioned in terms of ROI.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So we're starting to see what feels like saturation and
some pullback in performance marketing on that channel specifically interesting.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
So in terms of overall marketing spending, you know, for
our chains it's it's increased material and materially over the
last couple of years. What does the survey suggest about
twenty twenty six?
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Flat is the new up? Like even even marketing budgets
are flat. I think this is the hard thing that
this is the hardest thing for me to grapple with
in the survey.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
You know, we were with a brand and.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Last week and they basically said, look, when we buy software,
especially the stuff that you guys do, it comes out
of the marketing fund. I used to be able to
rely on sales going up three to five percent each
year and funding any new tech initiatives out of that
incremental three to five percent. But if my sales are flat,
(32:21):
my marketing fund, my AD fund, my marketing dollars are flat.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
So if I'm going to buy your thing.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
I got to make tough calls on cutting other things
in order to fund your tool. And so most most
operators expect their marketing budgets to be flat next year.
Circling back to this is the hardest thing that you know,
I felt like I had to grapple with was they say,
you can't cut your way to growth, and so, like
I jokingly said to somebody on my team, like, can
you neutral your way to growth? Like I don't know,
(32:47):
Like you're asking people to unlock. You're asking people in
an increasingly tougher environment to basically maintain their level of growth.
We know the other variables are changing. We know people
feel like consumer spending is going to get tougher, We
know that the marketplace is going to get noisier and
more competitive. And yet you know, we're asking restaurant marketers
(33:09):
to maintain flat to slightly down on traffic with the
same exact budget when everything else is getting harder. And
it's like it was hard for me to square those
two things. Like that doesn't feel like a recipe for
success for next year for those brands. But you know,
if sales are flat and you got marketing fund to work,
(33:31):
with you know, it follows that your budgets are going
to be flat as well.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah, well, you know, you know, to your point, we've
seen casual dining chains who cut back all of their
marketing and the pandemic and really kept it very very
low in there. You know, first couple of years post
pandemic really turned on the marketing. You know, in the
last twelve months, you know, you think, yeah, Brinker Chili's
at Brinker. Yeah, you think about Darden and Red Lobster, right,
(33:58):
I'm sorry the copster no longer Red Lobster Olive Garden,
and they've done really, really well. So to your point, marketing,
you know, those dollars are working for a lot of
change working.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
You just got to know what's incremental.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
And I think you know to to that point too,
from a full service like, something else happened right where
it's like consumers were like, oh, maybe I should be
going out to eat, right, Like, I think that's the
thing too. It's like they cut back and it certainly
hurt them on the compside, but a moment in time
happened where people didn't want to just spend thirty bucks
(34:33):
on the couch anymore. They wanted to go sit down
and have a drink, spend thirty bucks with a group
of friends, and so they time that they tie. They
strategically timed it very well, I would say, And that's
I think that's part of the reason. There are a
lot of things that that Chilis in particular has done
that have helped drive their growth.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
But I feel like that's part of the reason. Also
is just they threaten the needle, like just right.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, all right, So what we're winning cmos do next
year to outperform.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
This is I mean, uh, the biggest the biggest answer
and the biggest takeaway was personalization, segmentation using data. You know,
I know I'm great my own homework a little bit
when I when I say that, but I think it's true.
You know, like when I when we think about personalization,
I think one of the things I've learned from the
(35:18):
operators that we work with is personalization doesn't just mean
right message, right person, right off, or right time. It
means things like we are going to launch ltos that
we know historically have done a great job at bringing
in new guests. One brand we worked with is like
we launched Pastrami last year. We saw a huge spike
(35:39):
in sales. You know what, like we are going to
launch Pastrami again this year because it had a lot
of new guests, and we're going to retarget those people
watered Pastrami last year and haven't been back to the
brand since and say Pastrami's back. And that one campaign
which they ran increased the ROI on their SMS messaging
by seven x like literally, and this is like not
(35:59):
it's not a lot of like you know, fine cuts
getting down to one to one messaging and so literally
who ordered this item at this time last year? Have
they been back since?
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Let's hit them with messaging saying it's back.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
And so personalization is goes into the menu, right, like
are we literally building the menu items that map to
the parts of the funnel where we want to grow,
whether it's bringing that laps guest, bringing a new guests
of course is segmentation and targeting through the loyalty program.
It's also like figuring out what offers actually drive a
(36:31):
new guest acquisition and incrementality. And so I think like
the big theme that we saw of what people will
do is and this is this goes outside of Vicky
is just get better at using data, get better at
understanding that their guests are, get better understanding what they
care about, and then get better at leveraging that data
to do things like drive greater efficiency and spend an
(36:51):
ROI and of course the ultimate growth traffic.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
All right, good stuff, man, I think that's the perfect
spot to wrap it up.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
You're great man, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me and always
a big fan. So it's an r B here and
thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
I want to thank the audience for tuning in. Check
out biki dot com to find out more about what
Abanov and this team are up to. If you liked
our discussion, please share with your friends and colleague. Check
back soon for another interview on Chopping it Up.
Host
Michael Halen
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