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May 14, 2025 37 mins

In this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts, Michael Attias welcomes Allen Beck, Director of Off-Premise and Catering at Costa Vida. With over 15 years of experience in restaurant operations and hospitality, Allen has helped Costa Vida double its catering business year over year—by building a sales-driven culture and putting boots on the ground.

Allen shares how the brand shifted catering from a passive revenue stream to a core profit center through working interviews, franchisee engagement, and menu engineering that supports scale and travel. He also offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Costa Vida aligns corporate and franchise operations, the ROI of hiring a catering sales rep, and why knocking on doors still beats a tech stack.

If you’re serious about growing catering sales, this is a can’t-miss conversation full of actionable insights—and a few spicy hot takes.

Restaurant Catering Smarts is sponsored by CaterZen Catering Software—helping restaurants turn catering chaos into calm.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:34):
Hello again, I am Michael T as your host of Restaurant Catering Smarts and today's guestis Alan Beck.
Director of off-premise and catering at Costa Vida, with over 15 years of experience inthe restaurant and hospitality industry, Alan brings a wealth of knowledge on how to build
catering programs that drive growth, enhance guest experience, and streamline operations.

(00:56):
His insights into systemization, brand consistency, and customer engagement make him astandout leader in the evolving world of off-premise dining, and we're excited to have him
on the show today.
But before we get started, let's take a minute to recognize our sponsor, CaterZen CateringSoftware.
They help restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.

(01:16):
Discover why restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase sales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of the software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts.
How are you doing today, Allen?
Doing great, Michael.
Thanks for having me on.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, thanks for being here.
So I like to get everybody started off with like a icebreaker question.

(01:41):
We'll keep it easy because there's a thousand the higher the number the crazier it is.
So one to 300 give me a number.
Let's go with an even 250 then.
high end to the low end.
Okay, what's the most interesting thing you've ever seen at a museum?
most interesting thing I have ever seen at a museum.

(02:09):
Wow, that's a great question.
Right here in Utah, the one that comes to mind is like, there's the, it's like thedinosaur museum here.
And it has a huge, like ancient sea turtle.
And like, it's like a true, they like dug it up and put all the bones together.

(02:31):
And it's like a massive sea turtle.
And I've like, Mike, that is the most interesting thing I think I've ever seen out of amuseum.
I can't even think of the most interesting thing that I've seen at a museum.
That's pretty cool.
How big is it?
Big as a bedroom?
it's probably I would I ballpark it between 15 to 20 feet wide and then like 20 to 25 feetlong.

(02:54):
So like, you see like sea turtles now and you're like, Oh, wow.
And it's like, just a giant version of that.
So yeah.
Yeah, there's a wall.
No, that's a green screen.
You can see that's my truck right there.
And that's

(03:14):
That's the mountains.
That's legitimate.
I'm a big Park City, Utah fan.
I know you're not far from there.
um Awesome.
Okay, can you walk us through your journey in the restaurant industry and what led you tospecialize in off-premise and catering at Costa Vida?
absolutely.
It's a it's a it's a eventful and fun story.

(03:34):
So I uh start like when I came over to Costa Vida, I had just I come over from the salesworld.
So I was an account executive BDR uh kind of doing selling tech uh for businesses.
And I've done the summer sales thing went and knocked doors and sold pest control andsolar and all that.

(03:59):
I was ready for a change.
Like, yeah, I was making really good money, but I wasn't really getting into a career.
So I came over to Costa Vida.
I actually know the CEO very well, Sean Collins.
uh He was an ecclesiastical leader for me growing up.
So I called him and said, what do you got going on?
And they hired me as an assistant manager in one of our stores here in Utah.

(04:20):
And then I kind of worked my way up through, became a general manager and then a districtmanager in training.
And then March 2020 happened.
And we saw a need with the pandemic to really like, how do we move business?

(04:41):
I mean, we have of our 92 locations, like 34 of them have drive-throughs.
So those, the 34 that have drive-throughs, they were able to adapt very quickly, but whatabout the rest of them?
What about the other two thirds of the brand?
And so...
Myself and our VP of innovation and our VP of ops We just kind of this three-headedmonster came together and we we built it and I was kind of on the tech side Figuring

(05:04):
things out.
How do I move POS is?
Outside how they run cat 5k link through the restaurant etc.
And so Because of that then we created the off-premise department uh And then I waspromoted to the director of the off-premise department uh
three and a half, four years ago now, and I've grown it since.

(05:27):
It's crazy how people get started in this business, the different paths, you know, likenobody ever wakes up and says, I want to work in a restaurant.
You know, that's my goal.
Maybe I want to be a chef, but nobody says I want to work in a restaurant.
You know, you talked about the key drivers of building out, you know, the off-premise, buthow did the catering

(05:50):
You know, where was there a shift?
Was catering always part of the brand?
Did it, at some point, you when you came in, you said, hey, we need to give a little morelove to the catering department.
How did that all come together?
had always been something that we had done, but never something that we had focused on.
And so it's kind of yes to both sides of that question.

(06:12):
Like, yes, it was already part of the brand.
And yes, we needed to give it some love.
And so we'd always had uh
like these specialists for the different franchise groups or whatnot.
But we never had one that owned the strategy from an entire brand perspective.
And so when I was promoted into the director of Off-Premise, they also gave me catering.

(06:38):
And so not only was it a focus of helping the corporate stores building out their andcontinuing to have their momentum in it, but then uh also building out the overall
strategy
with packaging and offerings and uh our go-to-market and whatnot like that.

(07:00):
And so uh we took something that was kind of always helped business.
It's kind of like the whipped cream on top of the pie.
And we put some love and some focus and attention to it.
And it's grown.
It's almost doubled percentage every year.

(07:21):
in the last four years post pandemic.
That's awesome.
Is it a requirement of franchisees to have a catering sales specialist for their group oris it optional?
It's optional, but we are definitely moving that way.
Because what we've seen is those groups that do have the sales professional, we call themcatering coordinators.

(07:41):
ah Those franchisees that have them also see the biggest increase in catering and have themost opportunity to gain from it.
Yeah, I've worked with a lot of brands across the country and the ones where there is adedicated person or it's part of the brand.
They're they're they're so far ahead of everybody, you know.

(08:01):
Yeah, you might pick up a couple of orders because you got a sign in the window.
But if you really want to juice it up, you've got to have somebody out there, you know,meeting meeting people, sampling and making it, you know, bread and butter.
You know, I know that and maybe not a lot of people know this.
You know, obviously Salt Lake is known as, you know, ground
zero for the Mormon church.

(08:23):
But me being a student of direct mail, direct marketing sales.
No, it's also ground zero for multi-level marketing outfits.
You've got like you said, I sold pest control.
You know, you're you're you know, I don't know.
I'm assuming you're Mormon.
You know, you've got to go out for two years.
And if you can go sell religion, you probably can sell anything.

(08:46):
Where does that play into the success of the brand?
as far as selling catering.
You know, I think of it this way, right?
So yes, to all of that, going out and being able to talk to people about what you believein is hard.
And so if you can, to what you said, if you can sell that or you can talk about that, youcan sell anything else, right?

(09:12):
Going out and selling pest control after trying to sell religion or talk about religionwas significantly easier.
uh because everybody wants pest control, not everybody wants religion.
And so it was a much easier conversation.
easier to show cockroaches in salvation, I'm sure.

(09:34):
absolutely.
And so I also look at it is like, when you're talking about catering, you want to build abusiness, in my mind, there's no like, golden bullet for it.
There's no like secret sauce, because businesses already have it, whether I'm selling uhcater zen, or I'm selling toast, or I'm selling Olo.

(09:57):
These companies have sales reps that are
picking up the phone, we're drumming up business and talking to it.
So in my mind, if it's working for a billion dollar company like Toast or Olo or uhSalesforce or HubSpot, why wouldn't it work for a little 92 regional location brand like

(10:20):
Costa Vida to go out and sell our catering, right?
sure.
And you know, um I've always been a believer if you can take white collar principles andapply them to blue collar industries, you're gonna be successful.
My first business in college, I had a bartending service and we just, you we knew how tohustle, we knew how to position ourselves.
And you know, most of the guys that had were bartending, you know, they weren't doinganything, they were just there.

(10:44):
Mm-hmm.
with catering, you know, I did a million a year in catering when I sold in 05 and it'sbecause of all my study of sale.
mean, my first sales job was in third grade selling world's finest chocolate coveredalmonds and basically given samples at the door and they either felt guilty or they loved
it.
It either way I made the sale.
So.
Heck yeah.

(11:06):
It's really interesting to me that franchisees or I'll have brands uh in the industry comeup and ask me, like, hey, where do I start?
What do I do?
And it's an investment, and people get scared about that.
But again, you name the brand out there, regardless of whether it's in the restaurantindustry or just the tech industry.

(11:32):
Sales reps make the difference.
You can't grow a business.
couldn't be uh Amazon and not go out there and try to drum up business and just hope thatorganically I grew it into a trillion dollar company.
No, he had to grow from somewhere, right?
It's the same thing with Elon Musk.
He's grown it in because he's had people, he's out there selling, drumming up business,getting investments, all of that stuff to be able to grow it.

(11:59):
Why would it work for those trillion billion dollar companies and why would it not workfor me?
Like, it's very interesting.
I can sit back in my restaurant and hope business comes to me.
And I always joke this, I mean it's kind of religious.
If you want hope, go to church.
If you want to make a difference, get out there and get on the grind.

(12:20):
Yeah, I find it very interesting.
And it's like, you know, I know you're very well respected in the community.
You know, I see on LinkedIn, I see at the conferences, you know, you're one of the namespeople talk about.
It's like you're giving them the playbook.
Like, I'm sure if somebody sat down with you at a conference, you know, you're not goingto say, write me a check.
You're going to go, hey, you should do this, this and this.

(12:40):
Why do you think people it's like you're given in the playbook, right?
Why do you feel that there's that barricade between this is what you should do andactually
getting up off their butt and doing it.
because it's not easy.
honestly, the generation that we have today, I mean, I remember it, you probably rememberit.

(13:03):
Growing up, we didn't have this.
It wasn't in our pocket.
I didn't have the answers at my fingertips.
couldn't do, it was all right there.
You had to go out, you had figure it out.
Where we're at in today's society, technology.
Everything is right there.
It's an easy button, right?
I mean, we have people making...
millions of dollars and all they're doing is they're filming on their phone and they'remaking content and they're doing all those things to go out there and to knock on a door

(13:31):
and to talk to somebody at a doctor's office about catering it's really awkward and it'snot easy versus going on to easy cater and and and boosting my percentage in in premier
partnership or whatever and giving away more of my business that's easy
Yeah, giving away your whole profit, honestly.

(13:52):
that's really easy and I can turn around and say, I brought in 40, 50 new caterings thismonth, but yeah, your profits gone versus going out and going to this building right here,
knocking on their door, talking about, hey, I'm with Costa Vida.
Here's a free chips in case.
So here's these free samples, just like your almonds, right?
That's not easy.
That's hard to do.

(14:12):
It's awkward.
And people don't like having those awkward interactions and feel like they're intruding onpeople.
But that's...
what makes the difference between you and your competitors because your competitors may ormay not be doing that and if they're not that's your competitive edge.
Yeah, what's crazy is you talk about the investment and I've told people I go, okay,you're gonna go spend quarter of a million dollar on kitchen equipment and all this money

(14:38):
on POS.
You realize you could spend a fraction of that to get catering up and going and you coulddouble your profits without another lease, without another employee.
And then, you know, but they won't spend the money on that.
It's crazy.
um You know, something I did for my kids, my daughter.
I shouldn't say this on tape, but she failed.

(14:59):
She quit after a week or two.
But I told my kids, if you sell cutco knives the summer before you go to college, I'lldouble what you make.
And my son...
Wow.

(15:19):
Sorry, I lost your audio for a second there, Michael.
There we go.
It's coming back now.

(15:47):
Bye!
Yeah, yeah, we're coming through better now.
It probably, you know, just, we'll just keep rolling.
um So yeah, my, know, for everyone listening to this, went off in the middle, but we werejust talking about teaching your kids to sell.

(16:12):
What do you see, you know, when you see the restaurants that try to get into catering,what are some of the big pitfalls you see out there that they're experiencing or mistakes?
When I talk to several brands and chat with them about things, the biggest one, and it'slike the easy button, they want to go build it with tech first.

(16:36):
They want to go out there and they want to uh launch a website, and they want to go andget a catering CRM, and they want to do all of this.
They want to go to the point you were just talking about just a moment ago.
It's very easy to write a check for the tech.
than it is to write a check for a person to go out and grow the business.
And I think it's a little bit backwards.

(16:58):
If you grow the business and you're bringing in that income and you're seeing the fruitsof your labors, then it's very easy to write a check for that.
Oh, all right, perfect.
We're bringing in X number of thousands of dollars a month.
Let's go and launch a catering website and let's get that low hanging fruit.

(17:18):
And now we're bringing in even more.
And now let's go and do, uh you know, get a catering serum so we can keep track of allthese leads that are coming in.
And then let's go and get the next iteration and then let's go and get the next person andso on and so forth.
So many people want to do it kind of like reverse it.
Well, I want to, I want to have the perfect tech stack and I want to have everything thereso that when I bring someone in, they have all of these cool tools.

(17:42):
Well, that's fantastic.
I would love to go into that environment.
However, after you've written the check for all of this cool tech, you're like,
what now don't want to write the check for the 40, 50, 60,000 a year salary pluscommission for the catering sales rep because uh I have a $250,000 tech stack that I got
to pay off.
The only way to pay it off is you have a person.

(18:04):
what's crazy?
my first catering sales guy, Corky's, I look at it this way.
If I broke even on him year one, right?
Then I get most of that business back year two, right?
And then half of its profit.
So I've made a, even conservatively, I've made a 30.
to 50 % ROI on that investment moving forward, right?

(18:27):
And then he's paid for himself here too, and that's all profit.
Well, you if I told you, hey, I've got this real estate deal and it's a not lose andyou're going to make a 50 % return, everybody would just stumble over themselves to write
the check.
But they don't see it as like, you know, the bar is very low for a salesperson to pay forthemselves if they're out there and they know what they're doing.

(18:50):
You know, and I think there's things, I don't know if y'all ever
Hired people who've sold out of their places.
Do you feel that that works?
Does it work?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's the you know, we look at that we want to know, you know, what's your background?
Have you sold uh catering before?
Have you sold at all before?
Obviously, we want some kind of background in sales, because that does help.

(19:14):
And if they've sold in in the restaurant space, that's even better, but not necessarily arequirement.
uh But when people when we have uh
When we have restaurant team members that are like, hey, I want to do that.
I want to go out and sell catering.
Excellent.
We team them up with someone who's already doing it and kind of show them like, hey, we'regoing to give you like a working interview and you may go out and do it and be like, hard

(19:39):
pass.
I don't want to do this.
We'd much rather do that than, yeah, we're to have you do this, right?
You know, give you a salary, give you a quota, get you out there and you're like a weekinto the job and you're like, this is bull crap.
I don't want to do this.
This is, this is hard.
This is awkward and this is not for me.
And then now what?
Now we've lost a team member and we've made the investment that's not going to get in as areturn.

(20:03):
you said something so quickly, I need to go backwards.
Working interview.
Tell me more how that works.
That is like, that might be the most valuable thing that I've heard today, because I'venever heard it.
I mean, I've heard like shadowing or whatever, but tell me more about it.

(20:24):
So yeah, we do do working interviews with our team members in stores that are aspiring tobecome a catering coordinator.
And so they clock in just like they're at the store, then they're going to come out withthe with an experienced catering coordinator to go out and experience what does it mean to
go out and talk to businesses.
This is how we go about it.

(20:46):
This is how we're going to approach it.
when we land an order, this is how we submit it to our call center and just walk themthrough the whole process.
And it's like a working interview.
And so after a while, after we've done a couple of these, you know, I did it when I didthis door to door, we'd go out, I'd show the rookie how to knock on a door, give them the
elevator sales pitch and say, okay, perfect.

(21:08):
Well, you're going to do one and just be very honest, you're going to screw it up, but youneed to know like,
what it's like.
You need to be able to talk and you need to be go through it because this is what the jobis.
And if you can't do it, that's totally fine.
We'd rather figure that out now rather than, again, writing the investment, giving you asalary, giving you a quota, etc.

(21:32):
And then three weeks, four weeks down the road, you're like, pound sand, I'm done withthis.
I don't want to do this anymore.
And now we're back to square one.
Let's do a couple of those working interviews.
Go out with an experienced catering coordinator and see if you like it.
See if you can enjoy it.
See if you want to do it.
And if not, that's totally fine.
We put you back in the store.
You do your thing.

(21:53):
No harm, no foul.
Man, that's incredible.
That's very smart.
What about catering and labor and the challenges in the market?
Are y'all having a lot of labor challenges?
How are you dealing with them?
Yeah, so what we've done is we've built it, the labor, right into the profitability of thecatering.

(22:16):
And so we have our food cost, we have our paper cost, we have our labor cost.
And so because we've built it that way, we know that the cold prep is gonna do this muchfor the store and then this much for catering and that's built into catering.
And it definitely helps.
uh So then that way when it comes to like the profitability and uh you know the whippedcream on top of the pie or the cherry on top of the pie however you want to say it

(22:44):
catering is a true uh true profit for you and a true revenue channel for you and not aburden onto the store.
That's why we get very cautious.
It's not a shot at Easy Cater or anybody, but when we promote on Easy Cater, we want to bevery strategic.
How much of that profit margin were you eroding away so that it doesn't become detrimentalto the stores operations and P &Ls.

(23:09):
smart.
You know if I came to you and I said hey I just started this restaurant a year or two agoI've got everything dialed in and I want to start catering you know where would you got
you know where what are the first two three four or five steps you know you'd recommend toguide somebody.

(23:32):
Very first thing I always ask for is how does your food scale in your restaurant?
And be very honest with yourselves.
you're a really good food chain that's, you know, like it scales really great to 50 andunder, then play in that space and dominate that space.

(23:55):
If you can scale it to above 50 people caterings and even to big 200, 300, 400, thousand,whatever it may be.
Be honest with yourself.
And then how does your food travel?
You need to answer a lot of the questions.
It's very similar to the off-premise question.
uh Order a burrito and let it sit in your office for 25 minutes before you eat it.

(24:18):
And is it still good?
Right?
And if the answer is no, then maybe you don't offer that menu item on DoorDash and on yourapp, right?
It's the same thing with the catering.
Before you can go out,
and make the investment with the person to go out and sell your food, you need to figureout what your menu and how you're gonna package it and how it's gonna travel first.

(24:39):
Because if you go out and make the investment in a person or the tech stack or whatever itmay be, and your food doesn't travel well and it doesn't present well in a catering form,
then that investment is that you're flashing the pan.
You've gone out there, you've done it.

(24:59):
And it's not going to execute well.
I just recently talked with a burger brand.
They said, well, when you have our burger and our fries in our store, they're fantastic.
They're really good.
I said, okay, put your fries in a paper bag for 30 minutes and then eat them later becauseyou have to load them up, put them in the van, drive to the location, unpackage it, set it

(25:22):
out, et cetera.
You're probably 30 minutes after you left the store.
your fries in Yeah.
And so, do your fries still taste good?
Well, no.
Okay, well then you need to find the packaging where you can transport and present yourfries.
Well, they're not just a soggy potato-y mess and they still got the crisp and they stillhave the seasoning on there and your burger buns aren't soggy.

(25:45):
Once you get that figured out, then let's go out and sell it.
Right?
told a lot of, I've engineered a lot of menus and I've told people in the burger space,said, I would recommend doing a build your own burger bar or build your own chicken
sandwich bar.
At least, you know, the burger is going to be hot and juicy and then nothing else getssoggy and messed up.
you know, there, you know, obviously the, the, the space you play in the Tex-Mex space andbarbecue, there's certain things in the South fried chicken is always going to room

(26:14):
temperature fried chicken always take.
There's no such thing as bad.
fried chicken, barbecue.
mean, there's certain things, deli always travels well, you know, and there's some thingsthat, you know, maybe it would travel well, but I don't know that there's a big market for
vegan unless you're in a crunchy city.
So um it's not going to sell in Nashville very well.

(26:37):
um
When you talk, okay, now we've gone to the point where, it travels well, I can scale well,where do you guide them to start building sales?
So we know, and this is a hot take, I know a lot of people don't, they think opposite ofthis.

(27:02):
Now that you know you've got your packaging figured out, you've got your menu figured out,now it's time to be, in my mind, and I know this is gonna ruffle some people's feathers
that may listen to this, it's time to be very honest in the verticals that you play wellin.
And what I mean by that is a lot of times, um

(27:24):
When I talk to brands in catering, they say yes to everything that comes in.
And sometimes it's very, very good for them, and sometimes it's not.
I think of a barbecue.
You got a nice uh juicy brisket.

(27:44):
You got a little bit of barbecue sauce on there.
It's dripping, right?
It's kind of messy.
may not be the best solution for an elegant wedding reception center.
Maybe it is, maybe it's not, I don't know.
But if you realize, so for me, I know I got rice, I got beans, my beans got juices onthem, my pork is almost soupy because it's got the sweet uh sauce in there.

(28:12):
I'm gonna feel horrible if that bride builds a taco, she goes to bite into it.
and she spills that pork juice on her white dress, and it's not coming out.
I've spilled that juice on my polos before, it don't come out.
And so I'm gonna feel embarrassed and it's gonna do worse for my business by trying to fita square.

(28:37):
uh
peg into a round hole just to say yes.
And so for me, I know Costa Vida, we play very well in the verticals that are likepharmaceutical reps, ah PTA schools, religious organizations, and areas like that.
Even feeding colleges their sports teams because the caloric intake and the requirementsthat they have, we play very well in that space.

(29:05):
I'm going to say yes and I'm going to double down my marketing efforts.
in those verticals rather than a wedding may not be where I play best at so I'm not goingto go to the bridal oh venues where you're buying dresses or the reception centers or
things of that nature and promote my business because I know that that's not somethingthat I'm I can duplicate over and over and over and over again and plus

(29:33):
brides they want very specifics and you know my Trace Lages comes with strawberries butthey want blueberries so now I'm kind of now am I compromising my the integrity of my food
and my brand to try to make something fit just because I wanted to say yes to thatthousand person catering and that ten thousand dollar check looks so good in my on my P &L

(29:54):
versus and you know what I'll take the 2550 PTAs pharmaceutical red and I'll just do thoseevery single day
and make money that way.
Yeah.
And I think even if you go do that, the bride calls you as long as you tell her, look, letme tell you the downside of having us.
And then you make a decision and she might say, I don't care.

(30:15):
We love Costa Vida.
And then they made that.
And if they decide not to go, then you have credibility because then they'll remember you.
You weren't just trying to sell them a catering package.
You were looking out for their best interest and that you can't buy that.
You just can't buy that.
And I wish more brands would be able to, or would be more honest with themselves in thatway.

(30:38):
Like, if you're just honest with yourself to know where your food performs best at, andthen honest with your guests, like, you'll do so good, you'll do so much good in the
community, and so good for your stores, you'll be amazed at what that no actually turnedinto.

(30:59):
Yeah, I mean, I know personally, anytime I've sold, probably undersell because I don'twant somebody coming back and complaining or said, oh, I promised you that, you you
promised me this.
I didn't get this.
It's just, it's not worth the hassle.
just isn't.
Yeah, absolutely.
mean, no one wants to be under promised or over promised and under delivered, right?

(31:20):
Everybody wants, you know, I'd rather under promise and over deliver surprise and delight.
Then, yeah, I can do your wedding and I can do that and I'll bring these special shapingdishes and I'll have these taco holders and all that.
And then I don't show up with that because
Another store was using them and I didn't have enough inventory to bring it to yourwedding and now you as the bride are pissed because in your mind you thought it was going

(31:44):
to look one way and now it doesn't versus hey it's going to look like our typical cateringand then if I'm able to work it out with the other store to bring those special shaping
dishes and the taco holders and the cute signs and all that stuff then the the bride'sstoked out of her mind.
for sure.
um You know, obviously you all have corporate stores and franchise stores.

(32:07):
How do you ensure consistency with franchisees?
Because technically they report to you, but they're your partners.
And you know, it's not the same as an employee where if they're not doing it, you can justgo, look, you're on a PIP and now you're out the door, right?
It's a little bit more difficult to end a franchise agreement than it is fire someone.

(32:30):
You always catch more bees with honey than you do vinegar, right?
And so work very closely with them.
We have our Costa Vida Advisory Council.
We call it seat, our CVAC, and it's uh our five largest franchisees.
They meet with all of the leadership uh at Costa Vida once a quarter.
So I have the opportunity to be able to present there and talk about what we're doing,strategy and whatnot.

(32:54):
And I use it as a true advisory council.
What are your thoughts?
How would you guys go about this?
What's your feedback here, et cetera?
And then having their input and their feedback, then when I go to launch the concept,packaging, offerings, whatever it may be, it becomes very easy because you already have
the buy-in of the five largest franchisees.

(33:14):
And so they're bought into it, they're aware of it, and they're going into it.
How do we keep track of consistency and making sure that every franchisee, there's acouple different tools that you can can use your back-end tool.
We use a company,
Called synergy suite and I can pull a descending dollar report and in that descendingdollar report.
It'll it'll it'll say you had ten thousand dollars worth of catering so you should haveused X number thousands of dollars worth of packaging and food and here's what you

(33:45):
actually used and so it's very easy to say with with synergy suite Here's ten thousanddollars.
You should have used two thousand dollars worth of packaging, but you only used fivehundred dollars worth of packaging
I guess.
This is the assumption in me, but maybe it's bad.
I don't know.
You're probably going to the dollar store or like restaurant depot and you're probablygetting packaging that's our packaging, that's not branded, that's not through an approved

(34:14):
vendor.
There's no way you could have $10,000 worth of catering.
You should have used $2,000 worth of packaging and you only used 500.
Sorry.
Quacks like a duck and walks like a duck.
Probably is a duck.
Yeah, for sure.
And so we use it that way, but then we also, I partner very closely with our franchisebusiness consultants and our corporate district managers.

(34:38):
And they do a quality assurance check every quarter in every store.
So all 92 stores are visited either by their corporate district manager, or if they're afranchisee, they're visited by their franchise business consultant.
and they perform a QA not only from the food and whatnot, but then also making sure thatdo they have the right packaging?

(34:58):
Do they have the right offerings?
If we're not offering enchiladas and they have enchilada set up, that's a concern, right?
And then they report back to me on any of those things and then I work with the directorof franchise business and we figure out how we wanna approach and resolve those issues.
Very good.
um If I don't, let's just say I can't afford a full-time catering salesperson today, whatwould you do?

(35:30):
You got team members, right?
Start there.
Have a team member start in your lobby, someone who's social.
You already have people coming into your lobby and ordering food.
It's very easy to tell the difference between a stay at home mom who's juggling two orthree kids and trying to come up for air versus a businessman or woman that's on their

(35:54):
lunch break.
so...
uh
have someone in your lobby, start just talking and say, hey, how was your meal?
Did everything come out good?
Hey, just so you know, we also offer catering.
Here's our catering uh menu.
If you ever need a catering, my name's Alan.
Love to help you out and talk to you.
If that's what you can afford, you already have someone in your lobby, busing tables andwhatnot, have them start talking to the guests that already love your food and are already

(36:21):
in your lobby and see if you can drum up business that way.
And if you can go from.
one catering a month to two caterings a month or two caterings a month to four caterings amonth, you're not soon far off to be able to make the investment to hire that catering
coordinator.
point.
You know, when I first opened my restaurant, I was stuck in it.
So if I had a good prospect, I would say come in for lunch and I'll sit down with you forfive minutes and I'll buy your lunch, right?

(36:46):
They're getting the food.
I get to schmooze them for take five minutes out of the shift, give them the information,the spiel.
They get a taste how good it is.
And obviously it helped close the sale.
So there's a lot of creative things you can do before you have to go spend the money.
I mean, they really like your feet, otherwise they wouldn't be in your lobby.
I've never been like, you know what?

(37:06):
I really hate Taco Bell.
So I'm gonna go there for lunch today.
Right?
No one has that conversation.
so when you look forward in the catering landscape What trends are you seeing out there?
know, it could be from anything from Menu to marketing to ai.
What are you seeing is the next thing or things that you're working on looking at?

(37:31):
Yeah, I look at you know, there's there's some core like futuristic stuff with like AIthat we talked like I just got back from food on demand.
We talked about it there.
There's some really cool things there.
Like I don't I don't think we're very far off from ordering catering or ordering food inin video gameplay.
I mean, Chipotle is done in years past.
uh But then also AI, I think we're gonna have true AI virtual assistants that you know, wepeople are using chat GPT.

(37:58):
uh
Siri others, right?
I don't think we're far off uh from I just activated my Siri when I said that ah we're notfar off from set, you know, using chat GPT to say, I need a book of catering from Costa
Vida for 25 people with pork and chicken, and throwing that into chat GPT and chat GPTdoing the rest of it for us.

(38:22):
I don't think we're I when I say I don't think we're far off.
I think that happens in the next five years.
ah
quicker.
way, I mean, everything that comes across my desk every day, just, it's like, it's crazy.
Yeah.
But then also in the trends, we're seeing it significantly here in Utah.

(38:42):
You why is catering blowing up is because the return to work.
uh The remote work is is if you're starting a remote work company and you're still workingfor a company that allows you to work remotely, cherish it.
Because I'm seeing it every day here in Utah.
And I've seen it in several other states.
where now it's the return to work and companies are wanting their people to come back intothe office.

(39:05):
And so they're incentivizing their people by saying, hey, come back into the office andwe'll buy you lunch, you five days a week.
And so there's the cool futuristic tech trends, but then there's also the trends of youbetter have a strategy now if you're a restaurant company because catering is already
here.
It's already booming and people are already talking about it like crazy.

(39:25):
And so, you know, hop on the trend now.
to start being able to capitalize on that business, because it's only going to continue togrow, know, knock on wood unless we have another pandemic of some sort, which I hope and
pray we don't.
But it's happening.
So there's two different trends.
There's the trend that, you know, coming back to the work and working in office and thenthe tech trend of chat GPT and all that.

(39:48):
Those are like the two ones that I see very much happening right now.
good call.
And you know, what's, um, what's interesting is I, I don't know that if you're going to bein the restaurant business, unless you're in a specific niche, I think catering is going
to be a have to have not a, it'd be nice for us to do catering.
You know, I think it's just part of your overall sales marketing strategy, profitstrategy.

(40:12):
And if you're not, you're really missing a lot of good opportunity.
Absolutely.
I would never agree with that.
has been phenomenal interview.
I appreciate all the input, knowledge, and with that, I'm gonna sign us out.
Thanks Michael, thank you guys.
Thanks.
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