June 5, 2025 • 15 mins
Eric Robison, developer and multi-unit owner at Rock N' Roll Sushi, joins this episode of Give an Ovation to break down how the brand has grown from 16 to 75+ units and what it takes to get guests back through the doors. From creating a fun, high-energy dining experience to transforming guest feedback into operational change, Eric shares how his team makes sushi dining loud, vibrant, and unforgettable.
- Why retention beats new traffic
- How COVID shifted guest service culture
- Infusing your brand into your team
- Turning feedback into a gift
- 5 A’s of guest recovery
Thanks, Eric!
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/rocknrollsushi/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation the
restaurant guest experiencepodcast.
I'm your host, Zach Oates, andeach week I chat with industry
experts to uncover theirstrategies and tactics you can
use to create a five-star guestexperience.
This podcast is powered byOvation, the feedback and
operations platform built formulti-unit restaurants.
It gets you insights you needto improve without an annoying
(00:22):
survey for your guests.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today we have someone whohas really seen an incredible
growth.
He's the area developer andowner of seven units for Rock
and Roll Sushi.
He has been there from 16 units.
They're now at 75 units.
He's been in it, he's beenaround it, he's been enjoying it
(00:43):
.
Eric Robinson, welcome to theshow man.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, we're doing great, thingsare going good, we're enjoying
it and excited to be here today.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, I'm really excited and, as you have seen
this journey really from theinside, what are some lessons
that you would have shared withrock and roll sushi and yourself
at 16 units, now that you'reall at 75 units?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I mean, we've just been like, as you grow and
things change, you see whatworks for you and then sometimes
you kind of lose sight ofthings too.
I think one thing that reallylike put it in perspective for
us was coming out of COVID.
It was obviously one of thehardest things I think anybody's
been through in the restaurantindustry.
And going through that andbeing able to say, like, man,
the guest experience fell apartduring COVID.
(01:29):
The guests were on edge, theour staff was on edge and we
kind of lost sight of howimportant it was.
We almost became in a mindsetof we're being attacked, they're
being attacked, everyone'sunder attack and like, how do we
bring that back?
Once we got out of that, we said, man, something's changed in
our service and we stopped.
I think you just kind of you'rebattle hardened in a way.
(01:52):
You know well, we've got to getback to great guest experiences
.
We've got to start givingpeople a reason to come out of
the house again and come backinto our restaurant, yeah, and
to really build that experienceand say, what does the
experience look like now?
How do we make an enjoyabletime outside the house again?
So that's been a huge focus forus.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And as you're looking at this and as you're thinking
about, how do you get peopleback in and what are you guys
focused on?
What is basically moreimportant?
The retention or the net?
New?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I mean for sure is the retention, because you
can't grow a business if you'renot retaining the guest.
What we've seen is we do a lotof third party deliveries
DoorDash, Uber Eats and we'rethankful for that business, but
it's not the way that I see thebrands growing from the
experience that we want toprovide.
We want people to be excitedabout dining out, excited about
sushi.
(02:47):
There's a lot of things thatyou can make at home.
You can make a sandwich at home, but sushi at home is a
difficult thing to pull off.
So we can deliver it, but it'sso much better if you just come
in and let us create thatexperience for you in the
restaurant.
So we're trying to doeverything we can to bring the
guests back out of the house andbring the guests to a fun night
out, make it a good date nightexperience or a good office
(03:10):
lunch meeting.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And rock and roll sushi.
You guys obviously have areally strong brand.
It's a loud brand, it's onethat you look at it and it's not
like your neighborhood sushishop.
Tell me a little bit about thevibe of rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I mean we're kind of breaking the rules of
what your traditional sushiplace should be or what it could
be.
So we're bringing it out.
We have music videos playingand we got the music a little
louder.
We're trying to bring vibrantatmospheres and really create an
experience where you come outand say, wow, that was a fun
time to go out for dinner andeven all the way down to the
(03:50):
food is the food fun?
And we're doing a lot of justinnovative things with bringing
that experience together.
We have unusual rolls withstrawberries on top and avocados
and stuff that you wouldn'ttraditionally see at a standard
sushi restaurant.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And the brand too.
I mean, like you look at thebrand and you're like this is
like a fun place with your staffand creating this brand.
It goes beyond just a logo andmarketing.
You really got to infuse thatin your people.
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think it's you know .
It starts with who you hire andthen definitely how you train,
spending the time to find theright people that are going to
help you build a memorableexperience.
It's not just a place to orderget.
The food is hey, we are SushiAmplify.
We are dining out loud, and sowe want to just bring that from
starting with our servers allthe way to our food.
(04:33):
What is that experience you getwhen you come out and how do we
fulfill that promise?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, and I think that's so awesome because we
talk about this all the time,about how the guest and the
employee experience areinseparably connected.
You have to connect the two.
But when you look at the guestexperience, what do you think
some of the most importantaspects of guest experience
nowadays are?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, I think so.
What we have to remember rightout the gate is when people come
out to dine with you food makesus happy, like food gives us
joy.
Your expectation is, whensomeone comes out, it's like I
want to be happy and they kindof put the burden on you.
Will you make me happy, can yousatisfy my needs?
And so you get that line oflike this was my intention, and
(05:15):
if you don't hit my happiness, Ican go sad real fast and so
like how are you going to solvefor that?
But really just letting that bethe first thing you know is
like they're coming here to behappy, they're coming here to
enjoy their experience diningout.
So give them that experience.
Give them.
I mean, everyone's got a finiteamount of money.
Where am I going to spend mypaycheck?
(05:36):
Who am I going to give my moneyto and what are you going to
give me back for it?
And I tell my team all the time, whether it's the cocktail we
call them rocktails whether it'sthe rocktail or it's the sushi
roll.
It's like what are you doing?
They're not buying the littlebit of alcohol in the glass,
they're buying that experience.
They're buying the boomerang.
They're buying like the hey, doI have something to hold and
(06:00):
build on that experience?
And do I get the chopsticks?
And it's like bringing allthose aspects together and
saying I've had a I love thatphilosophy of just how do you
leave it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I'm an Eagle Scout and we always talk about the
campground leave it better thanyou found it right.
So, too, with people.
How do your guests leavehappier than when they came in?
And if that's the mentality andif that's the focus of every
single employee every singletime, then you're going to crush
it.
Because guess what happens,Eric, when you go to a
restaurant and you have a badexperience with a server, you
(06:34):
leave that restaurant and yousay, oh man, Jim was really rude
.
No, you say, that restauranthas bad service, that's right.
And so I think it's so criticalthat we remember that.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Absolutely, and you'll see that in your brand.
And even what Ovation's up iswith is protecting that online
appearance.
And like, how are you able tosolve it when you mess up?
Because we're not perfect,we're working with a lot of
moving pieces and everyone knowsrestaurants are not easy, but
how do you solve for that?
And, by the way, how hasOvation been helpful for you,
(07:07):
man?
It's given us so much power toreally see what are the guests
thinking, what are they feeling,and then just being able to
communicate with the guests isjust like wow, that's so
insightful.
That's like you have theoriesand you have thoughts, but it's
like now we know, we know whatthe guest says and we know how
(07:28):
to get in contact with them.
When they left us a Googlereview, we would try to reach
out, but there's almost noresponse Like you could take.
Please just let me know.
I want to talk to you likeghost ghost town, I think too,
because Google is such a publicplatform.
You know it was like well, Idon't really want to just be out
there.
Well, it's one thing to goleave the one star review, but
(07:50):
how do you?
Um, you don't really have anopen discussion on that platform
.
And then Novation has broughtthat together.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And is there anything that you've been able to change
operationally, Anything thatyou learned when from using
Novation, from hearing from yourguests?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh, absolutely.
I think one of the biggestthings was realizing something
that we weren't doing right.
You know like well, we surelywere.
We think we're executing themenu item.
Why are they complaining aboutthis one menu item all the time,
like we've got to changesomething on that?
And we were saying, like therewas a for us, specifically fried
rice, and it was expected, likesome certain industry standards
(08:28):
, of like a chicken fried riceis a dinner sized portion, but
for us it was just a side is adinner size portion, but for us
it was just a side.
And so we started like man,people aren't getting that this
is a side, even though, becausethe industry standard says this
is an entree, and we're likewe're letting people down even
though the price said side, theexpectation was still entree.
So we've got to solve for that.
(08:49):
And that's something we're likewe didn't know that one
particular thing was letting somany guests down.
We're like why is everyonecomplaining about this one
little thing?
But it gave us insight so wecan take that information and
then let's change it.
If we're not acing it to theguest's expectation, we're the
problem.
We can't say it's the guest'sfault.
Hey, it says you know.
So we're working through thatand say, like, what can we do?
(09:10):
We want to wow and thisproduct's not doing it.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Things like that, where it's like the guest has
these feelings, they have thesethoughts.
But what happens historicallyis if you're waiting for an
online review, you're not goingto get an accurate
representation and thatcomplaint is going to seem like
a one-off.
But when you can get a lot ofguests to give you a little bit
of information, it paints a muchmore accurate picture about
(09:34):
what's actually happening in therestaurants.
Well, I appreciate that andglad that you're seeing value
with Ovation.
That is.
My biggest motivation in theworld is just driving value and
hoping that people can see thatvalue.
But, as I always say, Ovationisn't to make bad restaurants
good, it's to make greatrestaurants better.
And the great restaurants theywant to create that guest
(09:56):
experience.
They have that guest firstmentality.
They're not afraid of hearingwhat their guests are saying and
helping that guest feel heard.
And so kudos to you and thankyou for doing that.
So, besides Ovation, any othertactics that you would use to
improve the guest experience?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, so when we do some leadership reading with our
team and we're always lookingfor a good thing to help us
inspire ourselves and renew ourenergy each day.
And then recently we did agroup read right at the same
time that we launched Ovationand just kind of really worked
together with setting the tablewith Danny Myers and we started
like really implementing thosefive A's awareness,
acknowledgement, apology,started like really implementing
(10:36):
those five A's awareness,acknowledgement, apology, action
and additional generosity tomigrate that in or merge that in
with our ovation.
Like how do we not just hearwhat the guest is saying, but
how do we answer what the guestis saying?
How do we make changes and letthe guests know that we're
caring about this?
This is not just okay, we don'twant a one star, are you?
Of course not?
But how do we earn five stars?
Okay, we don't want a one-star,are you?
(10:56):
Of course not?
Well, how do we earn five stars?
And how do we take those sadguests and turn them into happy
guests?
And how do we write that greatfinal chapter with the guests
and get them loyal to our brand,because we want to be loyal to
our guests.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I love that because at the end of the day, when you
look at the power of a recoveredguest, when you do that proper
service recovery, our data showsthat that guest who is mad and
you recover them is worth 24times the value of the average
guest.
And this is.
We followed 150,000 customersover 18 months to see their
(11:29):
patterns of how they shop andwhere they go to eat and how
often they eat there and what isit based on if they're mad or
if they're happy or if they'renot and so really powerful data
that shows.
I completely agree with you,eric, about what you said
earlier.
It's great to bring in newguests, but there's a lot of
things that you can do to retainthe guests that you have and
(11:53):
that is so much more valuablethat that's way easier to do.
And not only that, but thoseare the guests that are going to
go out and be your advocatesbringing in the new customers.
And so you could focus all youwant on marketing.
But when you focus a lot andwhen you really focus on the
guest experience and thatretention and recovery, that
(12:13):
naturally produces net newcustomers coming in because they
bring their friends, becausethey become loyal, raving fans
absolutely yeah, for sure as welook to what's next at rock and
roll sushi, how do you thinkabout the future of the brand?
what do you think are some ofthe main focuses that
restaurants should be looking atnowadays?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I think just being open and honest with yourself
about hey, sometimes it's hard,it's always hard to accept
criticism, right, and then whenyou have a platform like Ovation
, I think you've got to be verymindful about how you want to
receive this information and belike look, it's not criticism,
this is coaching from your guestand saying we want to do more
business with you.
We've taken the time to tellyou what would make us do more
(12:57):
business with you.
So listen to them and say ohwow, I do care about my business
succeeding.
I need to know what you'resaying and I need to know before
you answer with your wallet,because when the sales have
already started going down, thenyou it's too late.
You've messed up and diggingout of that hole.
Man, I don't know if it seemslike it's harder than ever you
get that guest back.
(13:18):
It's so difficult.
They have a lot of options Opento the feedback.
I would say you're going to getthe feedback and I tell people
when they start up with OvationI'm like you're going to get a
lot of feedback.
You can't sit there and getnegative in your head.
It's like this is coaching,this is what you're getting that
information.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I love the fact that you just use the word thankful,
because this feedback really isa gift and if you treat it that
way, it's going to help you andyour business and your team and
your brand just get better.
So love that, eric.
Where can people go to find andfollow you and Rock and Roll
Sushi?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You can follow us on.
We have one Instagram page orfacebook page for the whole
brand and then we have localones in your town.
If there's that, we always knowwhat local events a lot of our
locations are doing, likekaraoke and some other you know
music, bingo and some otherthings like that are starting to
go on locally.
But follow the brand rnr sushion instagram and facebook.
You can follow me.
(14:16):
I'm not really great with.
I got a brand new baby at homeand we're just like we're like
struggling or we're not sleepinga ton, but we're having a great
time.
But, yeah, I'm out there on somesocial medias.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I know Eric was rocking the Red Bull right
before the podcast.
I'm like I get it.
I've been there with thenewborn.
Every hour feels like a daywhen you're on a few hours of
sleep, so I really appreciateyou coming on, eric, and for
being a rock star with guestexperience.
Today's ovation goes to you.
Thank you for joining us onGive an Ovation, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for joining us today.
(14:50):
If you liked this episode,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite placeto listen.
We're all about feedback here.
Again, this episode wassponsored by Ovation, a
two-question, sms-basedactionable guest feedback
platform built for multi-unitrestaurants.
If you'd like to learn how wecan help you measure and create
a better guest experience, visitus at OvationUpcom.
Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation the
restaurant guest experiencepodcast.
I'm your host, Zach Oates, andeach week I chat with industry
experts to uncover theirstrategies and tactics you can
use to create a five-star guestexperience.
This podcast is powered byOvation, the feedback and
operations platform built formulti-unit restaurants.
It gets you insights you needto improve without an annoying
(00:22):
survey for your guests.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today we have someone whohas really seen an incredible
growth.
He's the area developer andowner of seven units for Rock
and Roll Sushi.
He has been there from 16 units.
They're now at 75 units.
He's been in it, he's beenaround it, he's been enjoying it
(00:43):
.
Eric Robinson, welcome to theshow man.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hello, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, we're doing great, thingsare going good, we're enjoying
it and excited to be here today.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, I'm really excited and, as you have seen
this journey really from theinside, what are some lessons
that you would have shared withrock and roll sushi and yourself
at 16 units, now that you'reall at 75 units?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I mean, we've just been like, as you grow and
things change, you see whatworks for you and then sometimes
you kind of lose sight ofthings too.
I think one thing that reallylike put it in perspective for
us was coming out of COVID.
It was obviously one of thehardest things I think anybody's
been through in the restaurantindustry.
And going through that andbeing able to say, like, man,
the guest experience fell apartduring COVID.
(01:29):
The guests were on edge, theour staff was on edge and we
kind of lost sight of howimportant it was.
We almost became in a mindsetof we're being attacked, they're
being attacked, everyone'sunder attack and like, how do we
bring that back?
Once we got out of that, we said, man, something's changed in
our service and we stopped.
I think you just kind of you'rebattle hardened in a way.
(01:52):
You know well, we've got to getback to great guest experiences
.
We've got to start givingpeople a reason to come out of
the house again and come backinto our restaurant, yeah, and
to really build that experienceand say, what does the
experience look like now?
How do we make an enjoyabletime outside the house again?
So that's been a huge focus forus.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
And as you're looking at this and as you're thinking
about, how do you get peopleback in and what are you guys
focused on?
What is basically moreimportant?
The retention or the net?
New?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, I mean for sure is the retention, because you
can't grow a business if you'renot retaining the guest.
What we've seen is we do a lotof third party deliveries
DoorDash, Uber Eats and we'rethankful for that business, but
it's not the way that I see thebrands growing from the
experience that we want toprovide.
We want people to be excitedabout dining out, excited about
sushi.
(02:47):
There's a lot of things thatyou can make at home.
You can make a sandwich at home, but sushi at home is a
difficult thing to pull off.
So we can deliver it, but it'sso much better if you just come
in and let us create thatexperience for you in the
restaurant.
So we're trying to doeverything we can to bring the
guests back out of the house andbring the guests to a fun night
out, make it a good date nightexperience or a good office
(03:10):
lunch meeting.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
And rock and roll sushi.
You guys obviously have areally strong brand.
It's a loud brand, it's onethat you look at it and it's not
like your neighborhood sushishop.
Tell me a little bit about thevibe of rock and roll.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I mean we're kind of breaking the rules of
what your traditional sushiplace should be or what it could
be.
So we're bringing it out.
We have music videos playingand we got the music a little
louder.
We're trying to bring vibrantatmospheres and really create an
experience where you come outand say, wow, that was a fun
time to go out for dinner andeven all the way down to the
(03:50):
food is the food fun?
And we're doing a lot of justinnovative things with bringing
that experience together.
We have unusual rolls withstrawberries on top and avocados
and stuff that you wouldn'ttraditionally see at a standard
sushi restaurant.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
And the brand too.
I mean, like you look at thebrand and you're like this is
like a fun place with your staffand creating this brand.
It goes beyond just a logo andmarketing.
You really got to infuse thatin your people.
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think it's you know .
It starts with who you hire andthen definitely how you train,
spending the time to find theright people that are going to
help you build a memorableexperience.
It's not just a place to orderget.
The food is hey, we are SushiAmplify.
We are dining out loud, and sowe want to just bring that from
starting with our servers allthe way to our food.
(04:33):
What is that experience you getwhen you come out and how do we
fulfill that promise?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, and I think that's so awesome because we
talk about this all the time,about how the guest and the
employee experience areinseparably connected.
You have to connect the two.
But when you look at the guestexperience, what do you think
some of the most importantaspects of guest experience
nowadays are?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, I think so.
What we have to remember rightout the gate is when people come
out to dine with you food makesus happy, like food gives us
joy.
Your expectation is, whensomeone comes out, it's like I
want to be happy and they kindof put the burden on you.
Will you make me happy, can yousatisfy my needs?
And so you get that line oflike this was my intention, and
(05:15):
if you don't hit my happiness, Ican go sad real fast and so
like how are you going to solvefor that?
But really just letting that bethe first thing you know is
like they're coming here to behappy, they're coming here to
enjoy their experience diningout.
So give them that experience.
Give them.
I mean, everyone's got a finiteamount of money.
Where am I going to spend mypaycheck?
(05:36):
Who am I going to give my moneyto and what are you going to
give me back for it?
And I tell my team all the time, whether it's the cocktail we
call them rocktails whether it'sthe rocktail or it's the sushi
roll.
It's like what are you doing?
They're not buying the littlebit of alcohol in the glass,
they're buying that experience.
They're buying the boomerang.
They're buying like the hey, doI have something to hold and
(06:00):
build on that experience?
And do I get the chopsticks?
And it's like bringing allthose aspects together and
saying I've had a I love thatphilosophy of just how do you
leave it.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I'm an Eagle Scout and we always talk about the
campground leave it better thanyou found it right.
So, too, with people.
How do your guests leavehappier than when they came in?
And if that's the mentality andif that's the focus of every
single employee every singletime, then you're going to crush
it.
Because guess what happens,Eric, when you go to a
restaurant and you have a badexperience with a server, you
(06:34):
leave that restaurant and yousay, oh man, Jim was really rude
.
No, you say, that restauranthas bad service, that's right.
And so I think it's so criticalthat we remember that.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Absolutely, and you'll see that in your brand.
And even what Ovation's up iswith is protecting that online
appearance.
And like, how are you able tosolve it when you mess up?
Because we're not perfect,we're working with a lot of
moving pieces and everyone knowsrestaurants are not easy, but
how do you solve for that?
And, by the way, how hasOvation been helpful for you,
(07:07):
man?
It's given us so much power toreally see what are the guests
thinking, what are they feeling,and then just being able to
communicate with the guests isjust like wow, that's so
insightful.
That's like you have theoriesand you have thoughts, but it's
like now we know, we know whatthe guest says and we know how
(07:28):
to get in contact with them.
When they left us a Googlereview, we would try to reach
out, but there's almost noresponse Like you could take.
Please just let me know.
I want to talk to you likeghost ghost town, I think too,
because Google is such a publicplatform.
You know it was like well, Idon't really want to just be out
there.
Well, it's one thing to goleave the one star review, but
(07:50):
how do you?
Um, you don't really have anopen discussion on that platform
.
And then Novation has broughtthat together.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And is there anything that you've been able to change
operationally, Anything thatyou learned when from using
Novation, from hearing from yourguests?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh, absolutely.
I think one of the biggestthings was realizing something
that we weren't doing right.
You know like well, we surelywere.
We think we're executing themenu item.
Why are they complaining aboutthis one menu item all the time,
like we've got to changesomething on that?
And we were saying, like therewas a for us, specifically fried
rice, and it was expected, likesome certain industry standards
(08:28):
, of like a chicken fried riceis a dinner sized portion, but
for us it was just a side is adinner size portion, but for us
it was just a side.
And so we started like man,people aren't getting that this
is a side, even though, becausethe industry standard says this
is an entree, and we're likewe're letting people down even
though the price said side, theexpectation was still entree.
So we've got to solve for that.
(08:49):
And that's something we're likewe didn't know that one
particular thing was letting somany guests down.
We're like why is everyonecomplaining about this one
little thing?
But it gave us insight so wecan take that information and
then let's change it.
If we're not acing it to theguest's expectation, we're the
problem.
We can't say it's the guest'sfault.
Hey, it says you know.
So we're working through thatand say, like, what can we do?
(09:10):
We want to wow and thisproduct's not doing it.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Things like that, where it's like the guest has
these feelings, they have thesethoughts.
But what happens historicallyis if you're waiting for an
online review, you're not goingto get an accurate
representation and thatcomplaint is going to seem like
a one-off.
But when you can get a lot ofguests to give you a little bit
of information, it paints a muchmore accurate picture about
(09:34):
what's actually happening in therestaurants.
Well, I appreciate that andglad that you're seeing value
with Ovation.
That is.
My biggest motivation in theworld is just driving value and
hoping that people can see thatvalue.
But, as I always say, Ovationisn't to make bad restaurants
good, it's to make greatrestaurants better.
And the great restaurants theywant to create that guest
(09:56):
experience.
They have that guest firstmentality.
They're not afraid of hearingwhat their guests are saying and
helping that guest feel heard.
And so kudos to you and thankyou for doing that.
So, besides Ovation, any othertactics that you would use to
improve the guest experience?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, so when we do some leadership reading with our
team and we're always lookingfor a good thing to help us
inspire ourselves and renew ourenergy each day.
And then recently we did agroup read right at the same
time that we launched Ovationand just kind of really worked
together with setting the tablewith Danny Myers and we started
like really implementing thosefive A's awareness,
acknowledgement, apology,started like really implementing
(10:36):
those five A's awareness,acknowledgement, apology, action
and additional generosity tomigrate that in or merge that in
with our ovation.
Like how do we not just hearwhat the guest is saying, but
how do we answer what the guestis saying?
How do we make changes and letthe guests know that we're
caring about this?
This is not just okay, we don'twant a one star, are you?
Of course not?
But how do we earn five stars?
Okay, we don't want a one-star,are you?
(10:56):
Of course not?
Well, how do we earn five stars?
And how do we take those sadguests and turn them into happy
guests?
And how do we write that greatfinal chapter with the guests
and get them loyal to our brand,because we want to be loyal to
our guests.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
I love that because at the end of the day, when you
look at the power of a recoveredguest, when you do that proper
service recovery, our data showsthat that guest who is mad and
you recover them is worth 24times the value of the average
guest.
And this is.
We followed 150,000 customersover 18 months to see their
(11:29):
patterns of how they shop andwhere they go to eat and how
often they eat there and what isit based on if they're mad or
if they're happy or if they'renot and so really powerful data
that shows.
I completely agree with you,eric, about what you said
earlier.
It's great to bring in newguests, but there's a lot of
things that you can do to retainthe guests that you have and
(11:53):
that is so much more valuablethat that's way easier to do.
And not only that, but thoseare the guests that are going to
go out and be your advocatesbringing in the new customers.
And so you could focus all youwant on marketing.
But when you focus a lot andwhen you really focus on the
guest experience and thatretention and recovery, that
(12:13):
naturally produces net newcustomers coming in because they
bring their friends, becausethey become loyal, raving fans
absolutely yeah, for sure as welook to what's next at rock and
roll sushi, how do you thinkabout the future of the brand?
what do you think are some ofthe main focuses that
restaurants should be looking atnowadays?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
I think just being open and honest with yourself
about hey, sometimes it's hard,it's always hard to accept
criticism, right, and then whenyou have a platform like Ovation
, I think you've got to be verymindful about how you want to
receive this information and belike look, it's not criticism,
this is coaching from your guestand saying we want to do more
business with you.
We've taken the time to tellyou what would make us do more
(12:57):
business with you.
So listen to them and say ohwow, I do care about my business
succeeding.
I need to know what you'resaying and I need to know before
you answer with your wallet,because when the sales have
already started going down, thenyou it's too late.
You've messed up and diggingout of that hole.
Man, I don't know if it seemslike it's harder than ever you
get that guest back.
(13:18):
It's so difficult.
They have a lot of options Opento the feedback.
I would say you're going to getthe feedback and I tell people
when they start up with OvationI'm like you're going to get a
lot of feedback.
You can't sit there and getnegative in your head.
It's like this is coaching,this is what you're getting that
information.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
I love the fact that you just use the word thankful,
because this feedback really isa gift and if you treat it that
way, it's going to help you andyour business and your team and
your brand just get better.
So love that, eric.
Where can people go to find andfollow you and Rock and Roll
Sushi?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You can follow us on.
We have one Instagram page orfacebook page for the whole
brand and then we have localones in your town.
If there's that, we always knowwhat local events a lot of our
locations are doing, likekaraoke and some other you know
music, bingo and some otherthings like that are starting to
go on locally.
But follow the brand rnr sushion instagram and facebook.
You can follow me.
(14:16):
I'm not really great with.
I got a brand new baby at homeand we're just like we're like
struggling or we're not sleepinga ton, but we're having a great
time.
But, yeah, I'm out there on somesocial medias.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
I know Eric was rocking the Red Bull right
before the podcast.
I'm like I get it.
I've been there with thenewborn.
Every hour feels like a daywhen you're on a few hours of
sleep, so I really appreciateyou coming on, eric, and for
being a rock star with guestexperience.
Today's ovation goes to you.
Thank you for joining us onGive an Ovation, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for joining us today.
(14:50):
If you liked this episode,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts or your favorite placeto listen.
We're all about feedback here.
Again, this episode wassponsored by Ovation, a
two-question, sms-basedactionable guest feedback
platform built for multi-unitrestaurants.
If you'd like to learn how wecan help you measure and create
a better guest experience, visitus at OvationUpcom.
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