April 16, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Restaurant Catering Smarts, Michael Attias sits down with Erle Dardick, founder of CaterLinked and the Off Premises Growth Academy—and one of the most respected voices in restaurant off-premises strategy.
Erle’s journey started back in 1996 with the purchase of Tony’s Deli in Vancouver. Fast forward nearly 30 years, and he’s become a major force in helping restaurant operators succeed in the off-premises world of catering, takeout, and delivery.
In this candid conversation, Erle and Michael talk about:
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The evolution of catering from back-of-house afterthought to business-critical revenue stream.
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Why tech-enabled systems and operations are non-negotiable if you want to scale.
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How focus and clarity drive profitability—and what to avoid if you’re serious about growth.
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The future of catering and what restaurants must do now to stay relevant.
You’ll walk away with battle-tested strategies for building a more efficient, profitable, and scalable catering business. Whether you’re just starting or hitting a plateau, this episode is your blueprint for growth.
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.
(00:04):
you
(00:28):
Hello again, I am Michael Adias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smarts and today's guestis Earl Dardoch, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Mikey Media Software, the Catering
Institute and the Off-Premise Growth Academy.
And I'm sure there's more to add in there like his deli we'll talk about.
With over two decades of experience, Earl helps restaurant operators thrive in theoff-premises dining.
(00:52):
environment by integrating innovative technology and strategies.
As a thought leader in the industry, he continues to aspire businesses to optimize theircatering and delivery operations in a constantly evolving landscape.
And we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get into asking Earl a bunch of questions, let's take a minute to recognizeour sponsor.
This episode is brought to you by CaterZen Catering Software, the industry leader inhelping restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:19):
Discover why top independent
and enterprise restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase their cateringsales.
Go to www.caterzen.com.
Earl, how are you doing today?
I'm great, Michael.
I'm great.
know, I'm just like, why am I the first of all before you know, there's 100 centimeters ofsnow coming on the mountain starting tonight.
(01:43):
100.
It's going to be a week.
This is like a week.
This is like I've been waiting all season for this week.
So I'm just like, you know, there's just I do my best thinking and sort of like, you know,when I'm up in the mountains and I'm skiing, I'm in nature, I'm on a Whistler and I'm
doing my thing.
It's really a meditation, know?
So it's it's like totally like, you know, connecting to nature.
(02:06):
I find my nervous system is dialed all the way down, you know?
That's how I feel at the beach.
And you know, I used to ski.
I'm not very good anymore, but I had a friend whose dad had a place in Park City.
And when you get on top of the mountain and it's snowing and that snow muffles everythingout, like it is just so Zen and peaceful.
And I'm not a woo woo person.
I'm just woo.
(02:27):
And same thing with the beach.
When I go to the beach or I take a nap on my day bed and just hear the waves crashing,like it's like, I feel like 30 pounds is off my shoulder.
But when I come back to Nashville, it's like,
If I didn't have to come home for business, I don't know that I've ever returned.
So, and nothing against Nashville, but it's.
I understand.
Maybe it's part of our age too, right?
(02:49):
So where we are, so.
I mean, I don't know how old you are, but maybe, I think I'm older than you, I don't know.
Thank you.
Yeah, white.
I'm 59.
Yeah, we're the same age then.
When do you turn 60?
Next February, I just had my birthday.
so I am older.
Mine's in April.
My kids are taking me to Napa for my 60th.
(03:10):
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I identify as 42 and I'm going to petition the Supreme Court to change my legaldocuments.
I think you should.
Okay, I know we've got a lot to cover.
Why don't you give everybody a quick background and you know, we have very similarbackgrounds to food to the tech.
(03:31):
So why don't you give everybody a high level and then we can dig into some meat andpotatoes.
Yeah, okay, sure.
Um, let me, I'll start.
I'm well, maybe in 1996 I bought a deli.
Okay.
I was a young entrepreneur.
I was 30 years old, had a young family starting.
Uh, this was in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Um, it was called Tony's deli.
(03:52):
It had been there for since 1972.
like, I don't remember how many years, but like 30, 40 years.
And it was gone through several hands and there was a guy named David that actually ownedthe deli and he was a great entrepreneur and a wonderful in the kitchen and just put out
great products.
And Tony's developed this
this great reputation.
And David, as he wanted to expand this business, he went and got a commissary and hestarted doing all these things.
(04:15):
And sure enough, he found himself to be in a little hot water.
His strong suit was in creating.
He wasn't so strong administratively or business-wise.
And I became his business partner in the deli.
And in that process, we identified that catering was a huge opportunity.
This is 1996, Michael.
So this is like, we're running a Unilwell cash register in the deli.
(04:37):
And the format was, you you'd walk up to a display case, we had sandwiches, salads,desserts, salads were done by weight, sandwiches were done by what we call the round,
that's maybe another podcast.
And then we had coffees and sweets and all that kind of stuff.
And then, you you'd pick it out of the deli case, it was either a fresh sandwich or it wasone for the grill.
And we would put it on the panini grill.
In those days, you couldn't even get panini grills.
(04:59):
We brought them in from Italy and off we went.
And Tony's became...
reputable.
Within the context of retail transactions, people were coming in the front door.
David had been very successful in getting some press coverage and getting the brand andthe food was great and the service was good and it was a cool place in Vancouver.
And so I got involved as the business guy that came in to help David to clean up hissituation, which was quite difficult.
(05:26):
So we rolled the assets into a new company.
Started from the beginning.
I took on all the vendors and suppliers and David had almost my...
And I worked with David
We paid everybody back and it was a very slow process.
And that was my entrepreneurial beginning in the food business.
And so in that process, catering became obvious to me.
And I came from a business to business background, so it was comfortable for me.
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And we started on the floor, shaking hands, kissing babies, know, hey, do you cater?
Yeah, of course, yeah.
Yeah, sure, we can do that.
100 people, no problem.
kissing mothers, I get it.
You know, it's funny, were you in B2B sales before?
Yeah, always my whole life, you know, my whole life.
very funny.
I'm not gonna mention the name, but a very, very big franchise company.
(06:11):
I was on the phone with the person who handles off-premise and catering.
And we were talking about, like, I can't tell you how many times I've consulted forchains.
And I said, if you're gonna hire, look for a franchisee, look for a guy that used to sellB2B.
in their previous life and wants a business, let them go out and pound the streets.
They'll bring in another couple hundred grand in catering and they'll pay for the guywatching the register making the sandwiches all day long.
(06:36):
And your unit economics will be through the roof.
But for some reason, they'd rather hire somebody who thinks if I write a check and put theclown on the door, it will come.
Well, we'll talk about that a little more because it's all dovetailing into I think whatneeds to happen.
ultimately, Tony's Deli became this sort of experiment, if you will, and the turnaround ofit.
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was a distressed deli.
We started to fix it.
We used catering as a strategy.
Our point of sale system wouldn't work for catering.
So we had a piece of paper.
And then we had Kate.
Kate was like, or Sarah, sorry, before Kate was Sarah.
Sarah was like, we made her the catering leader.
Sarah, here.
Poor Sarah.
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And we were very manual in the back end of this thing.
And then we engineered really what was the workflow, which was order entry, which wasorders, QuickBooks invoice.
We had a delivery log book that was like, had eight columns, because I was running trucksand all this stuff.
And we had all this columns and it was all manual.
And there was a web developer in my building doing web-based animation in the mid 90sdoing upstairs in the building.
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and he would come downstairs and we'd talk and he'd go, what the hell are you doing here?
This is crazy.
said, well, you know what?
We have bootstrap deli.
We had no money to buy it.
A server in those days was like 25K.
You know, and I didn't have money for that.
So he said, I'll just put you up in this hosted environment.
We just rented web space, 25 bucks a month.
And yeah, it's amazing.
(08:08):
It's not, you know, I had the idea for Kater's and.
Originally, it was restaurant catering systems and people go, you have a cateringbusiness, you have a restaurant.
So we changed the name and then we needed to be a little bit more agnostic.
But when I was waiting tables at Corky's in college, I'd sit rolling silverware upstairsand they had three women on the phone taking orders.
They blew out.
(08:28):
Like on a Friday, they'd have 10, 15 drop off orders and huge picnics for thousands ofpeople.
And what would happen is every single time somebody would call, what's your name?
What's your company?
What's your address?
What's your credit card?
You know, all this stuff.
And then the manager would sit for an hour at the end of the day and take all the ticketsand add up how many pounds of pork, how many pounds of beef.
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And at the time I had a friend, he was in his forties, he owned some jewelry stores.
Total genius guy, used to work on Wall Street.
He taught himself how to program in D base three plus.
And he wrote this entire system for his jewelry store with even printing the little tagsfor the rings.
And I used to sit and think.
You know, if I knew how to program a deep base three plus, I could write a program forthem and eliminate all this headache.
(09:14):
So I literally sat on that idea for like 22 years.
yeah, overnight success over for after 40 years.
That's, that's what I've got.
So, I mean.
So we're in this process, right?
We're just, we're chipping away.
And I was in the pursuit of making a great deli, Michael.
I saw catering as the force multiplier that would be the turnaround of the deli.
(09:39):
It was absolutely the way to go while we maintain our core business.
Of course, we had to do that, right?
So that was where the energy was coming from.
But the subtleties inside that deli in terms of running it.
and running it in the context of how to maximize it for catering, all the functions,features, ideas got baked into the tech over time.
(10:02):
And so we did that for five years.
So fast forward like 1996 to 2001, 9-11 happens.
Tech sector blows up.
The world changes.
Stock market crashes.
Pullback on catering.
I don't know if you remember it.
Big pullback on catering.
I'm sitting in my deli going, just, at this, but the deli was doing, now it was doing 2.3million a year in sales.
(10:26):
It was generating a million two in cashflow.
This was a very profitable little business.
was chaotic.
We bought the business next door.
had eight trucks running out the back and it was, it was a catering machine.
mean, half my business was catering at that point.
I actually changed the name to Tony's Deli and Catering Company.
And I often tell people that, that they should do that because, know, Panera, imagine itwas like Panera Bread and Catering Company.
(10:47):
Can you imagine?
Like.
Their sales were spiked 5 % overnight.
the roof, there's like conceptually they just can't get there.
But anyways, we'll talk, we can dissect that a little later.
anyway, so that was the model that developed and we had this tech in the cloud that wasrunning.
It was a separate business.
We bought the commissary next door.
We were in high volume production in primary B2B transactions.
(11:09):
And 9-11 happened.
Catering dipped off maybe 30, 40 % overnight.
It was fast.
The recovery was much quicker.
And that was where I pivoted.
started going on and my buddy said to me, Earl, you're the most advanced deli in theworld.
You gotta show people this tech.
I'm going like it never works.
this and the drill.
I'm going like, it goes down.
(11:29):
I mean, this is like early, right?
Try and get someone on the phone to reboot the server somewhere, like forget it.
It was tough times.
Anyway, so I pivoted.
I showed what I thought was a competitor of mine.
and that was unique.
It was called the Spector Great River Restaurants.
As a matter of fact, this is my firsthand written contract, look.
(11:54):
Yeah, that's Monkey's first contract.
yeah.
here's what was interesting, Michael.
Oh, they had a brand called the Bread Garden, which had like 17 stores.
they also had, they were a public company that had other brands as well.
And they were partners with bigger public companies.
Long story short, they wanted to retreat back to the fast casual brand and they wereselling everything else.
(12:18):
They were getting out.
And this was a reinvestment back into that brand.
But what they had was a commissary that was in Vancouver that was feeding their 17 cafesand also feeding 500 gas stations every day.
wow.
Yeah, and they were using a product called Datapacks, which was an old, you know, and sothey asked us if we could replace that and we took on that project.
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That's what that project was.
And it wasn't catering, it was actually commissary.
Yeah, commissary, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we were in commissaries.
Yeah, yeah, John, yeah, yeah, yeah, Monkey Bakery, yeah.
like killer.
You know, listen, there's a genre of Michael London bakeries they're called.
(13:04):
Michael London is the baker with the recipes.
if you look at the artisan bread business, I spent a lot of time in there with guys likeSteve Sullivan, like early artisan bread guys in San Francisco, Acme Bread Company, early,
early ones.
you know, a central bread company, Grand Central, all of this on the West Coast because myjourney became, I had a successful commissary, I went down to Seattle and I ended up in
(13:26):
the bakery and commissary space, that's what happened.
And it wasn't until I got to 2005 when I landed on Boudin Bakery because Dave Wolfgram wasrunning it and he came out of Corner Bakery and they had 21 retail locations with catering
going out of everywhere.
They had two wholesale bakeries in San Francisco and had a mail order for Feldman House.
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And they gave us a project and they said, we want you to do the mail order.
It's called Monkey Mail Order.
We wanted you to do the two bakeries, which we did.
We wanted you to do our catering business and we want you to integrate with micros becausewe want you to do our takeout.
So we took all that.
Okay, and it was successful.
It's still going by the way, still running.
(14:10):
So we were in all this back end of these like,
multi-unit restaurant operators in the genre where they maybe had centralized kitchensfeeding themselves.
Yeah, okay, that's where we were.
And off we went.
And then we continued on, and then 2007 was the defining moment.
Because that's when we brought on Einstein Brothers Bagels.
It was our first national account, it about 500 locations.
(14:32):
They just wanted the catering piece of it.
So we stepped back, we looked at our product, which was B2B, food manufacturing.
We went all the way deep into
Supply chain management, purchasing inventory, recipes, formulas.
Yeah, was deep.
Okay, it was all time.
Three, four, notice this?
It's fast.
(14:53):
It was just like a total creative explosion of just like.
like me, don't, you're not the tech guy, right?
You don't program at all.
I'm the business guy and yeah, then the logic, like the business logic inside the tech ismy designs, you Yeah.
My head already is like...
(15:15):
And so yeah, so we ended up in this space and then in the pivot was when we stepped backand we stripped the product back.
That's where Mo came in.
This is 2007.
Mo was the...
best thing that ever happened to me because he was the one that took like 40 differentcode bases.
And it was like, we need one code base.
(15:36):
And that was the Einstein's project.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that became just like sales, ordering, accounting, production, delivery.
Right.
integrated into their ecosystem and that became the future of Monkey.
And what was interesting about it was it was early and nobody understood what we weredoing very well.
(15:57):
So that fast forward three years and then I just wrote this book.
You we all have a book now, okay.
So the book was, I got so tired of explaining it like you do Michael, you know, but mytarget, my focus was on multi-unit restaurant executives because I saw the opportunity for
what was.
If you have a thousand restaurants, it's just like having, you know, it's no different.
You have one restaurant or a thousand, it's the same, it's just scaled up, right?
(16:18):
So that was the birth of the Catering Institute, which became the force multiplier in thewhole thing.
Okay, so then fast forward, ba-ba-bum, did conferences, did all that.
2019 had an exit to easy cater, sorry it's so long, exit to easy cater.
And then I left there, I tumbled for a while, I had won.
But emotionally I experienced a loss.
(16:43):
It took me a while to work through that.
It was hard, it was hard, emotionally difficult.
And then the pandemic happened.
mean, so much of me was tied to that 23 year journey of just like every day.
You know, you're obsessed about it.
It's so part of who you are when it's gone.
In my case, I sold it to a company that didn't want me around anymore, which I knew.
(17:08):
And so it was a bit of a, know, kind of that kind of thing.
Anyway, so I ended up then doing some work.
I was invited to be the general manager of catering at Olo.
I did that for a while.
It was interesting.
Got a good insight, you know, view of like what does the online ordering world look likeas it relates to catering and like what is the gap, which is, you know, big and we can
(17:29):
talk about all that stuff too.
Comprehensive versus non-comprehensive solutions.
And then, you my recommendation for them was to take a break because they were justacquired wisely.
They had a lot of stuff going on.
They needed to get through all that stuff and then come back at it, which of course, youknow, they're doing.
And then I was invited by Lunchbox to come and kind of run the same process there.
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And, you know, that was just a different thing.
was a company at a different stage.
Wasn't ready for me, I don't think.
I wasn't ready for it.
It wasn't what I was personally looking for.
And they're trying to find their way.
you know, again, online ordering company trying
And that became the epiphany for me, which was about a year ago, which was I realized thatthe biggest gap in my life in this entire thing was the connections, like what we're doing
(18:17):
now.
It's the friendships, it's the conversation, it's the trading of ideas, which is reallywhat I was missing.
And so I took on the workshop, I did the restaurant catering workshop last year and thebirth of the Off-Premises Growth Academy and that led to this digital community we're
creating called Cater Linked.
And my vision of that community is that it's peer group oriented and people are learningfrom each other.
(18:40):
It's a no selling zone, it's meant to really try and create some authentic conversationsbecause I believe that the truth...
is within, like people know what's going on.
And I think like the companies that are doing really good work and really good quality arenot scared of that because they have really good solutions and they actually want that
conversation.
(19:00):
Okay.
And everybody else that's saying they have it, but they don't, okay.
They need to be sort of called out in the process and they can catch up by all means, youplease, I mean, continue chipping away and investing and working, you know, but there's
big differences between
catering technology, you know, know that more than anybody, but yeah, so that's basicallywhere I'm at.
(19:23):
And I'm just, really having fun now because, you know, health, work, play, love, all inplace in my life.
My work was a gap, it was hard for a bit, and now I feel like it's in good spot, yeah.
So you're sort of in the grandfather phase instead of the father phase.
Like you can show up, have fun with the grandkids and then get back to skiing or doingwhat you want.
(19:47):
Or Costa Rica, come hang out with me.
I'm gonna wait for your successful exit so we can celebrate down there.
Well, listen, every entrepreneur, you're not gonna live forever, know, like you're not,so.
Okay, fine, but yeah.
Maybe.
everybody might kill themselves with AI and we can talk about AI in a minute.
(20:10):
That's a whole nother.
I've been obsessed with.
has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to find a way through.
Yeah, I have two kids too.
We'll see.
Right now, like I enjoy, like I could have a development team of 5,000 people because likemy head doesn't stop and there's just more and more stuff.
(20:32):
So I'm loving the hell out of that.
So, I mean, look, you've been, you know, I'm newer to the enterprise space.
And you've been working in this space and you you've seen like all the cast of characters,right?
You know, it's like the the heroes and the supervillains.
What differentiates the winning brands?
(20:54):
And I'm going to call the losing brands, you know, the ones that, know, really.
Yeah, like most Southwest Grill.
yeah.
OK.
crush it and somebody else, they just get what the phone rate brings in, right?
Or what Easy Cater gets them online, right?
They're not really, what do see as some of the big challenges?
(21:18):
Michael.
You for me, it really starts on the executive team, to be honest.
You know, it's all to do with what is the vision of the brand and is catering core tothat?
And do you understand what that means?
Because people don't understand what it means to have catering core to the strategy andembedded inside.
(21:39):
a multi-unit restaurant environment in the enterprise space.
And you're seeing this now, because I know you're working with Tzatziki and some people,like you're getting the experience, which is, you know, basically the dynamic is depending
on whether or not you're a franchisor or if you're a corporate, okay, sometimes you're ahard bread of both, right?
Sometimes even under the system, the franchisor system, there's a franchisee that'scorporate, they have a hundred store, and that happens, right?
(22:02):
And so it begins at the strategy.
which is like, what do you want to do here guys?
Do you want to offer centralized services to your franchisees?
Do you want to control the experience?
I've been in the biggest brands in the world, okay, and I can tell you, I don't know whatit is now, but I'm sure it hasn't changed much, but in those days, that catering got away
because franchisees needed to survive and there's stores that don't do necessarily welland so they went off into catering on their own while the franchisor didn't support them
(22:31):
or they didn't have a program for it, right?
You know, it's funny.
So the guy that used to sell me Southern pride smokers, his son was a manager for somebarbecue, you know, they had 20, 30 locations and his dad did a lot of barbecue catering
out of Brownsville, Tennessee.
And he asked his daddy goes, Hey, can I borrow some of your cambros and his sale, that'show he turned around his, his fledgling operation, but no support from corporate or
(22:59):
anything.
Right.
And.
get it, they don't get it.
So, anyway, so what has to happen is like the brand, like when I look at a brand and Isee, let's talk 100 locations just for argument's sake.
you know, I look at a Monday to Friday business, maybe you see it differently.
Like the event catering business, let's just agree it's over there, okay?
Like that's just an anomaly.
(23:19):
It's like if you want to do events, great, it's another business, okay?
You need another leader for it.
It's got a whole different work process.
You want to go, you know, but what we're talking about is restaurants.
And this is really important because catering out of restaurants is unique problem torestaurants.
And here's the challenge restaurants don't understand is that they're getting their asseshanded to them, if you will, not against each other.
(23:42):
But you've got like convenience stores, OK, that are setting up commissaries and they'redoing deals with.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and all those guys.
And they're basically restaurants.
7-Eleven is running a whole restaurant program.
So this is like the differentiation time and segmentation of markets.
This is about getting back into your communities and providing more services to your fansof your brand.
(24:07):
And the differentiation between those channels is what's critical.
And that is a complex dynamic that lives at the brand level, who's accustomed tobillboards, television advertising, to drive traffic, couponing, right?
They don't understand the concept.
You actually have to have a database.
You need B2B sales teams.
You gotta go be knocking on doors.
You gotta do sampling.
(24:27):
What do mean invoicing?
What's in accounts or Civo?
Like it's conceptually not even in their DNA.
Okay.
Like that's the thing.
So you asked me the question, what do I see?
The brands where the sponsorship was at the ownership level, catering was, and theyinvested in the strategies, made the right investments, and then put in the behaviors and
(24:49):
policies and procedures within the context of their operations.
As time has gone on, they are performing at the top.
So we can name a whole bunch of people.
mean, you know,
Mike Axiotis, for example, over at Lehigh Valley, he's 26 units.
(25:09):
He's a Red Robin franchisee and within the Red Robin system, he's performing like doubleeverybody else.
But he did it.
In those days, he put in Monkey, he did all the integration work, he did all the training,he set up a sales team.
And he said to me a while ago, said, Erlef, now for the work we did with you guys in allthose years leading up to the pandemic, we would have been out of business.
(25:29):
So yeah.
do you, why do you think that like there's not a secret in the world anymore?
Right.
You could look and see how here's 50 guys that are crushing it.
Why are the other guys sitting on their hands and going,
it's big.
It's so big that it requires a chief catering officer in the boardroom.
(25:53):
That's how big it is.
No.
No.
Yeah, yeah, I'm pushing.
As a matter of fact, Caterlinked is all about that because that leader is sitting withinthe context of our community.
And it's ridiculous in my mind, especially at scale.
Okay, you're talking a thousand restaurants.
I didn't give you the math.
We were talking about math before at hundred restaurants.
At a hundred restaurants, it's 360,000 a year in an incremental bump to your restaurantbased on four orders a day.
(26:22):
It's like, order.
I mean, maybe your data is different.
This is data coming through.
We should ask you your data.
What is the average order size?
How many orders a day should a store expect?
And we could do that.
And I can tell you when you take 360,000 and you multiply it by 100, it's $36 million.
(26:45):
Right.
And it's half the profit.
So you would think that half the profit for a brand, you should have somebody with a seatat the table.
let's talk about why it's half the profit.
And this is so important because it lives in the context of restaurants.
the restaurants, the infrastructure's already sunk.
And you've already got labor in the restaurants.
(27:05):
And so they're just busier.
So their labor, right?
Okay, so you and I get that.
That is very hard to translate into
a plan for execution across a multi-unit restaurant executive where you have, you know,private equity ownership, you have this, you have that, know, there's a lot of ivory tower
(27:25):
stuff happening in our industry where it's like, you know, you know, but the lift is sopositive, but it does take time.
It is an investment.
So if I said to you, Michael, look, you've got 150 restaurants, okay?
Let's say 50 of them never do catering.
There's a hundred that do, okay?
and want to do it that way.
(27:45):
And we modestly look at four orders per location, know, per day, Monday to Friday.
It's 20 orders a week.
You know, it's not a big deal, right?
You and I know that, okay?
And if we look at that as incremental on top of the existing operation, then, you know,we're looking at this $36 million centralized business, right?
(28:05):
So you need to put a team in place to manage that business unit within the context of thisrestaurant.
And the reason why it's half the profits is because of the flow through, which is...
Right, it's all in, you're just paying food, food and packaging and credit cardprocessing.
mean.
small incremental increase in your overhead maybe, but you do have some capital you got toinvest.
(28:28):
You got to put in tech, capital investment takes time.
Packaging you have to commit to.
human capital for sales and marketing.
need trucks.
What's your delivery strategy?
Maybe you'll use third party, you'll outsource great CSP, but maybe you want to keep onevan for yourself and you'll do big orders.
Do you think it has to do with, know, when you're growing a brand, it's always like, howmany units?
(28:51):
We're going to add 10 units, we're going to add 50 units, we're going to do 100.
And so they see it, their math is units.
Where I see it is, I've made this investment.
How do you maximize ROI?
Because the people I was talking to today, $750,000 to build a QSR.
it's like, and they're not even doing a million a year in volume.
(29:14):
WTF like doesn't make sense
Oh my God, it's about leveraging the brand.
And this is another great conversation of virtual brands versus these brands.
Listen, the brands that you and I are talking about right now are the most powerful brandsin America, Michael.
They're just the...
And so we don't underestimate that because that has decades of memories and emotionsattached to, right?
(29:36):
Like we can, I remember going back as a kid and going to places on Ponderosa steakhouse.
I don't know if it was in the US or in Auburn.
You know, yeah, there were no...
Yeah, that was the birthday dinner.
and broke, that's a big night out.
$8.99.
In those days $8.99 was a lot of money.
(29:57):
But those are memories.
If somebody came to me today and said, hey, there's a Ponderosa steak catering program andit's made up of steak sandwiches and some great Caprese salads and whatever, and somebody
reinvented it and was delivering it out of a commissary, I would order it because Ibirthday memories.
So the power of the brand.
pizza will bring the piano player out.
(30:17):
yeah.
So the power of the brand is really why restaurants have this opportunity.
Okay.
Oh, they have such an upper hand.
And if you're gonna get Mexican, wouldn't you rather get it from a Mexican restaurant thango to a generic caterer that may or may not do it well or barbecue or Italian or, you
(30:39):
know, there's so many advantages, but.
so the trick is to, you have to step back and look at the brand, look at the experience,see what's executable.
You have to create menus that are different from your in-store menus.
And you have to create your menus, okay, in the best interest of your kitchen production.
(31:01):
So you actually need to reverse engineer, start at the manufacturing process, see what'seasy and then, yeah, yeah.
And, and, you know, there's people that I tell like, Hey, this doesn't really travel well,but here's a way you could make it travel well, or, you know, so there's definitely some
stuff.
I know we're a little tight on time and I want to.
(31:23):
We got three days.
No.
We can do more sessions.
Um, yeah, we'll have you back on for sure.
Let's pivot to ai because five years ago Um, actually I had a friend 20 years ago wastalking to me about ai.
He's one of these computer geeks.
He's on his third fourth Tech startup he he codes and I I didn't even know what the hellhe was talking about.
(31:46):
It was greek and now Maybe five years ago.
I said one day ai will get to where
The AI is taking the phone order and probably even better.
It's going to know, you know, your psychological profile.
Are you analytical?
It's like, give me the facts.
Are you emotional and going to ask you about your hobbies and your kids and the weatherand are you going skiing?
(32:08):
It's going to know where you are.
Earl, Hey, I see that you're getting dumped on.
you going skiing tomorrow?
And you're going to think like, my God, this is the best thing since sliced white bread.
that's coming.
It's not there, but it will come.
you know, what's your take on AI?
Just in the catering space, do see anybody doing it?
(32:28):
Where do you see opportunity?
I can tell you where we're working, but I want to get your take on where you see it.
think that here's the thing, like, you know, all these technologies become disruptive,right?
It's like it's like that's the thing.
It's like everybody's moving more towards, you know, seamless, frictionless, that kind ofthing.
I would say software as a service like it's that's a threat there.
Like it's got it's got to watch the AI like.
(32:49):
But but maybe.
maybe what will happen is the AI will just come around it and the SAS thing will always bethe core of it and then things are happening around it probably.
But I'm always like what's lurking in the background is the question, right?
It's like, you know.
conversation and I don't know.
Again, I don't have anything to base this on except years of experience and just sort ofspit balling.
(33:12):
So, you know, if you're a big company and you bring in SAP, you have consultants from thebig four.
My daughter-in-law is consultant with the big four and they basically interview you,right?
They want to, they're going to get all the information out of you because you don't evenknow what to ask yourself, right?
So I see in the future you will have an AI consultant.
Yeah.
and it will build software for you based on your unique needs, right?
(33:34):
So Tony's Deli is different than Corky's Barbecue is this.
So literally, if you have a thousand and a thousand brands, it will be a thousanddifferent personalized versions based on your workflow, you know, the colors, where you
want your fields.
Maybe you have some idiosyncratic because you know.
(33:55):
you working on that stuff yet?
Or it's not there yet.
you want to find me some backers?
Because I think that will be disruptive.
It will be, there will be two or three brands that do that, not only in catering, butevery business.
Well, I would say, look, if you want to find backers, that's not going to be a problem foryou.
You're a horse in the race.
that's the strategy you want to go, you should think about that.
I would say that fueling up your AI investment is a very good idea.
(34:20):
What am I seeing out there?
I am diving deep into agentic AI.
don't know if you spent any time on that, just, so what I'm, what I'm learning is thatthere's agents that are getting created.
It's called an AI agent.
It's agentic AI and an agent is task oriented.
So it does a task or it could be a few tasks, but a task.
(34:42):
And so when I look at software as a service and I see sales, let's just talk about CRM asan example.
Okay.
That's, that's, that's a module.
Let's say
Order entry is a module, okay?
Accounting module, production module, okay?
And delivery module.
Forget about the data for a minute.
I'm talking workflow, okay?
(35:03):
And so what I'm seeing are agents that are starting to displace pieces of what was amanual order entry process, okay?
In our space.
So whether it's voice that's now hooking right into order management, hitting point ofsale, or drive through is a good example.
is an example of an agent.
(35:23):
So the theory is, and here's the big, nobody knows this yet, so we're gonna learn, but Ithink maybe this is where it's going, is that it's possible that the next generation of
tech for catering and all tech really, okay, is threading together these AI agents.
(35:43):
to all do separate specialized functions within.
So it could be like, hey, this agent responsible for logistics and scheduling the drivers,whether it's internal third party based on, and knows Earl's got a van, Michael's got a
Honda Civic, Michael can take orders of this size.
So it's gonna be highly and,
(36:08):
Now imagine this, okay, let's fast forward 10 years.
Let's just say, okay, there's no reason why the AI agent that's responsible for productioncan't communicate to a robot.
the robots will be making it, there's no doubt.
like Chipotle is already deep in that investment, salad robot.
(36:31):
I'll show you, we can spend so much time on this, that's fun stuff.
But there's a company called Hyphen that they've invested big money in, you and this is,you know, look it up, Hyphen, I think it's called Hyphen, just Hyphen Chipotle investment,
because they've got a venture fund for this stuff.
And...
And it's fascinating.
It's robotic salad production is what it is.
And so there's no reason why the production AI agent can't give it the instructions itneeds to receive.
(36:57):
And that AI agent is being fed and information and communicating with the order entryagent who's communicating with the AI sales agent.
And each of those agents are working 24 hours a day.
So the sales agent is prospecting.
It's literally scraping the internet.
It's looking for all the law firms with more than 25 people in Dallas.
(37:23):
They're scraping lunch will be provided, Nashville, Tennessee, know, everything.
looking.
We can use the agentic AI to look at unstructured emails.
We can give an instruction to an AI agent as a company to look at all the company emailsand find every single thing that mentions catering and move it into a structured database
(37:49):
so we can actually interpret it, understand it, and take some action against it.
That's happening now.
Salesforce is doing that already.
EasyCater is already in a partnership agreement with them.
Go check it out.
Agenic AI?
It's agentic, just look up Salesforce.
Offline, send me a note, I'll find it for you I'll send you a link.
(38:10):
cool.
We're working with a voice company and we're gonna pilot a test.
So basically...
they have like an answering service that's AI.
We can have 99 different catering prompts.
So how much notice do you need?
(38:31):
Do you have something for vegans, whatever.
And it sounds like you're talking to a real person and as opposed to getting a voicemailand everybody hates fricking voicemail.
Am I gonna get called back?
it gonna...
And what we want to do is we want to take that information, right?
Whether it's a lost call or whether it's, you know, we can take, what, what questions didEarl ask?
(38:53):
Right?
He asked these five questions and we'll have a dashboard that says we missed a call fromEarl.
he's a customer, not a customer.
Here's his phone number.
And then we have, we have, VoIP in our system.
So I can tell if somebody called Earl back because there's a recording attached to Earl'sname.
Right.
And then when I call back, I know why you called.
(39:14):
So I can say, Hey, I see you called about birthday parties or whatever.
Right.
And then I can then, a pen sales data that says over the last quarter, all these missedcalls, did they monetize into what extent?
Right.
Great.
That's great.
Those are great tools, Michael.
Yeah, you'll get there.
You'll get there.
(39:34):
think for sure.
mean, the tools are getting easier.
Yeah.
like this story.
So I was doing a training session for a big brand and I asked the salespeople, what's yourbiggest pain point?
go, you know, they want them to go out there and knock and sample 10 doors a day and goescoming back at the end of the day and putting business cards in the software and putting
(39:58):
in the notes and all that.
And I said, you know, we've got on our drawing board, we're do a QR, a business cardscanning software.
And I said, but you know, there's this thing I see on Instagram, plot AI, where you candictate.
And I said,
Hold on a second.
So I took out my phone, I took Jatch GPT, and I literally said, I need you to create aspreadsheet for data entry, and here's the fields.
(40:23):
It messed up the fields.
It put first and last name as one field.
I said, split it up, and then I want you to add group, I want you to add note, and I wantyou to add follow-up task.
Literally in front of the whole group, I dictated three prospects.
So you could do it on your way to your car.
I sent the file to the guy on the computer.
And in two seconds, he appended everything in the CRM.
(40:48):
So saving him 45 minutes without us programming it in, just say, use your chat GPT andhack it.
Totally.
You know, it's amazing.
I mean, talk about JATC.
But you do yourself a I prompted a while ago.
said, give me a comparison on functionality between CaterZen, MSI, FlexCatering, Ollo.
Check me.
Go do that.
(41:10):
Maybe you've done.
I can do you one better.
So we're working with one goal consulting.
They're like the manufacturers, Revit tech.
Huh?
Yeah, yeah.
So one of his guys says, Hey, my client is looking at catering, spoon fed, something else.
Right?
Can you give me a comparison?
I'm like, shit, I don't have a week to do a comparison.
(41:30):
So I get on there and I go, could you do a comparison?
I had a chart to him in like five minutes.
it?
amazing.
I mean, you do have to check for accuracy, by the way.
Just do that because it's coming.
It's coming.
It's just it's all just getting better, smarter, better, smarter.
But, know, it's wonderful, Michael, you know, just.
I, you know, one of the things we've got on our, yeah.
(41:54):
You'll edit this out.
Just give me one second here.
I just have to tell these guys I'm running a few minutes behind, okay?
Yeah, we won't be too long.
Keep him busy.
I don't even know he's there.
Okay.
I mean, one of the things we want to use AI for, because everybody says, Oh, who hasn'tordered in 30 days or 45 or 90 days?
(42:19):
We want to look at each customer's buying pattern to intercept when you should reach outto them based on their buying behavior.
And if they change velocity, right?
Yeah.
But what if they used to order for 30 people a week and now it's 15?
What if they spent $20 ahead and now it's $15 ahead?
about, you and I, we should get in room.
(42:40):
How about, how about, how about we find the ones that haven't ordered in six months and wego find them on the internet and see if they've changed their jobs and then update their
profiles and go and reach out and send them a sample.
Yeah, that's a...
And you know what?
You could use this agent.
You could use the agent.
Yes, the ancient.
I yeah.
(43:02):
This is where we're heading here.
This is where we're heading.
And honestly, we could probably ask Chachi PT if you were going to mine data from acatering operating system to maximize sales, give me, ask me all the questions you want
and give me all the possible strategies that we can employ to increase catering sales,repeat sales.
(43:24):
information, we can get all of it.
The difficult part is the implementation of it, which is the hard part.
So I think, not for us, we do, no problem for us, but I'm talking about for operators,like for them to take what we're making for them and implement it into their things.
it's funny, we had this conversation at our, we do Traction EOS operating system,entrepreneur operating system.
(43:50):
And I said, you know, when we used to help restaurants get in the catering business, wedid their menus and marketing and websites and all this.
Nobody did anything, right?
I said.
we're building this badass CRM and all this stuff.
I think we need to offer a service where we will do marketing as a service.
It's like, we know you're not gonna email your customers once a month.
We know you're not gonna call the inactive customers.
(44:13):
We know you're not gonna send out an email promotion to all the people who booked holidayparties last year.
Let us just manage it for you and then you just pay us a fee because you're gonna get anROI as opposed to sitting there and nothing's happening.
Yes.
Are you asking me or you're, I'm just saying, listen, if I'm you, I'm going to findpartners to help with that stuff.
(44:37):
And I'm going to just double down on my tech and scale myself.
Yeah, yeah.
Go make some partnerships.
You know, people like the Off-Premises Growth Academy or other, there's so many peoplethat can go and help, you know.
Hey, if y'all wanna do it, let me know.
Well, know, we have, listen, I'm building a bench of coaches, you they all need work, youknow, so like I'm just trying to, I don't want to do the work.
(44:58):
You know, I mean, I'll do some work.
Yeah, I'll do some of it, but I'm, you know, I do the stuff I like to do, you know, likeI'm doing my advisory stuff, which I'm really enjoying that one-on-one with people.
I'm going to do some workshops, I'll do some teaching, things like that.
I'll probably write some more.
I know we're gonna do another podcast about us getting involved in Caterlink and why don'tyou give everybody, how do you get to Caterlink?
(45:26):
Okay, yeah.
So the latest sort of brainstorm or thought process is if we can create community, like wedid a workshop and the biggest thing that came out of it was people told us they need more
time together in peer work.
That was the big thing that came out and they need to do it in a space that's safe andprivate and where they can actually be free to share.
That's what came out of it.
So that was the birth of caterlinked.com.
(45:48):
And basically we are firing up peer groups in that space.
It's all digital because I wanted it to be affordable and accessible, frankly, because thefeedback was all these events are too expensive and you gotta get on planes and hotels.
And the people that we're targeting, Michael, they don't have a lot of budgets for thisstuff.
Like they just don't.
So I was thinking like, what is a no brainer way we could do this?
Gabriel and Terry are driving that community.
(46:11):
And it's coming, know, we got, every day we're seeing two, three, four more, slowly,slowly.
We just had our first brand bring 10 people, which is cool.
Of course, you you've been very generous and you're supporting the community and we'recreating a zone for you to be able to have some conversations and it's private for you,
nobody else can see it.
(46:31):
So that's kind of the idea.
And then the resource itself is to be a very rich resource in terms of content, in termsof education materials.
I want to try and democratize and aggregate.
yeah, I have a lot of good stuff, you know, but so do you, you know, and so does TJ and sodoes Sam and so does Kelly Grogan and so does everybody.
And everybody's rowing boats in different directions.
(46:51):
And I'm going to talk about these people as being the cream of the cream.
It's not everybody, you know, there's a lot of people that are putting out stuff that areeither copycatting or frankly, it's not that good.
And we don't want that stuff, you know, so we are in a vetting process of qualifying.
and I appreciate that even though I'm a vendor I'm more of a resource And and I appreciatethat it's not a pitch zone, right?
(47:16):
Like you you're paying to pitch everybody because nobody likes that, right?
Yeah, and but but this is what happens like when I went to your show in Denver I justspoke educationally right and then people know the real deal from the non real deal.
They want to work with the real deal That's the way it works.
They
it.
And your customers speak for it.
And you've been in years.
Listen, I'm a big fan, Michael.
(47:38):
So I really appreciate what you're doing, you know.
And I'm for you.
I'm rooting for you because like I had my win already.
So don't need it.
I want you to get yours.
need a big win so I can get my last place in Paris, France.
That's the last place I was born.
Did you know I was born there?
but I got to jump to this other thing.
Can we talk about?
Are we good?
Are we good?
I'm gonna Yeah, we're gonna cut out
(48:15):
Let it.
you
(00:28):
Hello again, I am Michael Adias, your host of Restaurant Catering Smarts and today's guestis Earl Dardoch, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Mikey Media Software, the Catering
Institute and the Off-Premise Growth Academy.
And I'm sure there's more to add in there like his deli we'll talk about.
With over two decades of experience, Earl helps restaurant operators thrive in theoff-premises dining.
(00:52):
environment by integrating innovative technology and strategies.
As a thought leader in the industry, he continues to aspire businesses to optimize theircatering and delivery operations in a constantly evolving landscape.
And we're excited to have him on the show today.
But before we get into asking Earl a bunch of questions, let's take a minute to recognizeour sponsor.
This episode is brought to you by CaterZen Catering Software, the industry leader inhelping restaurants turn their catering chaos into calm.
(01:19):
Discover why top independent
and enterprise restaurants trust CaterZen to save them time and increase their cateringsales.
Go to www.caterzen.com.
Earl, how are you doing today?
I'm great, Michael.
I'm great.
know, I'm just like, why am I the first of all before you know, there's 100 centimeters ofsnow coming on the mountain starting tonight.
(01:43):
100.
It's going to be a week.
This is like a week.
This is like I've been waiting all season for this week.
So I'm just like, you know, there's just I do my best thinking and sort of like, you know,when I'm up in the mountains and I'm skiing, I'm in nature, I'm on a Whistler and I'm
doing my thing.
It's really a meditation, know?
So it's it's like totally like, you know, connecting to nature.
(02:06):
I find my nervous system is dialed all the way down, you know?
That's how I feel at the beach.
And you know, I used to ski.
I'm not very good anymore, but I had a friend whose dad had a place in Park City.
And when you get on top of the mountain and it's snowing and that snow muffles everythingout, like it is just so Zen and peaceful.
And I'm not a woo woo person.
I'm just woo.
(02:27):
And same thing with the beach.
When I go to the beach or I take a nap on my day bed and just hear the waves crashing,like it's like, I feel like 30 pounds is off my shoulder.
But when I come back to Nashville, it's like,
If I didn't have to come home for business, I don't know that I've ever returned.
So, and nothing against Nashville, but it's.
I understand.
Maybe it's part of our age too, right?
(02:49):
So where we are, so.
I mean, I don't know how old you are, but maybe, I think I'm older than you, I don't know.
Thank you.
Yeah, white.
I'm 59.
Yeah, we're the same age then.
When do you turn 60?
Next February, I just had my birthday.
so I am older.
Mine's in April.
My kids are taking me to Napa for my 60th.
(03:10):
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I identify as 42 and I'm going to petition the Supreme Court to change my legaldocuments.
I think you should.
Okay, I know we've got a lot to cover.
Why don't you give everybody a quick background and you know, we have very similarbackgrounds to food to the tech.
(03:31):
So why don't you give everybody a high level and then we can dig into some meat andpotatoes.
Yeah, okay, sure.
Um, let me, I'll start.
I'm well, maybe in 1996 I bought a deli.
Okay.
I was a young entrepreneur.
I was 30 years old, had a young family starting.
Uh, this was in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Um, it was called Tony's deli.
(03:52):
It had been there for since 1972.
like, I don't remember how many years, but like 30, 40 years.
And it was gone through several hands and there was a guy named David that actually ownedthe deli and he was a great entrepreneur and a wonderful in the kitchen and just put out
great products.
And Tony's developed this
this great reputation.
And David, as he wanted to expand this business, he went and got a commissary and hestarted doing all these things.
(04:15):
And sure enough, he found himself to be in a little hot water.
His strong suit was in creating.
He wasn't so strong administratively or business-wise.
And I became his business partner in the deli.
And in that process, we identified that catering was a huge opportunity.
This is 1996, Michael.
So this is like, we're running a Unilwell cash register in the deli.
(04:37):
And the format was, you you'd walk up to a display case, we had sandwiches, salads,desserts, salads were done by weight, sandwiches were done by what we call the round,
that's maybe another podcast.
And then we had coffees and sweets and all that kind of stuff.
And then, you you'd pick it out of the deli case, it was either a fresh sandwich or it wasone for the grill.
And we would put it on the panini grill.
In those days, you couldn't even get panini grills.
(04:59):
We brought them in from Italy and off we went.
And Tony's became...
reputable.
Within the context of retail transactions, people were coming in the front door.
David had been very successful in getting some press coverage and getting the brand andthe food was great and the service was good and it was a cool place in Vancouver.
And so I got involved as the business guy that came in to help David to clean up hissituation, which was quite difficult.
(05:26):
So we rolled the assets into a new company.
Started from the beginning.
I took on all the vendors and suppliers and David had almost my...
And I worked with David
We paid everybody back and it was a very slow process.
And that was my entrepreneurial beginning in the food business.
And so in that process, catering became obvious to me.
And I came from a business to business background, so it was comfortable for me.
(05:48):
And we started on the floor, shaking hands, kissing babies, know, hey, do you cater?
Yeah, of course, yeah.
Yeah, sure, we can do that.
100 people, no problem.
kissing mothers, I get it.
You know, it's funny, were you in B2B sales before?
Yeah, always my whole life, you know, my whole life.
very funny.
I'm not gonna mention the name, but a very, very big franchise company.
(06:11):
I was on the phone with the person who handles off-premise and catering.
And we were talking about, like, I can't tell you how many times I've consulted forchains.
And I said, if you're gonna hire, look for a franchisee, look for a guy that used to sellB2B.
in their previous life and wants a business, let them go out and pound the streets.
They'll bring in another couple hundred grand in catering and they'll pay for the guywatching the register making the sandwiches all day long.
(06:36):
And your unit economics will be through the roof.
But for some reason, they'd rather hire somebody who thinks if I write a check and put theclown on the door, it will come.
Well, we'll talk about that a little more because it's all dovetailing into I think whatneeds to happen.
ultimately, Tony's Deli became this sort of experiment, if you will, and the turnaround ofit.
(06:56):
was a distressed deli.
We started to fix it.
We used catering as a strategy.
Our point of sale system wouldn't work for catering.
So we had a piece of paper.
And then we had Kate.
Kate was like, or Sarah, sorry, before Kate was Sarah.
Sarah was like, we made her the catering leader.
Sarah, here.
Poor Sarah.
(07:17):
And we were very manual in the back end of this thing.
And then we engineered really what was the workflow, which was order entry, which wasorders, QuickBooks invoice.
We had a delivery log book that was like, had eight columns, because I was running trucksand all this stuff.
And we had all this columns and it was all manual.
And there was a web developer in my building doing web-based animation in the mid 90sdoing upstairs in the building.
(07:43):
and he would come downstairs and we'd talk and he'd go, what the hell are you doing here?
This is crazy.
said, well, you know what?
We have bootstrap deli.
We had no money to buy it.
A server in those days was like 25K.
You know, and I didn't have money for that.
So he said, I'll just put you up in this hosted environment.
We just rented web space, 25 bucks a month.
And yeah, it's amazing.
(08:08):
It's not, you know, I had the idea for Kater's and.
Originally, it was restaurant catering systems and people go, you have a cateringbusiness, you have a restaurant.
So we changed the name and then we needed to be a little bit more agnostic.
But when I was waiting tables at Corky's in college, I'd sit rolling silverware upstairsand they had three women on the phone taking orders.
They blew out.
(08:28):
Like on a Friday, they'd have 10, 15 drop off orders and huge picnics for thousands ofpeople.
And what would happen is every single time somebody would call, what's your name?
What's your company?
What's your address?
What's your credit card?
You know, all this stuff.
And then the manager would sit for an hour at the end of the day and take all the ticketsand add up how many pounds of pork, how many pounds of beef.
(08:49):
And at the time I had a friend, he was in his forties, he owned some jewelry stores.
Total genius guy, used to work on Wall Street.
He taught himself how to program in D base three plus.
And he wrote this entire system for his jewelry store with even printing the little tagsfor the rings.
And I used to sit and think.
You know, if I knew how to program a deep base three plus, I could write a program forthem and eliminate all this headache.
(09:14):
So I literally sat on that idea for like 22 years.
yeah, overnight success over for after 40 years.
That's, that's what I've got.
So, I mean.
So we're in this process, right?
We're just, we're chipping away.
And I was in the pursuit of making a great deli, Michael.
I saw catering as the force multiplier that would be the turnaround of the deli.
(09:39):
It was absolutely the way to go while we maintain our core business.
Of course, we had to do that, right?
So that was where the energy was coming from.
But the subtleties inside that deli in terms of running it.
and running it in the context of how to maximize it for catering, all the functions,features, ideas got baked into the tech over time.
(10:02):
And so we did that for five years.
So fast forward like 1996 to 2001, 9-11 happens.
Tech sector blows up.
The world changes.
Stock market crashes.
Pullback on catering.
I don't know if you remember it.
Big pullback on catering.
I'm sitting in my deli going, just, at this, but the deli was doing, now it was doing 2.3million a year in sales.
(10:26):
It was generating a million two in cashflow.
This was a very profitable little business.
was chaotic.
We bought the business next door.
had eight trucks running out the back and it was, it was a catering machine.
mean, half my business was catering at that point.
I actually changed the name to Tony's Deli and Catering Company.
And I often tell people that, that they should do that because, know, Panera, imagine itwas like Panera Bread and Catering Company.
(10:47):
Can you imagine?
Like.
Their sales were spiked 5 % overnight.
the roof, there's like conceptually they just can't get there.
But anyways, we'll talk, we can dissect that a little later.
anyway, so that was the model that developed and we had this tech in the cloud that wasrunning.
It was a separate business.
We bought the commissary next door.
We were in high volume production in primary B2B transactions.
(11:09):
And 9-11 happened.
Catering dipped off maybe 30, 40 % overnight.
It was fast.
The recovery was much quicker.
And that was where I pivoted.
started going on and my buddy said to me, Earl, you're the most advanced deli in theworld.
You gotta show people this tech.
I'm going like it never works.
this and the drill.
I'm going like, it goes down.
(11:29):
I mean, this is like early, right?
Try and get someone on the phone to reboot the server somewhere, like forget it.
It was tough times.
Anyway, so I pivoted.
I showed what I thought was a competitor of mine.
and that was unique.
It was called the Spector Great River Restaurants.
As a matter of fact, this is my firsthand written contract, look.
(11:54):
Yeah, that's Monkey's first contract.
yeah.
here's what was interesting, Michael.
Oh, they had a brand called the Bread Garden, which had like 17 stores.
they also had, they were a public company that had other brands as well.
And they were partners with bigger public companies.
Long story short, they wanted to retreat back to the fast casual brand and they wereselling everything else.
(12:18):
They were getting out.
And this was a reinvestment back into that brand.
But what they had was a commissary that was in Vancouver that was feeding their 17 cafesand also feeding 500 gas stations every day.
wow.
Yeah, and they were using a product called Datapacks, which was an old, you know, and sothey asked us if we could replace that and we took on that project.
(12:42):
That's what that project was.
And it wasn't catering, it was actually commissary.
Yeah, commissary, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we were in commissaries.
Yeah, yeah, John, yeah, yeah, yeah, Monkey Bakery, yeah.
like killer.
You know, listen, there's a genre of Michael London bakeries they're called.
(13:04):
Michael London is the baker with the recipes.
if you look at the artisan bread business, I spent a lot of time in there with guys likeSteve Sullivan, like early artisan bread guys in San Francisco, Acme Bread Company, early,
early ones.
you know, a central bread company, Grand Central, all of this on the West Coast because myjourney became, I had a successful commissary, I went down to Seattle and I ended up in
(13:26):
the bakery and commissary space, that's what happened.
And it wasn't until I got to 2005 when I landed on Boudin Bakery because Dave Wolfgram wasrunning it and he came out of Corner Bakery and they had 21 retail locations with catering
going out of everywhere.
They had two wholesale bakeries in San Francisco and had a mail order for Feldman House.
(13:48):
And they gave us a project and they said, we want you to do the mail order.
It's called Monkey Mail Order.
We wanted you to do the two bakeries, which we did.
We wanted you to do our catering business and we want you to integrate with micros becausewe want you to do our takeout.
So we took all that.
Okay, and it was successful.
It's still going by the way, still running.
(14:10):
So we were in all this back end of these like,
multi-unit restaurant operators in the genre where they maybe had centralized kitchensfeeding themselves.
Yeah, okay, that's where we were.
And off we went.
And then we continued on, and then 2007 was the defining moment.
Because that's when we brought on Einstein Brothers Bagels.
It was our first national account, it about 500 locations.
(14:32):
They just wanted the catering piece of it.
So we stepped back, we looked at our product, which was B2B, food manufacturing.
We went all the way deep into
Supply chain management, purchasing inventory, recipes, formulas.
Yeah, was deep.
Okay, it was all time.
Three, four, notice this?
It's fast.
(14:53):
It was just like a total creative explosion of just like.
like me, don't, you're not the tech guy, right?
You don't program at all.
I'm the business guy and yeah, then the logic, like the business logic inside the tech ismy designs, you Yeah.
My head already is like...
(15:15):
And so yeah, so we ended up in this space and then in the pivot was when we stepped backand we stripped the product back.
That's where Mo came in.
This is 2007.
Mo was the...
best thing that ever happened to me because he was the one that took like 40 differentcode bases.
And it was like, we need one code base.
(15:36):
And that was the Einstein's project.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that became just like sales, ordering, accounting, production, delivery.
Right.
integrated into their ecosystem and that became the future of Monkey.
And what was interesting about it was it was early and nobody understood what we weredoing very well.
(15:57):
So that fast forward three years and then I just wrote this book.
You we all have a book now, okay.
So the book was, I got so tired of explaining it like you do Michael, you know, but mytarget, my focus was on multi-unit restaurant executives because I saw the opportunity for
what was.
If you have a thousand restaurants, it's just like having, you know, it's no different.
You have one restaurant or a thousand, it's the same, it's just scaled up, right?
(16:18):
So that was the birth of the Catering Institute, which became the force multiplier in thewhole thing.
Okay, so then fast forward, ba-ba-bum, did conferences, did all that.
2019 had an exit to easy cater, sorry it's so long, exit to easy cater.
And then I left there, I tumbled for a while, I had won.
But emotionally I experienced a loss.
(16:43):
It took me a while to work through that.
It was hard, it was hard, emotionally difficult.
And then the pandemic happened.
mean, so much of me was tied to that 23 year journey of just like every day.
You know, you're obsessed about it.
It's so part of who you are when it's gone.
In my case, I sold it to a company that didn't want me around anymore, which I knew.
(17:08):
And so it was a bit of a, know, kind of that kind of thing.
Anyway, so I ended up then doing some work.
I was invited to be the general manager of catering at Olo.
I did that for a while.
It was interesting.
Got a good insight, you know, view of like what does the online ordering world look likeas it relates to catering and like what is the gap, which is, you know, big and we can
(17:29):
talk about all that stuff too.
Comprehensive versus non-comprehensive solutions.
And then, you my recommendation for them was to take a break because they were justacquired wisely.
They had a lot of stuff going on.
They needed to get through all that stuff and then come back at it, which of course, youknow, they're doing.
And then I was invited by Lunchbox to come and kind of run the same process there.
(17:50):
And, you know, that was just a different thing.
was a company at a different stage.
Wasn't ready for me, I don't think.
I wasn't ready for it.
It wasn't what I was personally looking for.
And they're trying to find their way.
you know, again, online ordering company trying
And that became the epiphany for me, which was about a year ago, which was I realized thatthe biggest gap in my life in this entire thing was the connections, like what we're doing
(18:17):
now.
It's the friendships, it's the conversation, it's the trading of ideas, which is reallywhat I was missing.
And so I took on the workshop, I did the restaurant catering workshop last year and thebirth of the Off-Premises Growth Academy and that led to this digital community we're
creating called Cater Linked.
And my vision of that community is that it's peer group oriented and people are learningfrom each other.
(18:40):
It's a no selling zone, it's meant to really try and create some authentic conversationsbecause I believe that the truth...
is within, like people know what's going on.
And I think like the companies that are doing really good work and really good quality arenot scared of that because they have really good solutions and they actually want that
conversation.
(19:00):
Okay.
And everybody else that's saying they have it, but they don't, okay.
They need to be sort of called out in the process and they can catch up by all means, youplease, I mean, continue chipping away and investing and working, you know, but there's
big differences between
catering technology, you know, know that more than anybody, but yeah, so that's basicallywhere I'm at.
(19:23):
And I'm just, really having fun now because, you know, health, work, play, love, all inplace in my life.
My work was a gap, it was hard for a bit, and now I feel like it's in good spot, yeah.
So you're sort of in the grandfather phase instead of the father phase.
Like you can show up, have fun with the grandkids and then get back to skiing or doingwhat you want.
(19:47):
Or Costa Rica, come hang out with me.
I'm gonna wait for your successful exit so we can celebrate down there.
Well, listen, every entrepreneur, you're not gonna live forever, know, like you're not,so.
Okay, fine, but yeah.
Maybe.
everybody might kill themselves with AI and we can talk about AI in a minute.
(20:10):
That's a whole nother.
I've been obsessed with.
has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders to find a way through.
Yeah, I have two kids too.
We'll see.
Right now, like I enjoy, like I could have a development team of 5,000 people because likemy head doesn't stop and there's just more and more stuff.
(20:32):
So I'm loving the hell out of that.
So, I mean, look, you've been, you know, I'm newer to the enterprise space.
And you've been working in this space and you you've seen like all the cast of characters,right?
You know, it's like the the heroes and the supervillains.
What differentiates the winning brands?
(20:54):
And I'm going to call the losing brands, you know, the ones that, know, really.
Yeah, like most Southwest Grill.
yeah.
OK.
crush it and somebody else, they just get what the phone rate brings in, right?
Or what Easy Cater gets them online, right?
They're not really, what do see as some of the big challenges?
(21:18):
Michael.
You for me, it really starts on the executive team, to be honest.
You know, it's all to do with what is the vision of the brand and is catering core tothat?
And do you understand what that means?
Because people don't understand what it means to have catering core to the strategy andembedded inside.
(21:39):
a multi-unit restaurant environment in the enterprise space.
And you're seeing this now, because I know you're working with Tzatziki and some people,like you're getting the experience, which is, you know, basically the dynamic is depending
on whether or not you're a franchisor or if you're a corporate, okay, sometimes you're ahard bread of both, right?
Sometimes even under the system, the franchisor system, there's a franchisee that'scorporate, they have a hundred store, and that happens, right?
(22:02):
And so it begins at the strategy.
which is like, what do you want to do here guys?
Do you want to offer centralized services to your franchisees?
Do you want to control the experience?
I've been in the biggest brands in the world, okay, and I can tell you, I don't know whatit is now, but I'm sure it hasn't changed much, but in those days, that catering got away
because franchisees needed to survive and there's stores that don't do necessarily welland so they went off into catering on their own while the franchisor didn't support them
(22:31):
or they didn't have a program for it, right?
You know, it's funny.
So the guy that used to sell me Southern pride smokers, his son was a manager for somebarbecue, you know, they had 20, 30 locations and his dad did a lot of barbecue catering
out of Brownsville, Tennessee.
And he asked his daddy goes, Hey, can I borrow some of your cambros and his sale, that'show he turned around his, his fledgling operation, but no support from corporate or
(22:59):
anything.
Right.
And.
get it, they don't get it.
So, anyway, so what has to happen is like the brand, like when I look at a brand and Isee, let's talk 100 locations just for argument's sake.
you know, I look at a Monday to Friday business, maybe you see it differently.
Like the event catering business, let's just agree it's over there, okay?
Like that's just an anomaly.
(23:19):
It's like if you want to do events, great, it's another business, okay?
You need another leader for it.
It's got a whole different work process.
You want to go, you know, but what we're talking about is restaurants.
And this is really important because catering out of restaurants is unique problem torestaurants.
And here's the challenge restaurants don't understand is that they're getting their asseshanded to them, if you will, not against each other.
(23:42):
But you've got like convenience stores, OK, that are setting up commissaries and they'redoing deals with.
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and all those guys.
And they're basically restaurants.
7-Eleven is running a whole restaurant program.
So this is like the differentiation time and segmentation of markets.
This is about getting back into your communities and providing more services to your fansof your brand.
(24:07):
And the differentiation between those channels is what's critical.
And that is a complex dynamic that lives at the brand level, who's accustomed tobillboards, television advertising, to drive traffic, couponing, right?
They don't understand the concept.
You actually have to have a database.
You need B2B sales teams.
You gotta go be knocking on doors.
You gotta do sampling.
(24:27):
What do mean invoicing?
What's in accounts or Civo?
Like it's conceptually not even in their DNA.
Okay.
Like that's the thing.
So you asked me the question, what do I see?
The brands where the sponsorship was at the ownership level, catering was, and theyinvested in the strategies, made the right investments, and then put in the behaviors and
(24:49):
policies and procedures within the context of their operations.
As time has gone on, they are performing at the top.
So we can name a whole bunch of people.
mean, you know,
Mike Axiotis, for example, over at Lehigh Valley, he's 26 units.
(25:09):
He's a Red Robin franchisee and within the Red Robin system, he's performing like doubleeverybody else.
But he did it.
In those days, he put in Monkey, he did all the integration work, he did all the training,he set up a sales team.
And he said to me a while ago, said, Erlef, now for the work we did with you guys in allthose years leading up to the pandemic, we would have been out of business.
(25:29):
So yeah.
do you, why do you think that like there's not a secret in the world anymore?
Right.
You could look and see how here's 50 guys that are crushing it.
Why are the other guys sitting on their hands and going,
it's big.
It's so big that it requires a chief catering officer in the boardroom.
(25:53):
That's how big it is.
No.
No.
Yeah, yeah, I'm pushing.
As a matter of fact, Caterlinked is all about that because that leader is sitting withinthe context of our community.
And it's ridiculous in my mind, especially at scale.
Okay, you're talking a thousand restaurants.
I didn't give you the math.
We were talking about math before at hundred restaurants.
At a hundred restaurants, it's 360,000 a year in an incremental bump to your restaurantbased on four orders a day.
(26:22):
It's like, order.
I mean, maybe your data is different.
This is data coming through.
We should ask you your data.
What is the average order size?
How many orders a day should a store expect?
And we could do that.
And I can tell you when you take 360,000 and you multiply it by 100, it's $36 million.
(26:45):
Right.
And it's half the profit.
So you would think that half the profit for a brand, you should have somebody with a seatat the table.
let's talk about why it's half the profit.
And this is so important because it lives in the context of restaurants.
the restaurants, the infrastructure's already sunk.
And you've already got labor in the restaurants.
(27:05):
And so they're just busier.
So their labor, right?
Okay, so you and I get that.
That is very hard to translate into
a plan for execution across a multi-unit restaurant executive where you have, you know,private equity ownership, you have this, you have that, know, there's a lot of ivory tower
(27:25):
stuff happening in our industry where it's like, you know, you know, but the lift is sopositive, but it does take time.
It is an investment.
So if I said to you, Michael, look, you've got 150 restaurants, okay?
Let's say 50 of them never do catering.
There's a hundred that do, okay?
and want to do it that way.
(27:45):
And we modestly look at four orders per location, know, per day, Monday to Friday.
It's 20 orders a week.
You know, it's not a big deal, right?
You and I know that, okay?
And if we look at that as incremental on top of the existing operation, then, you know,we're looking at this $36 million centralized business, right?
(28:05):
So you need to put a team in place to manage that business unit within the context of thisrestaurant.
And the reason why it's half the profits is because of the flow through, which is...
Right, it's all in, you're just paying food, food and packaging and credit cardprocessing.
mean.
small incremental increase in your overhead maybe, but you do have some capital you got toinvest.
(28:28):
You got to put in tech, capital investment takes time.
Packaging you have to commit to.
human capital for sales and marketing.
need trucks.
What's your delivery strategy?
Maybe you'll use third party, you'll outsource great CSP, but maybe you want to keep onevan for yourself and you'll do big orders.
Do you think it has to do with, know, when you're growing a brand, it's always like, howmany units?
(28:51):
We're going to add 10 units, we're going to add 50 units, we're going to do 100.
And so they see it, their math is units.
Where I see it is, I've made this investment.
How do you maximize ROI?
Because the people I was talking to today, $750,000 to build a QSR.
it's like, and they're not even doing a million a year in volume.
(29:14):
WTF like doesn't make sense
Oh my God, it's about leveraging the brand.
And this is another great conversation of virtual brands versus these brands.
Listen, the brands that you and I are talking about right now are the most powerful brandsin America, Michael.
They're just the...
And so we don't underestimate that because that has decades of memories and emotionsattached to, right?
(29:36):
Like we can, I remember going back as a kid and going to places on Ponderosa steakhouse.
I don't know if it was in the US or in Auburn.
You know, yeah, there were no...
Yeah, that was the birthday dinner.
and broke, that's a big night out.
$8.99.
In those days $8.99 was a lot of money.
(29:57):
But those are memories.
If somebody came to me today and said, hey, there's a Ponderosa steak catering program andit's made up of steak sandwiches and some great Caprese salads and whatever, and somebody
reinvented it and was delivering it out of a commissary, I would order it because Ibirthday memories.
So the power of the brand.
pizza will bring the piano player out.
(30:17):
yeah.
So the power of the brand is really why restaurants have this opportunity.
Okay.
Oh, they have such an upper hand.
And if you're gonna get Mexican, wouldn't you rather get it from a Mexican restaurant thango to a generic caterer that may or may not do it well or barbecue or Italian or, you
(30:39):
know, there's so many advantages, but.
so the trick is to, you have to step back and look at the brand, look at the experience,see what's executable.
You have to create menus that are different from your in-store menus.
And you have to create your menus, okay, in the best interest of your kitchen production.
(31:01):
So you actually need to reverse engineer, start at the manufacturing process, see what'seasy and then, yeah, yeah.
And, and, you know, there's people that I tell like, Hey, this doesn't really travel well,but here's a way you could make it travel well, or, you know, so there's definitely some
stuff.
I know we're a little tight on time and I want to.
(31:23):
We got three days.
No.
We can do more sessions.
Um, yeah, we'll have you back on for sure.
Let's pivot to ai because five years ago Um, actually I had a friend 20 years ago wastalking to me about ai.
He's one of these computer geeks.
He's on his third fourth Tech startup he he codes and I I didn't even know what the hellhe was talking about.
(31:46):
It was greek and now Maybe five years ago.
I said one day ai will get to where
The AI is taking the phone order and probably even better.
It's going to know, you know, your psychological profile.
Are you analytical?
It's like, give me the facts.
Are you emotional and going to ask you about your hobbies and your kids and the weatherand are you going skiing?
(32:08):
It's going to know where you are.
Earl, Hey, I see that you're getting dumped on.
you going skiing tomorrow?
And you're going to think like, my God, this is the best thing since sliced white bread.
that's coming.
It's not there, but it will come.
you know, what's your take on AI?
Just in the catering space, do see anybody doing it?
(32:28):
Where do you see opportunity?
I can tell you where we're working, but I want to get your take on where you see it.
think that here's the thing, like, you know, all these technologies become disruptive,right?
It's like it's like that's the thing.
It's like everybody's moving more towards, you know, seamless, frictionless, that kind ofthing.
I would say software as a service like it's that's a threat there.
Like it's got it's got to watch the AI like.
(32:49):
But but maybe.
maybe what will happen is the AI will just come around it and the SAS thing will always bethe core of it and then things are happening around it probably.
But I'm always like what's lurking in the background is the question, right?
It's like, you know.
conversation and I don't know.
Again, I don't have anything to base this on except years of experience and just sort ofspit balling.
(33:12):
So, you know, if you're a big company and you bring in SAP, you have consultants from thebig four.
My daughter-in-law is consultant with the big four and they basically interview you,right?
They want to, they're going to get all the information out of you because you don't evenknow what to ask yourself, right?
So I see in the future you will have an AI consultant.
Yeah.
and it will build software for you based on your unique needs, right?
(33:34):
So Tony's Deli is different than Corky's Barbecue is this.
So literally, if you have a thousand and a thousand brands, it will be a thousanddifferent personalized versions based on your workflow, you know, the colors, where you
want your fields.
Maybe you have some idiosyncratic because you know.
(33:55):
you working on that stuff yet?
Or it's not there yet.
you want to find me some backers?
Because I think that will be disruptive.
It will be, there will be two or three brands that do that, not only in catering, butevery business.
Well, I would say, look, if you want to find backers, that's not going to be a problem foryou.
You're a horse in the race.
that's the strategy you want to go, you should think about that.
I would say that fueling up your AI investment is a very good idea.
(34:20):
What am I seeing out there?
I am diving deep into agentic AI.
don't know if you spent any time on that, just, so what I'm, what I'm learning is thatthere's agents that are getting created.
It's called an AI agent.
It's agentic AI and an agent is task oriented.
So it does a task or it could be a few tasks, but a task.
(34:42):
And so when I look at software as a service and I see sales, let's just talk about CRM asan example.
Okay.
That's, that's, that's a module.
Let's say
Order entry is a module, okay?
Accounting module, production module, okay?
And delivery module.
Forget about the data for a minute.
I'm talking workflow, okay?
(35:03):
And so what I'm seeing are agents that are starting to displace pieces of what was amanual order entry process, okay?
In our space.
So whether it's voice that's now hooking right into order management, hitting point ofsale, or drive through is a good example.
is an example of an agent.
(35:23):
So the theory is, and here's the big, nobody knows this yet, so we're gonna learn, but Ithink maybe this is where it's going, is that it's possible that the next generation of
tech for catering and all tech really, okay, is threading together these AI agents.
(35:43):
to all do separate specialized functions within.
So it could be like, hey, this agent responsible for logistics and scheduling the drivers,whether it's internal third party based on, and knows Earl's got a van, Michael's got a
Honda Civic, Michael can take orders of this size.
So it's gonna be highly and,
(36:08):
Now imagine this, okay, let's fast forward 10 years.
Let's just say, okay, there's no reason why the AI agent that's responsible for productioncan't communicate to a robot.
the robots will be making it, there's no doubt.
like Chipotle is already deep in that investment, salad robot.
(36:31):
I'll show you, we can spend so much time on this, that's fun stuff.
But there's a company called Hyphen that they've invested big money in, you and this is,you know, look it up, Hyphen, I think it's called Hyphen, just Hyphen Chipotle investment,
because they've got a venture fund for this stuff.
And...
And it's fascinating.
It's robotic salad production is what it is.
And so there's no reason why the production AI agent can't give it the instructions itneeds to receive.
(36:57):
And that AI agent is being fed and information and communicating with the order entryagent who's communicating with the AI sales agent.
And each of those agents are working 24 hours a day.
So the sales agent is prospecting.
It's literally scraping the internet.
It's looking for all the law firms with more than 25 people in Dallas.
(37:23):
They're scraping lunch will be provided, Nashville, Tennessee, know, everything.
looking.
We can use the agentic AI to look at unstructured emails.
We can give an instruction to an AI agent as a company to look at all the company emailsand find every single thing that mentions catering and move it into a structured database
(37:49):
so we can actually interpret it, understand it, and take some action against it.
That's happening now.
Salesforce is doing that already.
EasyCater is already in a partnership agreement with them.
Go check it out.
Agenic AI?
It's agentic, just look up Salesforce.
Offline, send me a note, I'll find it for you I'll send you a link.
(38:10):
cool.
We're working with a voice company and we're gonna pilot a test.
So basically...
they have like an answering service that's AI.
We can have 99 different catering prompts.
So how much notice do you need?
(38:31):
Do you have something for vegans, whatever.
And it sounds like you're talking to a real person and as opposed to getting a voicemailand everybody hates fricking voicemail.
Am I gonna get called back?
it gonna...
And what we want to do is we want to take that information, right?
Whether it's a lost call or whether it's, you know, we can take, what, what questions didEarl ask?
(38:53):
Right?
He asked these five questions and we'll have a dashboard that says we missed a call fromEarl.
he's a customer, not a customer.
Here's his phone number.
And then we have, we have, VoIP in our system.
So I can tell if somebody called Earl back because there's a recording attached to Earl'sname.
Right.
And then when I call back, I know why you called.
(39:14):
So I can say, Hey, I see you called about birthday parties or whatever.
Right.
And then I can then, a pen sales data that says over the last quarter, all these missedcalls, did they monetize into what extent?
Right.
Great.
That's great.
Those are great tools, Michael.
Yeah, you'll get there.
You'll get there.
(39:34):
think for sure.
mean, the tools are getting easier.
Yeah.
like this story.
So I was doing a training session for a big brand and I asked the salespeople, what's yourbiggest pain point?
go, you know, they want them to go out there and knock and sample 10 doors a day and goescoming back at the end of the day and putting business cards in the software and putting
(39:58):
in the notes and all that.
And I said, you know, we've got on our drawing board, we're do a QR, a business cardscanning software.
And I said, but you know, there's this thing I see on Instagram, plot AI, where you candictate.
And I said,
Hold on a second.
So I took out my phone, I took Jatch GPT, and I literally said, I need you to create aspreadsheet for data entry, and here's the fields.
(40:23):
It messed up the fields.
It put first and last name as one field.
I said, split it up, and then I want you to add group, I want you to add note, and I wantyou to add follow-up task.
Literally in front of the whole group, I dictated three prospects.
So you could do it on your way to your car.
I sent the file to the guy on the computer.
And in two seconds, he appended everything in the CRM.
(40:48):
So saving him 45 minutes without us programming it in, just say, use your chat GPT andhack it.
Totally.
You know, it's amazing.
I mean, talk about JATC.
But you do yourself a I prompted a while ago.
said, give me a comparison on functionality between CaterZen, MSI, FlexCatering, Ollo.
Check me.
Go do that.
(41:10):
Maybe you've done.
I can do you one better.
So we're working with one goal consulting.
They're like the manufacturers, Revit tech.
Huh?
Yeah, yeah.
So one of his guys says, Hey, my client is looking at catering, spoon fed, something else.
Right?
Can you give me a comparison?
I'm like, shit, I don't have a week to do a comparison.
(41:30):
So I get on there and I go, could you do a comparison?
I had a chart to him in like five minutes.
it?
amazing.
I mean, you do have to check for accuracy, by the way.
Just do that because it's coming.
It's coming.
It's just it's all just getting better, smarter, better, smarter.
But, know, it's wonderful, Michael, you know, just.
I, you know, one of the things we've got on our, yeah.
(41:54):
You'll edit this out.
Just give me one second here.
I just have to tell these guys I'm running a few minutes behind, okay?
Yeah, we won't be too long.
Keep him busy.
I don't even know he's there.
Okay.
I mean, one of the things we want to use AI for, because everybody says, Oh, who hasn'tordered in 30 days or 45 or 90 days?
(42:19):
We want to look at each customer's buying pattern to intercept when you should reach outto them based on their buying behavior.
And if they change velocity, right?
Yeah.
But what if they used to order for 30 people a week and now it's 15?
What if they spent $20 ahead and now it's $15 ahead?
about, you and I, we should get in room.
(42:40):
How about, how about, how about we find the ones that haven't ordered in six months and wego find them on the internet and see if they've changed their jobs and then update their
profiles and go and reach out and send them a sample.
Yeah, that's a...
And you know what?
You could use this agent.
You could use the agent.
Yes, the ancient.
I yeah.
(43:02):
This is where we're heading here.
This is where we're heading.
And honestly, we could probably ask Chachi PT if you were going to mine data from acatering operating system to maximize sales, give me, ask me all the questions you want
and give me all the possible strategies that we can employ to increase catering sales,repeat sales.
(43:24):
information, we can get all of it.
The difficult part is the implementation of it, which is the hard part.
So I think, not for us, we do, no problem for us, but I'm talking about for operators,like for them to take what we're making for them and implement it into their things.
it's funny, we had this conversation at our, we do Traction EOS operating system,entrepreneur operating system.
(43:50):
And I said, you know, when we used to help restaurants get in the catering business, wedid their menus and marketing and websites and all this.
Nobody did anything, right?
I said.
we're building this badass CRM and all this stuff.
I think we need to offer a service where we will do marketing as a service.
It's like, we know you're not gonna email your customers once a month.
We know you're not gonna call the inactive customers.
(44:13):
We know you're not gonna send out an email promotion to all the people who booked holidayparties last year.
Let us just manage it for you and then you just pay us a fee because you're gonna get anROI as opposed to sitting there and nothing's happening.
Yes.
Are you asking me or you're, I'm just saying, listen, if I'm you, I'm going to findpartners to help with that stuff.
(44:37):
And I'm going to just double down on my tech and scale myself.
Yeah, yeah.
Go make some partnerships.
You know, people like the Off-Premises Growth Academy or other, there's so many peoplethat can go and help, you know.
Hey, if y'all wanna do it, let me know.
Well, know, we have, listen, I'm building a bench of coaches, you they all need work, youknow, so like I'm just trying to, I don't want to do the work.
(44:58):
You know, I mean, I'll do some work.
Yeah, I'll do some of it, but I'm, you know, I do the stuff I like to do, you know, likeI'm doing my advisory stuff, which I'm really enjoying that one-on-one with people.
I'm going to do some workshops, I'll do some teaching, things like that.
I'll probably write some more.
I know we're gonna do another podcast about us getting involved in Caterlink and why don'tyou give everybody, how do you get to Caterlink?
(45:26):
Okay, yeah.
So the latest sort of brainstorm or thought process is if we can create community, like wedid a workshop and the biggest thing that came out of it was people told us they need more
time together in peer work.
That was the big thing that came out and they need to do it in a space that's safe andprivate and where they can actually be free to share.
That's what came out of it.
So that was the birth of caterlinked.com.
(45:48):
And basically we are firing up peer groups in that space.
It's all digital because I wanted it to be affordable and accessible, frankly, because thefeedback was all these events are too expensive and you gotta get on planes and hotels.
And the people that we're targeting, Michael, they don't have a lot of budgets for thisstuff.
Like they just don't.
So I was thinking like, what is a no brainer way we could do this?
Gabriel and Terry are driving that community.
(46:11):
And it's coming, know, we got, every day we're seeing two, three, four more, slowly,slowly.
We just had our first brand bring 10 people, which is cool.
Of course, you you've been very generous and you're supporting the community and we'recreating a zone for you to be able to have some conversations and it's private for you,
nobody else can see it.
(46:31):
So that's kind of the idea.
And then the resource itself is to be a very rich resource in terms of content, in termsof education materials.
I want to try and democratize and aggregate.
yeah, I have a lot of good stuff, you know, but so do you, you know, and so does TJ and sodoes Sam and so does Kelly Grogan and so does everybody.
And everybody's rowing boats in different directions.
(46:51):
And I'm going to talk about these people as being the cream of the cream.
It's not everybody, you know, there's a lot of people that are putting out stuff that areeither copycatting or frankly, it's not that good.
And we don't want that stuff, you know, so we are in a vetting process of qualifying.
and I appreciate that even though I'm a vendor I'm more of a resource And and I appreciatethat it's not a pitch zone, right?
(47:16):
Like you you're paying to pitch everybody because nobody likes that, right?
Yeah, and but but this is what happens like when I went to your show in Denver I justspoke educationally right and then people know the real deal from the non real deal.
They want to work with the real deal That's the way it works.
They
it.
And your customers speak for it.
And you've been in years.
Listen, I'm a big fan, Michael.
(47:38):
So I really appreciate what you're doing, you know.
And I'm for you.
I'm rooting for you because like I had my win already.
So don't need it.
I want you to get yours.
need a big win so I can get my last place in Paris, France.
That's the last place I was born.
Did you know I was born there?
but I got to jump to this other thing.
Can we talk about?
Are we good?
Are we good?
I'm gonna Yeah, we're gonna cut out
(48:15):
Let it.
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