July 30, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts, Michael Attias sits down with John Geyerman, Chief Strategy Officer at WOWorks, the parent company behind better-for-you brands like Saladworks, Frutta Bowls, and The Simple Greek.
John brings a wealth of experience from his days at Schlotzsky's and Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, and he dives into the complexities and opportunities of running catering operations across multiple fast-casual brands. From managing brand identities to streamlining logistics, John unpacks how WOWorks approaches growth, guest experience, and operational excellence—all while keeping catering front and center.
You’ll learn how they:
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Prioritize catering in the tech stack and operational rollout
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Cross-train teams across different brand concepts
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Use catering to build brand awareness and guest loyalty
Whether you operate one brand or many, this episode is full of smart, strategic takeaways for scaling your catering game without sacrificing quality.
Restaurant Catering Smarts is sponsored by CaterZen Catering Software.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:28):
Hello again, I'm Mike Latias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smarts and today's guest isJohn Geierman, Chief Strategy Officer at WowWorks.
I was about to butcher it.
The one you told me not to call you.
With a career spanning decades in the restaurant industry, John brings a wealth ofexperience in scaling brands, optimizing operations and driving strategic growth.
(00:54):
At WowWorks, he's helping lead the charge across a portfolio.
portfolio of health focused fast casual concepts, guiding innovation, brand synergy andoff premise expansion.
John's deep understanding of multi brand operations and guest centric strategies makes hima powerhouse in our industry.
(01:15):
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, cater zencatering software.
They help restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
discover why restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase sales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of their software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts.
(01:37):
Welcome, John.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing fantastic, Michael.
Thank you very much for having me.
No, thanks for being here.
um So I'd like to start us off with an icebreaker question.
Give me a number between the one and 300.
I'd say 178.
What's the coolest animal encounter you've ever had?
(02:01):
Coolest animal encounter, you know?
Odd story, when I was in fifth grade, I worked for a veterinarian.
I would walk down in clean cages and walk dogs after school.
he would take me out on the weekends when he had like emergency projects, he'd pick me upand take me out and I'd get to see all kinds of things that I probably wouldn't mention on
this podcast.
(02:22):
But they were very cool for a fifth grade boy in South Dakota, you know, it was just, itwas a really cool time.
So give me one cool animal.
I mean cows mostly in that frame of work.
Very neat.
Yeah, I think the coolest animal I've interacted with, um a sloth.
(02:43):
yeah, very docile.
Yeah, very chill.
And they look like they look like their persona in the plush animals.
Just very like they're smoking pot or something.
They're just very, very.
little hair helmet thing going.
Yeah.
It's fantastic.
um So, you know, I'm going to guess you didn't just start in the restaurant business.
(03:09):
What's your path to the restaurant business?
How did you get into it?
I grew up in retail actually with Walmart.
was one of first four super centers that they built as a prototype with Walmart when theyconverted and added grocery to their core business of general merchandise.
I just happened to get a job to put myself through college in Arlington, Texas, workingfor one of the original four super centers.
(03:35):
And obviously that platform worked well for them.
So I rode that wave.
uh which was very aggressive for 15 years, opening up 27 different super centers and endedup running super centers in my 20s and 30s and uh got recruited to a great regional Texas
brand, HEB Grocers here in Texas.
Phenomenal brand, worked with them and then was recruited to a brand out of Austin, Texascalled Schlotzky's Deli, Schlotzky's Sandwiches, which is a phenomenal brand.
(04:05):
How far back were you with Schlotzkis?
That's 2009?
When you were there, was there a guy I'm purchasing named Matt Diana?
man, I loved Matt.
Okay.
So this, this is like, I'm Kevin Bacon today, right?
The seven degrees of Kevin Bacon.
My first job in high school was washing dishes.
(04:26):
Matt was my boss.
He was such a fucking hard ass.
And, you know, I'd come in, I'd come in and I go, Hey, can I have my tips from last night?
Why are you busting my ass?
I'm busy.
But you know, he just, he's sort of like that grouchy drill sergeant and
But he was very good.
(04:47):
I don't know if you know, he was a big audiophile when he worked.
Um, he had like a two 80 ZX and I think his car stereo was 10 times more expensive thanhis car.
And then I remember talking to him someplace later in life.
Um, when he went to work for Schlossky's, but it's crazy that he was my first boss.
(05:08):
Yeah, he always bragged every time he had to drive from Richardson to Austin because he'dcome down every week and he would always try to beat his previous record of how fast he
made it down and he wouldn't take toll roads because he was convinced that they were goingto track how long it took him to go from point A to B and that they would catch him for
speeding somehow.
I'm like, come on, Matt.
(05:29):
They don't care.
Is he still with Schlotzky's, even know?
Oh my God.
Yep, he passed away.
I went to his memorial service.
Yeah, he's a...
Yep.
Yep.
Learned a lot from that guy.
Really hard worker.
actually got along with him really well.
He was a huge punk fan.
So we had music in common.
(05:51):
He was a big audiophile for sure.
Yeah, he was definitely a grouch, but he worked his ass off.
He was a good role model.
I learned some good things from him.
Yeah, for sure.
When it came to purchasing, he was about as tough as they get.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
So you went to see you went to order for schloss keys.
What'd do with them?
(06:11):
I started as a regional vice president over the Dallas Fort Worth DMA.
It was the largest DMA and ended up taking over the western half of the US and theneventually the full US franchise system.
So I was running the US franchise system.
When em we had a new CEO come in over Focus Brands and they decided they wanted toconsolidate all brands under one rooftop, literally in Atlanta, I made a choice not to
(06:38):
move to Atlanta and decided to.
I could have stayed remote and stayed out of Dallas and worked in Atlanta, but then Iwould have been that guy who came in once a month and people really don't know and it just
didn't seem like it was a great idea.
No, mean that makes, I mean that definitely makes sense.
It makes it tougher for you to do your job when you're, you know, flying in and flyingout, yeah.
(06:59):
you're not at the coffee station with everybody else, you know, from time to timethroughout the day.
Unless you're like us, we're all remote, you know.
We are now 100 % remote.
We don't have an office, yeah.
Yeah, I put on a hat just for you.
I mean, normally I just roll out of bed and I just start working.
So it's nice.
I do have pants that I can, I can promise you, you know, what was that?
(07:22):
That guy on CNN got caught with no pants on or God only knows what it's crazy.
And then the other guy whose mistress walked behind him in the screenshot that wasn't hiswife or whatever.
Yeah.
There's all kinds of those stories.
sure there's plenty.
um And then how'd you end up at WoW Works?
Did you start it?
Were you part of the founding group?
(07:42):
How'd you end up over there?
president of Schlotzky's was Kelly Roddy and he's our current president.
So the equity group that bought Saladworks, that was our original brand, they boughtSaladworks out of bankruptcy.
They hired him to come in and be the president and he called and said, hey, I need somehelp.
So I came on board and originally we were all working in an office in Concha Hawk inPennsylvania, just a suburb of Philly.
(08:04):
So I was flying to Philly every week on Monday and flying home on Friday night.
Our executive team would fly in and we'd get stumped on and then we'd go home.
Through the pandemic, obviously nobody was going to the office and we started gettingopportunities to purchase small to mid-sized brands, 50 to 100 units.
So we picked up Garbanzo and we picked up Fruitable in December of 2020.
(08:29):
uh And then immediately picked up in April, Simple Greek.
And so we went from one brand to four during the pandemic.
And they all had bases of teams living in those communities, right?
Garbanzo was based in Denver.
So we kept people as we needed, but we were able to kind of scale with our existinginfrastructure and shared services to just run those brands with kind of what we had.
(08:55):
And we decided at that point, you know, maybe there's no reason to come back to a homeoffice.
Maybe we just work remotely.
And so that's what we've been doing for the past four years.
And it's been really, really good.
Yeah, I think if you bring on the right people, remote is actually better.
It's when people can't get their stuff done that you have a problem.
But people who are independent hard workers, they'll get more done in six hours than 12hours with people in the office and chit chatting and all that and um leave them to their
(09:27):
own devices.
Well, we're fortunate.
have a really good Chief People Officer.
She does a really good job at making sure that we stay connected to culture and that we doevents that keep people connected on a personal and relational level.
And that, think, is important.
That's the piece you really lose when you're not standing there with a cup of coffeeasking Jimmy what he did last Friday night, you know, and just kind of getting to know
(09:49):
people on that type of level.
So, and right now she's got us all doing Chia Pets and we were like taking pictures everyday of the growth and sharing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
not paying that high rent, you can afford to do a lot of cool stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's really good.
And it allows us to get talent wherever the talent lives.
So we're able to hire people from Tulsa, Oklahoma or Portland, Oregon.
(10:13):
And we don't have an expectation that they have to pick up and move to Pennsylvania.
So it's been really good.
Yeah, and especially when you can hire somebody in Tulsa and they're getting better thanTulsa wages.
Now, all of a sudden, they're more loyal, they're more excited, they're more engaged, youknow, so it's, it's not a bad way to go.
(10:34):
Now, are y'all mostly corporate or is it franchise?
We are almost exclusively franchised.
So we can get into that because I've worked with a lot of franchise brands and that hasits own set of challenges, obviously.
um Well, let's just go in and talk about that and we can just go in whatever direction.
So, you know, what I found when I work with the franchise organizations, it's the 80-20rule, right?
(11:00):
If you have 100 franchisees or 100 units, you got 20 % of them, 10-20, that are bustingout the catering.
You've got that owner who gets it.
He's out there hustling.
And the other 80 % think,
Hey, I paid for a logo and some recipes and it should be coming in the door, right?
What's y'all's theory on that?
Do you recruit franchisees?
(11:22):
Like I know I did some work with Moe's, you know, when they were with Focus and I knowthat sort of their MO is you're not getting a territory if you don't put a catering sales
rep in the market.
So that's just part of their ecosystem.
How do y'all deal with,
We've been fortunate.
Both Garbanzo and Barbados are super heavy catering, well above the industry average.
(11:46):
They cater really well.
They've got great product that presents well, that holds well.
And they have historically always done it.
So we've just really implemented tools that help them become more efficient and effectivein managing that process.
But I've got restaurants that are doing significant catering business.
Fruitable, not so much.
They do a ton of third party.
(12:06):
You know, it's acai bowls and smoothies, things like that.
Not a big catering play.
Saladworks has been growing.
They really didn't have a catering program when we got the brand.
So we've been developing things around our panini sandwiches, soups and salads that aremore catering friendly and getting some good play on that.
And then of course, ZOOP is a great catering play.
(12:27):
They've gotten a little bit of everything.
So they do a great job with it.
We really have not had any push back around catering.
People I think understand it's...
It's paid trial.
It's a great opportunity from an efficiency standpoint with labor.
You're building 70 meals, you know, with two people and it's just so much more efficient.
And it's top line revenue in the four boxes without any fixed costs, additional fixedcosts.
(12:49):
So it's so much more profitable.
But are you requiring your franchisees to bring on a catering sales rep?
Are they relying on third party?
What's their primary strategy to build catering sales?
You know, it's one thing you've got a barbecue restaurant and by inherent nature, you'regonna get 20 % just because that's part of the ecosystem of a barbecue restaurant or a
deli.
(13:11):
What are y'all doing to, you know, juice up those sales as opposed to, we got to signorder if you want to, or we're on Easy Cater.
think the reality of our restaurants is we have a lot of one, two and three unitfranchisees and they're very invested in their communities and they know people, they
sponsor the local baseball team, they're in their community, they're the face of theirbrand in the community, they're kind of the mayor of their brand.
(13:35):
And I think they're out there personally pressing those buttons and creating that type ofrelationship in their communities, which to me is critical.
That's what happens.
That's what differentiates for you from the corporate, you know,
For sure.
Franchise empire of somebody who they think that somebody sits in a tower in New YorkCity,
Yeah.
Do you, um, when you're looking for a franchisee to partner with, right?
(13:59):
Is that something you're looking for?
Like, Michael lives in so-and-so Kentucky.
You know, he goes, he's a deacon at the church.
He's involved in the rotary.
His kids play little league.
He coaches.
This fits a profile as opposed to, Hey, I got a bunch of money.
want to, I want to put my kid in a business.
And you're like, eh, you know, is that, are you recruiting for that?
(14:21):
Because it's sort of like culture at work, right?
How important is culture fit when you're recruiting franchisees?
It's critical.
It's critical.
And, you know, we learned that from Barberitos.
I think they were really good at it when we bought that brand.
you know, started in Athens, Georgia.
So it's a lot of uh University of Georgia people that had, they grew up in that town.
(14:43):
They're familiar with the brand from that.
They graduated, they moved back to their hometown or wherever they're establishingbusiness and have opened to Barberitos.
And again, they're kind of the mayor of their Barberitos in town, but they're, veryinvested in that relational.
And they're concentrated in the Southeast.
It's really kind of a cultural phenomenon that happens in the Southeast.
People like to sit down face to face, have a glass of tea across the table from somebodyand talk to each other.
(15:09):
It's a great way to do business.
that's just how they built their franchise system.
And we've embraced that and have encouraged it.
And that's sort of the way things work in the South.
Like, know, you're part of the community, you have a reputation.
And if you're a good part of the community, people love you and want to work with you.
And if you're some schmuck, they're going to turn their back on you.
(15:31):
So it can work for you against you, obviously.
There's so I was a Corky's barbecue franchisee.
worked for them in college.
I was one of their first franchisees, did a million in catering.
And so we sort of disrupted the market because
The barbecue restaurants were in town.
I don't know that their barbecue was great.
Um, and they were sort of old school as far as business practices, how they did business.
(15:55):
But there was this place called Herbert's barbecue about 15 minutes south of us inFranklin, Tennessee.
And it was Mr.
Herbert.
And he was known for his corn light bread, whatever that is.
I don't know.
It's like cornbread, but lighter, I guess.
And I was talking to him or talking to somebody and they go,
(16:15):
Yeah, you know, Mr.
Herbert's, you know, he's, he's a pillar and Franklin, you know, his family's been outthere forever and he reads the obits.
And when somebody dies, the family dies.
He shows up with barbecue, you know, he might bring a pound of barbecue and you know, acouple of pounds of barbecue.
Well, who the heck do you think they're going to order their catering from?
You know, who showed up at grandma's visitation?
(16:36):
It's really, really genius.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and he probably I'm sure there was an element of of entrepreneurismin that but it was probably just the way he's wired to it's just probably from the heart,
you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
he benefited from that.
Just like, you know, there's other people that have affinity groups or they like to helpout nonprofits, you know, and you know, it comes back to roost for sure.
(17:06):
100%.
At the end of the day, all things being equal, people want to do business with people thatthey respect and know.
And at the end of the day, even when things aren't equal, people want to do business withpeople that they respect and know.
So.
I think about the people I do business with, you know, you've got people that you dobusiness with because you need a vendor and the vent that's the vendor, whatever, but the
people you really have a good, my favorite people are the customers.
(17:31):
have a personal relationship with right.
Like there's a guy butch Scott out of Oxford, Mississippi, Taylor grocery.
He bought an educational system from me, the catering magic system back in.
maybe 2003.
So before I even had a software company, he was learning how to build catering sales.
He sold that, went to work for Taylor Grocery, which is an institution in Oxford.
(17:56):
So to have a guy that's been with you for like 20, 25 years, like that guy's got mynumber.
He can call me or I can call him and he's going to take my call and he's going to give mehis unfiltered opinion about something.
It's really nice to have those.
those people that you have that relationship with for sure.
(18:17):
100%.
I think that's what can get a, uh particularly in a franchise world, I think there'speople that are always looking for mailbox money.
So they've got an IT job or they're an accountant or they have a day job and they buy itas a passive investment and think that they'll just sit back and kind of collect money and
not have to do anything and that goes sideways generally pretty quick.
(18:38):
Yeah.
And there might be some brands that are better suited for that.
You know, if you're going to, I'm just thinking like on a high level, like a Papa John's,right?
It's very systematized.
It's pizza.
You can bring in.
Yeah.
Some of those you can get by with that, but if you're going to deal in the, in theenvironment you're in, especially with catering, you need somebody who's going to go out
(19:00):
there and press the flesh and you know, like I can come in your restaurant and if somebodymesses up a salad,
I go to the counter and I say, my salad was, you know, somebody put olives in, I hateolives.
We make it right with catering.
I want to know that I've got that go-to person like, Hey man, my boss just told me I needfood for 20 at 12 o'clock.
(19:23):
Can you hook me up or there's a problem?
Can you hook me up?
You know, it's a very relationship driven, but it's also very loyal.
Cause if you find somebody who takes care of you,
You know, I might love your salad today and there's a new salad chain across the street.
I'll try them.
And if I think they're nicer, better, I'll try them.
But catering is like, it's, it's way on a whole different level.
(19:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and so much you're dealing with your own relationships.
If you're a doctor and you have clients or you're a car dealership and you've got yourteam members that you're trying to take care of, I mean, that's a big responsibility.
You don't want to screw that up, right?
So you want somebody you know, you make a call and it gets taken care of.
And it has to just be the easy button.
It has to be done.
(20:06):
Right.
And I think that's the challenge with third party catering, you know, like easy cater doordash, whatever.
It's like, I don't have a person I can point my finger at and say, Hey, I need you to fixthis.
It's like whoever's picking up the phone and maybe there's a supervisor that'll handle it.
I need to know that I have my go-to person if there's a problem and you miss that with thethird party is that hand holding and that
(20:36):
special attention and sometimes you just need a somebody to pull you a favor like I needto go to the store and get me watermelon or Something special and it's like hey, you're a
great client.
I'll hook you up Like I don't mind doing it for you or hey, can you do third shift at thefactory?
For 20 people.
Well, yeah, you're feeding a thousand I'm happy to figure out how to get a crew to comeout at three in the morning feed those people I'll put them in a hotel room because an
(21:02):
easy caterers gonna say sorry, we're closed, right?
But if I'm dealing with you, you're thinking this is a thousand person holiday party for afactory.
I'm going to make it happen.
So it's, um, let's talk about with all these brands, how much cross pollination is thereof ideas of catering programs?
(21:27):
You know, because obviously there's, you know, you talk about the mastermind concept assmart as you are.
as smart as I think I am, when we can put 10 people with a similar background, like, youknow, is exponentially your, your, your knowledge rises, you know, you know, you increase
your sales, your operational efficiency, what you learn, what you can implement, how muchcross pollination do y'all do?
(21:54):
We try to encourage that pretty aggressively, not only from an operational standpoint, wehave what we've defined as the one wow way of doing things.
So when we create a training manual, we create a template and then we change it based oningredient or slight differences within the brands, right?
But it's gonna be kind of systematized around this is our wow works way of doing this.
(22:18):
And the nice thing is we have one POS, one...
in loyalty platform, et cetera, et cetera.
So it's very common and we have a very aggressively growing franchise system that is now,hey, I'm gonna do a salad works fruitable here and I'm gonna do a barbary dose here and
I'm gonna do a garbanzo here because I wanna operate within a 20 square mile radius of myhome.
(22:39):
I don't wanna have to go to the next town to do three more barbary dose, right?
So we're getting velocity in that.
So you're basically, you're increasing the value of a franchisee because now I have anappetite for more than one in my town and now you're going to cross pollinate brands.
there is obviously uh economies of scale and the fact that I don't have to know fivedifferent training programs, five different pieces of software.
(23:07):
I just needed to know five different menus and SOPs for recipes.
And I think that's genius and I'm sure that's.
And our FBCs are regionally located.
So that person is going to share, even though they've got four brands or five brands,they're going to share the same business consultant.
So that person, their one stop shop on our internal site is going to be the same personfor each of those brands, which is great.
(23:34):
Plus you can share team resources.
You have somebody call out at Salad Works and you've got a Barberitos down the street.
They're going to be looking at different ingredients, but the POS is going to look thesame.
the process is going to look the same.
It's all walk down the line, create your concept or your menu item and go.
how much cross pollination of catering clients?
So let's say that I'm located in Springfield, Tennessee, right?
(23:58):
And I've got four of your brands, three of them cater a lot.
How much cross pollination where, I mean, do you have cross pollination of databases whereI have one database with all my clients across brands?
Is it that integrated?
We do, we do, we just, don't have density of brands significant enough to be that big ofan impact in that regard yet.
(24:22):
We're getting there and some markets are growing out in that regard.
And what we do have is we've started taking our existing brands and creating a virtualcatering concept out of our other brands.
So for instance, I have a restaurant that was a Simple Greek when we bought Simple Greekand Garbanzo.
He converted to a Garbanzo.
(24:43):
Because quite frankly, the Garbanzo AUVs are better, they're stronger, it's a moreexpansive palette.
It's not simply narrated on Greek.
We can play with those flavor profiles much more aggressively because we have a moreexpansive region to play with.
So he converted to Garbanzo, but he kept his Simple Greek catering platform.
he's potentially, and his clients know this, they would order from him on a ThursdaySimple Greek and Saturday Garbanzo.
(25:11):
Well, now we've started doing a Barberitos catering platform, kind of a Barberitos Lite,that we've branded as uh Barito Syndicate.
And it is a catering platform and he's doing catering of Barberitos products that isidentical to our recipes and builds for Barberitos.
So he's literally, he's got a youth baseball tournament this weekend.
(25:33):
He's doing three caterings three days in a row, one from Simple Greek, one from Barberitosand one from Garbanzo.
all from the same four walls.
And you, you know, it's great because, you know, you want to, you know, we all know thatthe most expensive thing is the overhead of the bricks and mortar, right?
And you want to maximize that.
(25:53):
And, know, you don't have to go build a second store, which he may or may not, but now youcan double the profit out of that store.
The managers can make more money.
The crew can get better tips, better opportunity.
That's way better than like, okay, let's try to suck every diamond and make you open 10units.
And none of them are making you great money.
(26:14):
We're the only ones making money getting the royalty because, you know, hey, we canincrease that royalty by 20 % if we make you open four doors.
And then then you wonder why these franchises go out of business because the franchiseeswere never set up to print money, right?
That's genius.
focus on.
(26:34):
We did a study a couple of years ago and I put it into a narrative and it really playswell for people that, know, every dollar that you have up to breakeven, you've got your
prime cost coming out of that dollar up to breakeven.
But once you hit that threshold over breakeven, so when you're adding top line revenue forthird parties, for catering, for all these other ancillary things,
(26:56):
Those dollars don't see that same prime cost because you've now paid for that.
Your fixed costs are static.
They're done.
You've paid your rent.
You paid your utilities.
You paid your pest services and your linen services.
So now you're putting the exponential dollars to the bottom line.
Yes.
And I used to always tell people, now, if you're a cost account and you're going toaggregate that cost, it's like, okay, I'm going to call BS because you wouldn't have that
(27:21):
anyway.
So yeah, if you can increase your, I've always said it, you can double your profits withcatering.
Cause if the average restaurant's taking a nickel home and you increase catering sales,but to 10 % of sales, half of that you've doubled your profits plus the advertising
ability, right?
Every time they go out.
and they try it, you if the food's good, like where did that come from?
(27:42):
I want to go eat there.
And then, you know, you build another customer.
um What are the, so if I'm in your, your ecosystem, what are the top three, four thingsyou advocate or teach those guys to do to go out and build catering sales?
I think uh first and foremost to provide a good experience every time you're out on thestreet to make you got to hit it out of the park.
(28:05):
You can't do a bad catering experience.
Like you said, if somebody has a bad experience, especially if you're dropping off,setting it up and then you're walking away, you're not serving it for them.
And if something goes wrong, you're not necessarily there to know about that.
So the follow up afterwards, making sure did we do everything appropriately, making sureeverything was the way it was supposed to be and how they ordered it.
I think that's critical.
(28:26):
I think.
One thing that I really like are catering people when they go out, we try to train them towhen you go drop off a catering, be sure you've got your catering menu and your business
card, hit two businesses around that area and solicit them.
Just make an introduction, talk about things that, know, what your offer is and what youropportunity is.
I'm a big fan of, I learned this from my HEB grocery days and we have what we callthankful Thursdays.
(28:52):
And so what I encourage in our corporate stores we do, we've encouraged our franchisees todo this, every Thursday put a tray together, dessert tray, pinwheel tray, fruit tray,
vegetable tray, whatever.
Put your catering menu, your business card, whatever you want to put on it.
Take it somewhere in the community.
City offices, nurses' lounge at the hospital, teachers' lounge at the school, firedepartment, police department, courthouse, take it somewhere.
(29:17):
We appreciate so much what you do for our community.
Thank you very much.
We just want to tell you how much we appreciate it.
And by the way, if you ever have catering needs, we'd love to help you out with that.
And that's just take something every, it costs you five bucks and you're building arelationship.
And if you do it once a week, that's 52 touches every year.
It's so insignificant, but it goes such a long way in communities, especially when you'rein a smaller community.
(29:41):
Are y'all, are you doing anything to solicit catering leads from walk-in traffic?
other than in-store POP, not necessarily.
Yeah, something we're working on because my background, well, let me back up.
My background is washing dishes.
I went to school for sales and marketing, didn't really learn anything, but over, over theyears I figured out some stuff.
(30:04):
So we're working on a QR code to get people to scan in the store, enter their informationto enter a catering giveaway and then put them in an autopilot drip campaign to go do a
sample luncheon or some.
Something to get them in and that can be used Not only in the store, but like graduationparties was a big niche for us right and so You can buy a list of parents of high school
(30:33):
seniors So if you live in lexicon kentucky, you can buy a list how good is it?
don't know But if I know there's three high schools around my stores I can go to theguidance counselor and say look you're going to have a financial aid night or or a college
open house
yep.
dessert and tea and lemonade.
And then you get those parents to register for free graduation party.
(30:55):
Well, now you've just gotten 300 names for free for, and now you can market to them in thespring where none of your competitors are going to be doing that.
So we're building it where it's a QR code and it automatically goes in a drip campaign andyou know, you can fire it off.
So.
I love that.
love that.
We had a catering manager a couple of years ago that came up with a strategy that I reallythought was great.
(31:21):
And we've had really good success with it.
She would, as soon as they announced the fall football schedule for high schools, juniorcolleges, colleges, and anywhere around the region, she would take the visitors list and
she'd reach out to the athletic director of the visiting team.
And she'd say, hey,
You don't really want to walk into Pizza Hut or McDonald's and shoot their wheels off with70 kids.
(31:44):
Then you've got to collect and get back on a bus and you're going to leave one and thattakes their focus off the game.
We're going to bring you boxed lunches of a good, healthy, flavorful meal to the stadium.
Your kids can eat it on the bus in the stadium, however you want.
They can stay focused on the game, winning the game, whatever you want to do.
And man, the loyalty, they do that one time and they're hooked.
like, we got, here's the next 10 games.
(32:05):
We need you there to deliver our lunch to us.
And it's perfect.
know, I, I sort of pride by itself.
did a million a year in catering out of 104 seat restaurant and I sold an five.
So you can extrapolate 20 years, a million dollars out of 104 city restaurant was a lot.
And I did a million things.
And, you know, one of the things we did is, we would go to all the high school athleticdirectors.
(32:31):
Now your, your brands, maybe Barbary does would do this, but would be not every brand youhave would be
conduit to this is go to the athletic directors at a high school.
It goes, look, you're gonna have these sports banquets.
Let us cater your sports banquets or go, you know, to the retail stores.
Hey, Black Friday, you're busy.
Let us come in and bring food for the associates because you need them working.
(32:53):
Right.
And I think, and this is, this dates me.
I don't think you're as old as I am, but this dates me.
When I opened my restaurant the first year, I got an order from Dillard's departmentstore.
the day after Thanksgiving for 200 and some people.
And I was like, why did they order?
Like this makes no sense.
(33:13):
I didn't even know there was a thing called Black Friday.
This is how far back it goes.
So that Monday I called the person, I go, hey, I appreciate your order.
How was everything?
Great.
Why did you order?
It's Black Friday.
We order.
Does every retail store do that?
Yeah.
So the next year I get in my car with the legal pad.
I drive around to the five shopping areas in Nashville and I write down all, you know,Target, was Circuit City.
(33:38):
That's how far back it goes, right?
All these things.
There was no internet.
I had to take a Yellow Pages and then put together a letter and call.
Like it was about as, it's like, you know, your grandfather saying he walked uphill toschool both ways.
But, but the first time I did that, I spent 45 bucks and I booked 6,000 and drop offcatering.
(34:00):
There you go.
When I operated Super Centers, it's the same thing.
Black Friday is just all hands on deck.
It's so busy, you can't afford to have a team member leave the property to try to go eat.
They'll never get back, and they'll never find a parking place, and they'll just nevercome back.
So you got stacks of everything in the break room for them.
(34:24):
Just keep them hydrated, keep them fed.
You just want them.
Look, we're feeding you just work because it is crazy.
I mean, it was it was definitely nuts.
Now, I don't know what Black Friday is like now with Amazon.
Like.
I'm not an early adopter.
Maybe I'm the second wave.
Like everybody's like, I'm ordering from Amazon.
(34:46):
Now, I probably have a I probably average two, three packages from Amazon a week, eventimes where I go.
You know, I'm going go to, unless I have to have it right away.
I'm like, I'm going to go to Target.
Why am I going to Target?
I could just order on Amazon and have it tomorrow.
That's stupid.
It's, it's.
I think cyber has probably taken the big edge off of, especially the people who camped outovernight and so many of the retailers too, they start Black Friday a week early.
(35:14):
It's a preview and you know, they bled it out where it's like a month long and all that.
I think where it's fun is we're shopping is sports.
So where I'm down here in Florida, there's a big outlet mall.
mean, it's huge.
So, you know, my kids have come down here and we'll go to the outlet mall because it'ssport, right?
Like, let's just go see what's on super sale and different.
(35:36):
Like we don't have anything in mind.
You're just going, or somebody might like, I love Nike.
Let's see what's on sale at the Nike outlet.
It's more sport than, okay, I've got a list that I need to go buy and I've picked the.
the sales circular.
It's it's and who knows what's going to happen.
Where do you think?
What do think AI is going to do to change and disrupt your business or how are you usingit now?
(36:00):
And how do see it in the future?
Right now we're using mostly for modeling, projection forecasting modeling, supply chainmodeling, using it quite a bit in our marketing team, a marketing element, different ideas
and protocols.
I think that's something that we are, we're investigating aggressively, but we haven'tdeployed a lot of it yet.
(36:26):
I think it's one of those things like I love Instagram for the AI stuff.
gives me the self-improvement stuff it gives me and I hate it for the bullshit it givesme.
Right.
And I wish I could say, look, cut this out.
I just need a news channel for AI, for business, for self-improvement, for health.
(36:52):
I don't care about the other stuff because
Every other day I'm sending my team something about AI, what it's doing and how it'sworking.
I think, you know, five years ago I was calling AI voice for taking orders.
Now for pizza, they've got it pretty well dialed in catering.
We've looked at putting it in our system and it's not there to answer the complexity ofquestions.
(37:17):
And I think what's going to happen is you're going to leapfrog over a voice to online AI.
And what, and this is just my prediction is because think about this, there's a wholegeneration or generations.
They don't pick up the phone for anything.
They click on everything.
Right.
So you and I grew up picking up the phone, order a pizza, got questions.
(37:39):
Well, that's going to sunset away and you're going to have the consumers 10 years fromnow.
They don't want to talk to anybody.
Right.
But if I'm on my phone or if I'm online and I want to order catering,
I want a virtual catering consultant, right?
Maybe I don't want to click anything and go, hey, you know, uh John, what, you know,welcome to Barbary does I see you want to place a catering order.
(38:03):
Do you have any questions?
Yeah, I've got 20 football players.
What do you recommend?
Well, I recommend the three meat special and blah, blah.
You you want this for pickup or delivery.
I want it for delivery.
Great.
Where do you want to deliver it?
So you don't have to touch anything.
You don't have to type anything.
you what do have for desserts?
And it's going to pop up the three desserts and you can say, this is a cookie platter.
(38:25):
This is the churro, you know, in dip platter.
This is the fruit platter.
give me the fruit and this.
And it's just going to be like a virtual interaction because it needs to be visual.
And I want to do it from my device.
I don't, I'm not going to pick up the phone and call somebody.
That's what I think is going to be the intersection of those two will be the future.
(38:47):
you're absolutely right.
think you're absolutely right.
And theoretically, AI should help us leapfrog.
If we have a 10-month project, my anticipation is that if you're using AI appropriately,it should cut that based on all the learnings of everything else that's in the ether.
It should be able to help you troubleshoot and take that project to a six-month projectbecause it knows what it knows.
(39:10):
Yeah.
So I think that's going to be the efficiency that people need to get really good at using.
I mean, like I'm a pretty damn good copywriter, but like I just did a campaign eightemails and I could have written them and it would have taken me half a day to gestate
everything.
I'm very good at prompt engineering.
(39:32):
It literally spit out subject lines, this, that, and the other exactly the way it neededto.
And then you go in and you tweak it.
Well, I just saved half a day of my life.
Plus it wrote the SMS messages.
Plus it did the voicemails.
That's right.
I mean, you know, even something I've got a place in Costa Rica and I had a leaky roof.
I put in all my dimensions.
(39:54):
It's spec'd out what type of product I should use based on the pitch of the roof, the waythe house was modeled, where I live, the most rainfall that could fall on average at one
time, how big the gutters, the downspouts.
I'm just like, you'd have to be an engineer from MIT to figure that out.
(40:15):
And it figured it out in three minutes, right?
It is amazing.
uh I just filed for a corporate entity for a nonprofit.
I set up a nonprofit to help a friend of mine in Honduras.
I was thinking about calling a lawyer that I knew and I'm thinking, geez, I got to havearticles of incorporation bylaws.
I've got to have all this stuff.
I typed it into chat GPT and it did everything.
(40:39):
Everything is done.
Here's who you need to call.
Here's the link.
It did everything.
It's amazing.
There's a, when it comes back to retail and restaurants, there's a thought leader that Ilike to follow.
I learned a lot from him.
He's actually out of Franklin, Tennessee.
It's IHL services and he does a really good job of staying on.
It's informational for retail kind of thought leadership, but he does a really good jobsending out just educational, hey, this is something that the target's doing.
(41:06):
This is something that CAVA is doing, this whatever.
And I think it's.
m
I try to watch his stuff as much as I can because I think he's really on it.
Greg Buzak is his name.
Is he on Instagram?
Does he have a channel that he puts stuff out on?
on LinkedIn, he will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He actually is runs a nonprofit called retail ROI.
(41:28):
It's retail orphan initiative.
That's, that's kind how I got involved in the Honduras nonprofit stuff, but he justhappens to run a retail company called IHL.
Yeah.
Do go down to Honduras much?
see your necklace.
You look a little like you could be a surfer or hang out in Latin America.
Yeah, I was actually just there this week.
Yeah.
if you ever want to come to Costa Rica.
(41:50):
Um, I found a nice little, I've threatened to throw like a catering conference down thereand just bring a bunch of people under the guise of let's talk catering and then also go
fishing and do whatever.
It's just very, the town I'm in is it's a pain to get there.
It's three and a half hours from the airport, but it's also why it's great because it'snot a touristy town.
(42:13):
Great restaurants, great people.
great beach, great mountains, great vibe, but it's not overrun with like, you know, peopletrying to buy trinkets and, you know, just an overly touristy trap place.
It's not that kind of vibe.
yeah, those are the worst.
Yeah, it sounds awesome.
Awesome, well any final words or advice for anybody in the business who's working onbuilding their brand, their catering, any takeaways?
(42:41):
I think it all comes down to personal relationships and getting out and getting your faceknown.
Social is local.
If you're using social, it's got to be localized.
Talk about your team members.
Talk about what you're doing in the community.
Talk about how you're invested in the community and how you care about the community andare passionate about what you do.
And that'll resonate through your guests.
(43:01):
I think that's important.
For sure, for sure.
And you can't fake that.
It has to be from the heart, for sure.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Thanks so much, John.
I'm gonna count us out.
Hello again, I'm Mike Latias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smarts and today's guest isJohn Geierman, Chief Strategy Officer at WowWorks.
I was about to butcher it.
The one you told me not to call you.
With a career spanning decades in the restaurant industry, John brings a wealth ofexperience in scaling brands, optimizing operations and driving strategic growth.
(00:54):
At WowWorks, he's helping lead the charge across a portfolio.
portfolio of health focused fast casual concepts, guiding innovation, brand synergy andoff premise expansion.
John's deep understanding of multi brand operations and guest centric strategies makes hima powerhouse in our industry.
(01:15):
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, cater zencatering software.
They help restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
discover why restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase sales.
Go to caterzen.com and sign up for a walkthrough of their software.
Now let's dive into this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts.
(01:37):
Welcome, John.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing fantastic, Michael.
Thank you very much for having me.
No, thanks for being here.
um So I'd like to start us off with an icebreaker question.
Give me a number between the one and 300.
I'd say 178.
What's the coolest animal encounter you've ever had?
(02:01):
Coolest animal encounter, you know?
Odd story, when I was in fifth grade, I worked for a veterinarian.
I would walk down in clean cages and walk dogs after school.
he would take me out on the weekends when he had like emergency projects, he'd pick me upand take me out and I'd get to see all kinds of things that I probably wouldn't mention on
this podcast.
(02:22):
But they were very cool for a fifth grade boy in South Dakota, you know, it was just, itwas a really cool time.
So give me one cool animal.
I mean cows mostly in that frame of work.
Very neat.
Yeah, I think the coolest animal I've interacted with, um a sloth.
(02:43):
yeah, very docile.
Yeah, very chill.
And they look like they look like their persona in the plush animals.
Just very like they're smoking pot or something.
They're just very, very.
little hair helmet thing going.
Yeah.
It's fantastic.
um So, you know, I'm going to guess you didn't just start in the restaurant business.
(03:09):
What's your path to the restaurant business?
How did you get into it?
I grew up in retail actually with Walmart.
was one of first four super centers that they built as a prototype with Walmart when theyconverted and added grocery to their core business of general merchandise.
I just happened to get a job to put myself through college in Arlington, Texas, workingfor one of the original four super centers.
(03:35):
And obviously that platform worked well for them.
So I rode that wave.
uh which was very aggressive for 15 years, opening up 27 different super centers and endedup running super centers in my 20s and 30s and uh got recruited to a great regional Texas
brand, HEB Grocers here in Texas.
Phenomenal brand, worked with them and then was recruited to a brand out of Austin, Texascalled Schlotzky's Deli, Schlotzky's Sandwiches, which is a phenomenal brand.
(04:05):
How far back were you with Schlotzkis?
That's 2009?
When you were there, was there a guy I'm purchasing named Matt Diana?
man, I loved Matt.
Okay.
So this, this is like, I'm Kevin Bacon today, right?
The seven degrees of Kevin Bacon.
My first job in high school was washing dishes.
(04:26):
Matt was my boss.
He was such a fucking hard ass.
And, you know, I'd come in, I'd come in and I go, Hey, can I have my tips from last night?
Why are you busting my ass?
I'm busy.
But you know, he just, he's sort of like that grouchy drill sergeant and
But he was very good.
(04:47):
I don't know if you know, he was a big audiophile when he worked.
Um, he had like a two 80 ZX and I think his car stereo was 10 times more expensive thanhis car.
And then I remember talking to him someplace later in life.
Um, when he went to work for Schlossky's, but it's crazy that he was my first boss.
(05:08):
Yeah, he always bragged every time he had to drive from Richardson to Austin because he'dcome down every week and he would always try to beat his previous record of how fast he
made it down and he wouldn't take toll roads because he was convinced that they were goingto track how long it took him to go from point A to B and that they would catch him for
speeding somehow.
I'm like, come on, Matt.
(05:29):
They don't care.
Is he still with Schlotzky's, even know?
Oh my God.
Yep, he passed away.
I went to his memorial service.
Yeah, he's a...
Yep.
Yep.
Learned a lot from that guy.
Really hard worker.
actually got along with him really well.
He was a huge punk fan.
So we had music in common.
(05:51):
He was a big audiophile for sure.
Yeah, he was definitely a grouch, but he worked his ass off.
He was a good role model.
I learned some good things from him.
Yeah, for sure.
When it came to purchasing, he was about as tough as they get.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
So you went to see you went to order for schloss keys.
What'd do with them?
(06:11):
I started as a regional vice president over the Dallas Fort Worth DMA.
It was the largest DMA and ended up taking over the western half of the US and theneventually the full US franchise system.
So I was running the US franchise system.
When em we had a new CEO come in over Focus Brands and they decided they wanted toconsolidate all brands under one rooftop, literally in Atlanta, I made a choice not to
(06:38):
move to Atlanta and decided to.
I could have stayed remote and stayed out of Dallas and worked in Atlanta, but then Iwould have been that guy who came in once a month and people really don't know and it just
didn't seem like it was a great idea.
No, mean that makes, I mean that definitely makes sense.
It makes it tougher for you to do your job when you're, you know, flying in and flyingout, yeah.
(06:59):
you're not at the coffee station with everybody else, you know, from time to timethroughout the day.
Unless you're like us, we're all remote, you know.
We are now 100 % remote.
We don't have an office, yeah.
Yeah, I put on a hat just for you.
I mean, normally I just roll out of bed and I just start working.
So it's nice.
I do have pants that I can, I can promise you, you know, what was that?
(07:22):
That guy on CNN got caught with no pants on or God only knows what it's crazy.
And then the other guy whose mistress walked behind him in the screenshot that wasn't hiswife or whatever.
Yeah.
There's all kinds of those stories.
sure there's plenty.
um And then how'd you end up at WoW Works?
Did you start it?
Were you part of the founding group?
(07:42):
How'd you end up over there?
president of Schlotzky's was Kelly Roddy and he's our current president.
So the equity group that bought Saladworks, that was our original brand, they boughtSaladworks out of bankruptcy.
They hired him to come in and be the president and he called and said, hey, I need somehelp.
So I came on board and originally we were all working in an office in Concha Hawk inPennsylvania, just a suburb of Philly.
(08:04):
So I was flying to Philly every week on Monday and flying home on Friday night.
Our executive team would fly in and we'd get stumped on and then we'd go home.
Through the pandemic, obviously nobody was going to the office and we started gettingopportunities to purchase small to mid-sized brands, 50 to 100 units.
So we picked up Garbanzo and we picked up Fruitable in December of 2020.
(08:29):
uh And then immediately picked up in April, Simple Greek.
And so we went from one brand to four during the pandemic.
And they all had bases of teams living in those communities, right?
Garbanzo was based in Denver.
So we kept people as we needed, but we were able to kind of scale with our existinginfrastructure and shared services to just run those brands with kind of what we had.
(08:55):
And we decided at that point, you know, maybe there's no reason to come back to a homeoffice.
Maybe we just work remotely.
And so that's what we've been doing for the past four years.
And it's been really, really good.
Yeah, I think if you bring on the right people, remote is actually better.
It's when people can't get their stuff done that you have a problem.
But people who are independent hard workers, they'll get more done in six hours than 12hours with people in the office and chit chatting and all that and um leave them to their
(09:27):
own devices.
Well, we're fortunate.
have a really good Chief People Officer.
She does a really good job at making sure that we stay connected to culture and that we doevents that keep people connected on a personal and relational level.
And that, think, is important.
That's the piece you really lose when you're not standing there with a cup of coffeeasking Jimmy what he did last Friday night, you know, and just kind of getting to know
(09:49):
people on that type of level.
So, and right now she's got us all doing Chia Pets and we were like taking pictures everyday of the growth and sharing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
not paying that high rent, you can afford to do a lot of cool stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's really good.
And it allows us to get talent wherever the talent lives.
So we're able to hire people from Tulsa, Oklahoma or Portland, Oregon.
(10:13):
And we don't have an expectation that they have to pick up and move to Pennsylvania.
So it's been really good.
Yeah, and especially when you can hire somebody in Tulsa and they're getting better thanTulsa wages.
Now, all of a sudden, they're more loyal, they're more excited, they're more engaged, youknow, so it's, it's not a bad way to go.
(10:34):
Now, are y'all mostly corporate or is it franchise?
We are almost exclusively franchised.
So we can get into that because I've worked with a lot of franchise brands and that hasits own set of challenges, obviously.
um Well, let's just go in and talk about that and we can just go in whatever direction.
So, you know, what I found when I work with the franchise organizations, it's the 80-20rule, right?
(11:00):
If you have 100 franchisees or 100 units, you got 20 % of them, 10-20, that are bustingout the catering.
You've got that owner who gets it.
He's out there hustling.
And the other 80 % think,
Hey, I paid for a logo and some recipes and it should be coming in the door, right?
What's y'all's theory on that?
Do you recruit franchisees?
(11:22):
Like I know I did some work with Moe's, you know, when they were with Focus and I knowthat sort of their MO is you're not getting a territory if you don't put a catering sales
rep in the market.
So that's just part of their ecosystem.
How do y'all deal with,
We've been fortunate.
Both Garbanzo and Barbados are super heavy catering, well above the industry average.
(11:46):
They cater really well.
They've got great product that presents well, that holds well.
And they have historically always done it.
So we've just really implemented tools that help them become more efficient and effectivein managing that process.
But I've got restaurants that are doing significant catering business.
Fruitable, not so much.
They do a ton of third party.
(12:06):
You know, it's acai bowls and smoothies, things like that.
Not a big catering play.
Saladworks has been growing.
They really didn't have a catering program when we got the brand.
So we've been developing things around our panini sandwiches, soups and salads that aremore catering friendly and getting some good play on that.
And then of course, ZOOP is a great catering play.
(12:27):
They've gotten a little bit of everything.
So they do a great job with it.
We really have not had any push back around catering.
People I think understand it's...
It's paid trial.
It's a great opportunity from an efficiency standpoint with labor.
You're building 70 meals, you know, with two people and it's just so much more efficient.
And it's top line revenue in the four boxes without any fixed costs, additional fixedcosts.
(12:49):
So it's so much more profitable.
But are you requiring your franchisees to bring on a catering sales rep?
Are they relying on third party?
What's their primary strategy to build catering sales?
You know, it's one thing you've got a barbecue restaurant and by inherent nature, you'regonna get 20 % just because that's part of the ecosystem of a barbecue restaurant or a
deli.
(13:11):
What are y'all doing to, you know, juice up those sales as opposed to, we got to signorder if you want to, or we're on Easy Cater.
think the reality of our restaurants is we have a lot of one, two and three unitfranchisees and they're very invested in their communities and they know people, they
sponsor the local baseball team, they're in their community, they're the face of theirbrand in the community, they're kind of the mayor of their brand.
(13:35):
And I think they're out there personally pressing those buttons and creating that type ofrelationship in their communities, which to me is critical.
That's what happens.
That's what differentiates for you from the corporate, you know,
For sure.
Franchise empire of somebody who they think that somebody sits in a tower in New YorkCity,
Yeah.
Do you, um, when you're looking for a franchisee to partner with, right?
(13:59):
Is that something you're looking for?
Like, Michael lives in so-and-so Kentucky.
You know, he goes, he's a deacon at the church.
He's involved in the rotary.
His kids play little league.
He coaches.
This fits a profile as opposed to, Hey, I got a bunch of money.
want to, I want to put my kid in a business.
And you're like, eh, you know, is that, are you recruiting for that?
(14:21):
Because it's sort of like culture at work, right?
How important is culture fit when you're recruiting franchisees?
It's critical.
It's critical.
And, you know, we learned that from Barberitos.
I think they were really good at it when we bought that brand.
you know, started in Athens, Georgia.
So it's a lot of uh University of Georgia people that had, they grew up in that town.
(14:43):
They're familiar with the brand from that.
They graduated, they moved back to their hometown or wherever they're establishingbusiness and have opened to Barberitos.
And again, they're kind of the mayor of their Barberitos in town, but they're, veryinvested in that relational.
And they're concentrated in the Southeast.
It's really kind of a cultural phenomenon that happens in the Southeast.
People like to sit down face to face, have a glass of tea across the table from somebodyand talk to each other.
(15:09):
It's a great way to do business.
that's just how they built their franchise system.
And we've embraced that and have encouraged it.
And that's sort of the way things work in the South.
Like, know, you're part of the community, you have a reputation.
And if you're a good part of the community, people love you and want to work with you.
And if you're some schmuck, they're going to turn their back on you.
(15:31):
So it can work for you against you, obviously.
There's so I was a Corky's barbecue franchisee.
worked for them in college.
I was one of their first franchisees, did a million in catering.
And so we sort of disrupted the market because
The barbecue restaurants were in town.
I don't know that their barbecue was great.
Um, and they were sort of old school as far as business practices, how they did business.
(15:55):
But there was this place called Herbert's barbecue about 15 minutes south of us inFranklin, Tennessee.
And it was Mr.
Herbert.
And he was known for his corn light bread, whatever that is.
I don't know.
It's like cornbread, but lighter, I guess.
And I was talking to him or talking to somebody and they go,
(16:15):
Yeah, you know, Mr.
Herbert's, you know, he's, he's a pillar and Franklin, you know, his family's been outthere forever and he reads the obits.
And when somebody dies, the family dies.
He shows up with barbecue, you know, he might bring a pound of barbecue and you know, acouple of pounds of barbecue.
Well, who the heck do you think they're going to order their catering from?
You know, who showed up at grandma's visitation?
(16:36):
It's really, really genius.
Yeah, yeah, you know, and he probably I'm sure there was an element of of entrepreneurismin that but it was probably just the way he's wired to it's just probably from the heart,
you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
he benefited from that.
Just like, you know, there's other people that have affinity groups or they like to helpout nonprofits, you know, and you know, it comes back to roost for sure.
(17:06):
100%.
At the end of the day, all things being equal, people want to do business with people thatthey respect and know.
And at the end of the day, even when things aren't equal, people want to do business withpeople that they respect and know.
So.
I think about the people I do business with, you know, you've got people that you dobusiness with because you need a vendor and the vent that's the vendor, whatever, but the
people you really have a good, my favorite people are the customers.
(17:31):
have a personal relationship with right.
Like there's a guy butch Scott out of Oxford, Mississippi, Taylor grocery.
He bought an educational system from me, the catering magic system back in.
maybe 2003.
So before I even had a software company, he was learning how to build catering sales.
He sold that, went to work for Taylor Grocery, which is an institution in Oxford.
(17:56):
So to have a guy that's been with you for like 20, 25 years, like that guy's got mynumber.
He can call me or I can call him and he's going to take my call and he's going to give mehis unfiltered opinion about something.
It's really nice to have those.
those people that you have that relationship with for sure.
(18:17):
100%.
I think that's what can get a, uh particularly in a franchise world, I think there'speople that are always looking for mailbox money.
So they've got an IT job or they're an accountant or they have a day job and they buy itas a passive investment and think that they'll just sit back and kind of collect money and
not have to do anything and that goes sideways generally pretty quick.
(18:38):
Yeah.
And there might be some brands that are better suited for that.
You know, if you're going to, I'm just thinking like on a high level, like a Papa John's,right?
It's very systematized.
It's pizza.
You can bring in.
Yeah.
Some of those you can get by with that, but if you're going to deal in the, in theenvironment you're in, especially with catering, you need somebody who's going to go out
(19:00):
there and press the flesh and you know, like I can come in your restaurant and if somebodymesses up a salad,
I go to the counter and I say, my salad was, you know, somebody put olives in, I hateolives.
We make it right with catering.
I want to know that I've got that go-to person like, Hey man, my boss just told me I needfood for 20 at 12 o'clock.
(19:23):
Can you hook me up or there's a problem?
Can you hook me up?
You know, it's a very relationship driven, but it's also very loyal.
Cause if you find somebody who takes care of you,
You know, I might love your salad today and there's a new salad chain across the street.
I'll try them.
And if I think they're nicer, better, I'll try them.
But catering is like, it's, it's way on a whole different level.
(19:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and so much you're dealing with your own relationships.
If you're a doctor and you have clients or you're a car dealership and you've got yourteam members that you're trying to take care of, I mean, that's a big responsibility.
You don't want to screw that up, right?
So you want somebody you know, you make a call and it gets taken care of.
And it has to just be the easy button.
It has to be done.
(20:06):
Right.
And I think that's the challenge with third party catering, you know, like easy cater doordash, whatever.
It's like, I don't have a person I can point my finger at and say, Hey, I need you to fixthis.
It's like whoever's picking up the phone and maybe there's a supervisor that'll handle it.
I need to know that I have my go-to person if there's a problem and you miss that with thethird party is that hand holding and that
(20:36):
special attention and sometimes you just need a somebody to pull you a favor like I needto go to the store and get me watermelon or Something special and it's like hey, you're a
great client.
I'll hook you up Like I don't mind doing it for you or hey, can you do third shift at thefactory?
For 20 people.
Well, yeah, you're feeding a thousand I'm happy to figure out how to get a crew to comeout at three in the morning feed those people I'll put them in a hotel room because an
(21:02):
easy caterers gonna say sorry, we're closed, right?
But if I'm dealing with you, you're thinking this is a thousand person holiday party for afactory.
I'm going to make it happen.
So it's, um, let's talk about with all these brands, how much cross pollination is thereof ideas of catering programs?
(21:27):
You know, because obviously there's, you know, you talk about the mastermind concept assmart as you are.
as smart as I think I am, when we can put 10 people with a similar background, like, youknow, is exponentially your, your, your knowledge rises, you know, you know, you increase
your sales, your operational efficiency, what you learn, what you can implement, how muchcross pollination do y'all do?
(21:54):
We try to encourage that pretty aggressively, not only from an operational standpoint, wehave what we've defined as the one wow way of doing things.
So when we create a training manual, we create a template and then we change it based oningredient or slight differences within the brands, right?
But it's gonna be kind of systematized around this is our wow works way of doing this.
(22:18):
And the nice thing is we have one POS, one...
in loyalty platform, et cetera, et cetera.
So it's very common and we have a very aggressively growing franchise system that is now,hey, I'm gonna do a salad works fruitable here and I'm gonna do a barbary dose here and
I'm gonna do a garbanzo here because I wanna operate within a 20 square mile radius of myhome.
(22:39):
I don't wanna have to go to the next town to do three more barbary dose, right?
So we're getting velocity in that.
So you're basically, you're increasing the value of a franchisee because now I have anappetite for more than one in my town and now you're going to cross pollinate brands.
there is obviously uh economies of scale and the fact that I don't have to know fivedifferent training programs, five different pieces of software.
(23:07):
I just needed to know five different menus and SOPs for recipes.
And I think that's genius and I'm sure that's.
And our FBCs are regionally located.
So that person is going to share, even though they've got four brands or five brands,they're going to share the same business consultant.
So that person, their one stop shop on our internal site is going to be the same personfor each of those brands, which is great.
(23:34):
Plus you can share team resources.
You have somebody call out at Salad Works and you've got a Barberitos down the street.
They're going to be looking at different ingredients, but the POS is going to look thesame.
the process is going to look the same.
It's all walk down the line, create your concept or your menu item and go.
how much cross pollination of catering clients?
So let's say that I'm located in Springfield, Tennessee, right?
(23:58):
And I've got four of your brands, three of them cater a lot.
How much cross pollination where, I mean, do you have cross pollination of databases whereI have one database with all my clients across brands?
Is it that integrated?
We do, we do, we just, don't have density of brands significant enough to be that big ofan impact in that regard yet.
(24:22):
We're getting there and some markets are growing out in that regard.
And what we do have is we've started taking our existing brands and creating a virtualcatering concept out of our other brands.
So for instance, I have a restaurant that was a Simple Greek when we bought Simple Greekand Garbanzo.
He converted to a Garbanzo.
(24:43):
Because quite frankly, the Garbanzo AUVs are better, they're stronger, it's a moreexpansive palette.
It's not simply narrated on Greek.
We can play with those flavor profiles much more aggressively because we have a moreexpansive region to play with.
So he converted to Garbanzo, but he kept his Simple Greek catering platform.
he's potentially, and his clients know this, they would order from him on a ThursdaySimple Greek and Saturday Garbanzo.
(25:11):
Well, now we've started doing a Barberitos catering platform, kind of a Barberitos Lite,that we've branded as uh Barito Syndicate.
And it is a catering platform and he's doing catering of Barberitos products that isidentical to our recipes and builds for Barberitos.
So he's literally, he's got a youth baseball tournament this weekend.
(25:33):
He's doing three caterings three days in a row, one from Simple Greek, one from Barberitosand one from Garbanzo.
all from the same four walls.
And you, you know, it's great because, you know, you want to, you know, we all know thatthe most expensive thing is the overhead of the bricks and mortar, right?
And you want to maximize that.
(25:53):
And, know, you don't have to go build a second store, which he may or may not, but now youcan double the profit out of that store.
The managers can make more money.
The crew can get better tips, better opportunity.
That's way better than like, okay, let's try to suck every diamond and make you open 10units.
And none of them are making you great money.
(26:14):
We're the only ones making money getting the royalty because, you know, hey, we canincrease that royalty by 20 % if we make you open four doors.
And then then you wonder why these franchises go out of business because the franchiseeswere never set up to print money, right?
That's genius.
focus on.
(26:34):
We did a study a couple of years ago and I put it into a narrative and it really playswell for people that, know, every dollar that you have up to breakeven, you've got your
prime cost coming out of that dollar up to breakeven.
But once you hit that threshold over breakeven, so when you're adding top line revenue forthird parties, for catering, for all these other ancillary things,
(26:56):
Those dollars don't see that same prime cost because you've now paid for that.
Your fixed costs are static.
They're done.
You've paid your rent.
You paid your utilities.
You paid your pest services and your linen services.
So now you're putting the exponential dollars to the bottom line.
Yes.
And I used to always tell people, now, if you're a cost account and you're going toaggregate that cost, it's like, okay, I'm going to call BS because you wouldn't have that
(27:21):
anyway.
So yeah, if you can increase your, I've always said it, you can double your profits withcatering.
Cause if the average restaurant's taking a nickel home and you increase catering sales,but to 10 % of sales, half of that you've doubled your profits plus the advertising
ability, right?
Every time they go out.
and they try it, you if the food's good, like where did that come from?
(27:42):
I want to go eat there.
And then, you know, you build another customer.
um What are the, so if I'm in your, your ecosystem, what are the top three, four thingsyou advocate or teach those guys to do to go out and build catering sales?
I think uh first and foremost to provide a good experience every time you're out on thestreet to make you got to hit it out of the park.
(28:05):
You can't do a bad catering experience.
Like you said, if somebody has a bad experience, especially if you're dropping off,setting it up and then you're walking away, you're not serving it for them.
And if something goes wrong, you're not necessarily there to know about that.
So the follow up afterwards, making sure did we do everything appropriately, making sureeverything was the way it was supposed to be and how they ordered it.
I think that's critical.
(28:26):
I think.
One thing that I really like are catering people when they go out, we try to train them towhen you go drop off a catering, be sure you've got your catering menu and your business
card, hit two businesses around that area and solicit them.
Just make an introduction, talk about things that, know, what your offer is and what youropportunity is.
I'm a big fan of, I learned this from my HEB grocery days and we have what we callthankful Thursdays.
(28:52):
And so what I encourage in our corporate stores we do, we've encouraged our franchisees todo this, every Thursday put a tray together, dessert tray, pinwheel tray, fruit tray,
vegetable tray, whatever.
Put your catering menu, your business card, whatever you want to put on it.
Take it somewhere in the community.
City offices, nurses' lounge at the hospital, teachers' lounge at the school, firedepartment, police department, courthouse, take it somewhere.
(29:17):
We appreciate so much what you do for our community.
Thank you very much.
We just want to tell you how much we appreciate it.
And by the way, if you ever have catering needs, we'd love to help you out with that.
And that's just take something every, it costs you five bucks and you're building arelationship.
And if you do it once a week, that's 52 touches every year.
It's so insignificant, but it goes such a long way in communities, especially when you'rein a smaller community.
(29:41):
Are y'all, are you doing anything to solicit catering leads from walk-in traffic?
other than in-store POP, not necessarily.
Yeah, something we're working on because my background, well, let me back up.
My background is washing dishes.
I went to school for sales and marketing, didn't really learn anything, but over, over theyears I figured out some stuff.
(30:04):
So we're working on a QR code to get people to scan in the store, enter their informationto enter a catering giveaway and then put them in an autopilot drip campaign to go do a
sample luncheon or some.
Something to get them in and that can be used Not only in the store, but like graduationparties was a big niche for us right and so You can buy a list of parents of high school
(30:33):
seniors So if you live in lexicon kentucky, you can buy a list how good is it?
don't know But if I know there's three high schools around my stores I can go to theguidance counselor and say look you're going to have a financial aid night or or a college
open house
yep.
dessert and tea and lemonade.
And then you get those parents to register for free graduation party.
(30:55):
Well, now you've just gotten 300 names for free for, and now you can market to them in thespring where none of your competitors are going to be doing that.
So we're building it where it's a QR code and it automatically goes in a drip campaign andyou know, you can fire it off.
So.
I love that.
love that.
We had a catering manager a couple of years ago that came up with a strategy that I reallythought was great.
(31:21):
And we've had really good success with it.
She would, as soon as they announced the fall football schedule for high schools, juniorcolleges, colleges, and anywhere around the region, she would take the visitors list and
she'd reach out to the athletic director of the visiting team.
And she'd say, hey,
You don't really want to walk into Pizza Hut or McDonald's and shoot their wheels off with70 kids.
(31:44):
Then you've got to collect and get back on a bus and you're going to leave one and thattakes their focus off the game.
We're going to bring you boxed lunches of a good, healthy, flavorful meal to the stadium.
Your kids can eat it on the bus in the stadium, however you want.
They can stay focused on the game, winning the game, whatever you want to do.
And man, the loyalty, they do that one time and they're hooked.
like, we got, here's the next 10 games.
(32:05):
We need you there to deliver our lunch to us.
And it's perfect.
know, I, I sort of pride by itself.
did a million a year in catering out of 104 seat restaurant and I sold an five.
So you can extrapolate 20 years, a million dollars out of 104 city restaurant was a lot.
And I did a million things.
And, you know, one of the things we did is, we would go to all the high school athleticdirectors.
(32:31):
Now your, your brands, maybe Barbary does would do this, but would be not every brand youhave would be
conduit to this is go to the athletic directors at a high school.
It goes, look, you're gonna have these sports banquets.
Let us cater your sports banquets or go, you know, to the retail stores.
Hey, Black Friday, you're busy.
Let us come in and bring food for the associates because you need them working.
(32:53):
Right.
And I think, and this is, this dates me.
I don't think you're as old as I am, but this dates me.
When I opened my restaurant the first year, I got an order from Dillard's departmentstore.
the day after Thanksgiving for 200 and some people.
And I was like, why did they order?
Like this makes no sense.
(33:13):
I didn't even know there was a thing called Black Friday.
This is how far back it goes.
So that Monday I called the person, I go, hey, I appreciate your order.
How was everything?
Great.
Why did you order?
It's Black Friday.
We order.
Does every retail store do that?
Yeah.
So the next year I get in my car with the legal pad.
I drive around to the five shopping areas in Nashville and I write down all, you know,Target, was Circuit City.
(33:38):
That's how far back it goes, right?
All these things.
There was no internet.
I had to take a Yellow Pages and then put together a letter and call.
Like it was about as, it's like, you know, your grandfather saying he walked uphill toschool both ways.
But, but the first time I did that, I spent 45 bucks and I booked 6,000 and drop offcatering.
(34:00):
There you go.
When I operated Super Centers, it's the same thing.
Black Friday is just all hands on deck.
It's so busy, you can't afford to have a team member leave the property to try to go eat.
They'll never get back, and they'll never find a parking place, and they'll just nevercome back.
So you got stacks of everything in the break room for them.
(34:24):
Just keep them hydrated, keep them fed.
You just want them.
Look, we're feeding you just work because it is crazy.
I mean, it was it was definitely nuts.
Now, I don't know what Black Friday is like now with Amazon.
Like.
I'm not an early adopter.
Maybe I'm the second wave.
Like everybody's like, I'm ordering from Amazon.
(34:46):
Now, I probably have a I probably average two, three packages from Amazon a week, eventimes where I go.
You know, I'm going go to, unless I have to have it right away.
I'm like, I'm going to go to Target.
Why am I going to Target?
I could just order on Amazon and have it tomorrow.
That's stupid.
It's, it's.
I think cyber has probably taken the big edge off of, especially the people who camped outovernight and so many of the retailers too, they start Black Friday a week early.
(35:14):
It's a preview and you know, they bled it out where it's like a month long and all that.
I think where it's fun is we're shopping is sports.
So where I'm down here in Florida, there's a big outlet mall.
mean, it's huge.
So, you know, my kids have come down here and we'll go to the outlet mall because it'ssport, right?
Like, let's just go see what's on super sale and different.
(35:36):
Like we don't have anything in mind.
You're just going, or somebody might like, I love Nike.
Let's see what's on sale at the Nike outlet.
It's more sport than, okay, I've got a list that I need to go buy and I've picked the.
the sales circular.
It's it's and who knows what's going to happen.
Where do you think?
What do think AI is going to do to change and disrupt your business or how are you usingit now?
(36:00):
And how do see it in the future?
Right now we're using mostly for modeling, projection forecasting modeling, supply chainmodeling, using it quite a bit in our marketing team, a marketing element, different ideas
and protocols.
I think that's something that we are, we're investigating aggressively, but we haven'tdeployed a lot of it yet.
(36:26):
I think it's one of those things like I love Instagram for the AI stuff.
gives me the self-improvement stuff it gives me and I hate it for the bullshit it givesme.
Right.
And I wish I could say, look, cut this out.
I just need a news channel for AI, for business, for self-improvement, for health.
(36:52):
I don't care about the other stuff because
Every other day I'm sending my team something about AI, what it's doing and how it'sworking.
I think, you know, five years ago I was calling AI voice for taking orders.
Now for pizza, they've got it pretty well dialed in catering.
We've looked at putting it in our system and it's not there to answer the complexity ofquestions.
(37:17):
And I think what's going to happen is you're going to leapfrog over a voice to online AI.
And what, and this is just my prediction is because think about this, there's a wholegeneration or generations.
They don't pick up the phone for anything.
They click on everything.
Right.
So you and I grew up picking up the phone, order a pizza, got questions.
(37:39):
Well, that's going to sunset away and you're going to have the consumers 10 years fromnow.
They don't want to talk to anybody.
Right.
But if I'm on my phone or if I'm online and I want to order catering,
I want a virtual catering consultant, right?
Maybe I don't want to click anything and go, hey, you know, uh John, what, you know,welcome to Barbary does I see you want to place a catering order.
(38:03):
Do you have any questions?
Yeah, I've got 20 football players.
What do you recommend?
Well, I recommend the three meat special and blah, blah.
You you want this for pickup or delivery.
I want it for delivery.
Great.
Where do you want to deliver it?
So you don't have to touch anything.
You don't have to type anything.
you what do have for desserts?
And it's going to pop up the three desserts and you can say, this is a cookie platter.
(38:25):
This is the churro, you know, in dip platter.
This is the fruit platter.
give me the fruit and this.
And it's just going to be like a virtual interaction because it needs to be visual.
And I want to do it from my device.
I don't, I'm not going to pick up the phone and call somebody.
That's what I think is going to be the intersection of those two will be the future.
(38:47):
you're absolutely right.
think you're absolutely right.
And theoretically, AI should help us leapfrog.
If we have a 10-month project, my anticipation is that if you're using AI appropriately,it should cut that based on all the learnings of everything else that's in the ether.
It should be able to help you troubleshoot and take that project to a six-month projectbecause it knows what it knows.
(39:10):
Yeah.
So I think that's going to be the efficiency that people need to get really good at using.
I mean, like I'm a pretty damn good copywriter, but like I just did a campaign eightemails and I could have written them and it would have taken me half a day to gestate
everything.
I'm very good at prompt engineering.
(39:32):
It literally spit out subject lines, this, that, and the other exactly the way it neededto.
And then you go in and you tweak it.
Well, I just saved half a day of my life.
Plus it wrote the SMS messages.
Plus it did the voicemails.
That's right.
I mean, you know, even something I've got a place in Costa Rica and I had a leaky roof.
I put in all my dimensions.
(39:54):
It's spec'd out what type of product I should use based on the pitch of the roof, the waythe house was modeled, where I live, the most rainfall that could fall on average at one
time, how big the gutters, the downspouts.
I'm just like, you'd have to be an engineer from MIT to figure that out.
(40:15):
And it figured it out in three minutes, right?
It is amazing.
uh I just filed for a corporate entity for a nonprofit.
I set up a nonprofit to help a friend of mine in Honduras.
I was thinking about calling a lawyer that I knew and I'm thinking, geez, I got to havearticles of incorporation bylaws.
I've got to have all this stuff.
I typed it into chat GPT and it did everything.
(40:39):
Everything is done.
Here's who you need to call.
Here's the link.
It did everything.
It's amazing.
There's a, when it comes back to retail and restaurants, there's a thought leader that Ilike to follow.
I learned a lot from him.
He's actually out of Franklin, Tennessee.
It's IHL services and he does a really good job of staying on.
It's informational for retail kind of thought leadership, but he does a really good jobsending out just educational, hey, this is something that the target's doing.
(41:06):
This is something that CAVA is doing, this whatever.
And I think it's.
m
I try to watch his stuff as much as I can because I think he's really on it.
Greg Buzak is his name.
Is he on Instagram?
Does he have a channel that he puts stuff out on?
on LinkedIn, he will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He actually is runs a nonprofit called retail ROI.
(41:28):
It's retail orphan initiative.
That's, that's kind how I got involved in the Honduras nonprofit stuff, but he justhappens to run a retail company called IHL.
Yeah.
Do go down to Honduras much?
see your necklace.
You look a little like you could be a surfer or hang out in Latin America.
Yeah, I was actually just there this week.
Yeah.
if you ever want to come to Costa Rica.
(41:50):
Um, I found a nice little, I've threatened to throw like a catering conference down thereand just bring a bunch of people under the guise of let's talk catering and then also go
fishing and do whatever.
It's just very, the town I'm in is it's a pain to get there.
It's three and a half hours from the airport, but it's also why it's great because it'snot a touristy town.
(42:13):
Great restaurants, great people.
great beach, great mountains, great vibe, but it's not overrun with like, you know, peopletrying to buy trinkets and, you know, just an overly touristy trap place.
It's not that kind of vibe.
yeah, those are the worst.
Yeah, it sounds awesome.
Awesome, well any final words or advice for anybody in the business who's working onbuilding their brand, their catering, any takeaways?
(42:41):
I think it all comes down to personal relationships and getting out and getting your faceknown.
Social is local.
If you're using social, it's got to be localized.
Talk about your team members.
Talk about what you're doing in the community.
Talk about how you're invested in the community and how you care about the community andare passionate about what you do.
And that'll resonate through your guests.
(43:01):
I think that's important.
For sure, for sure.
And you can't fake that.
It has to be from the heart, for sure.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Thanks so much, John.
I'm gonna count us out.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.