June 16, 2025 • 16 mins
Michael Lukianoff, CEO of SignalFlare, joins Zack Oates to unpack the restaurant industry's biggest data challenges and opportunities. From AI-driven decision-making to understanding local market dynamics, Michael explains how restaurants can stay ahead in a crowded, fast-changing landscape.
Zack and Michael discuss:
- Why restaurant growth is outpacing population growth
- How to make sense of complex guest data without loyalty programs
- Why local market dynamics are more important than ever
- How AI will change local marketing strategy
- What brands can do to gain more than their “fair share” of traffic
Thanks, Michael!
Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikelukianoff/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/signalflareai/
https://signalflare.ai/
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 to help
you create a five-star guestexperience.
But stay tuned, because thisepisode is going to be slightly
different.
This podcast, as always, ispowered by Ovation, the feedback
(00:22):
and operations platform builtfor multi-unit restaurants.
Get all the insights you needto improve without an annoying
long survey for your guests.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today I am excited and thisis a little bit of a different
podcast because we have MikeLukianoff here with us today.
He is the CEO of Signal Flareand he's been all over the
industry.
(00:42):
He is a data guy.
He's been around for I mean,decades in data and hospitality,
and so Mike gave an incrediblekeynote at MEG, which is the
conference right before NRA,because NRA isn't long enough.
And after that I was like Mike,we got to get you on the
podcast and I'd love to justtalk about where you think the
(01:05):
industry is headed.
And so, first of all, thank youfor joining us on the podcast
and, second of all, tell us alittle bit about SignalFlare to
give some context to ourconversation today.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, hey, zach.
Well, first, thanks a lot forhaving me on Excited to be here
and for our conversation.
Yeah, so SignalFlare is adecision intelligence company,
so we specialize in priceoptimization, market
optimization, and we're takingreally large data sets mobile
phone data, credit card paneldata, local economic data, all
of the right prices are, whatthe right marketing strategies
(01:39):
are, what the right expansionstrategies are, and so forth and
we're doing it with AI agentswhich, in the background, are
pulling together the data andcreating all the optimizations
(02:00):
ideas.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
When you go to LinkedIn and I look you up, Mike
, and it says more profilessimilar to Mike, the CEO of
Snowflake is there.
So just to kind of show youthat Mike knows his data stuff.
So, based on what you're seeingMike, should restaurants be
excited or depressed about thefuture?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I think they should be strategic.
I think that if you like achallenge, then the future is
for you.
What we're seeing in the dataand I think what I talked about
at MAG is maybe a slightlydifferent point of view, where I
think the industry measuresitself on same store sales.
So it's always how do we doversus last year and how do we
(02:46):
take the same comparative setthis year and compare it to the
same group stores last year?
So we end up tracking thesemetrics that say, okay, well,
we're down this much or we're upthis much versus the same
period in the prior year.
But if you look at justaggregate growth, the industry
is growing.
(03:06):
You know it has been reallyalmost uninterrupted a little
bit of an interruption in 2020.
Oh why what happened?
There was some of that.
I think you slept through it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Oh, okay, I must have missed it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But even with that, there were a lot of closures,
but then there were also a lotof opens, and I think that's
there were a lot of closures,but then there were also a lot
of opens, and I think that'swhat shifted a lot of the
dynamics in the restaurantindustry, because a lot of the
full service restaurants endedup closing, but if you had a
drive through, it was boom times, so lots of limited service
restaurants got funded.
So what's happening now is thatrestaurants are growing at a
(03:44):
faster pace than populationgrowth, and population growth is
really starting to slow down.
And that doesn't even includepotential effects of decreasing
immigration and so forth, rightJust our natural growth in
population.
So what we're seeing right nowis that if you were just to go
back six years and compare thepopulation that supports each
(04:10):
restaurant, if you're limitedservice, you're about six points
lower than you were in terms ofthe number of customers per
restaurant in the nation, Right?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So you're saying ticket counts are down even
though same-store sales might beup.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, not ticket counts.
So total restaurant traffic inaggregate is growing right.
We went from like $800 billionto we'll end this year at $1.5
trillion as an industry, right.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
But in terms of like the actual people walking into
an individual location, right,if you look at-.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Into an individual location right If you look at
Into an individual location,right.
That's where the issue happens,because six years ago you
might've only had fivecompetitors around you.
Now you might have six, seven,eight, nine, 10.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And another five dark kitchens or delivery only
options right.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
That's right, and convenience is really upping
their game.
So really it's about theconsumer.
Isn't, I think, as weak aspeople say the consumer is.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It's more the big structural change is about how
many options there are.
Can you say that in an Austrianaccent, please?
The consumer is not weak.
The consumer is not weak therewe go, nailed it.
Consumer is not weak there wego, nailed it.
So it's just the fact that whenpeople are saying, oh man, like
(05:32):
things are tough forrestaurants, it's more of a
supply and demand problem thanit is a people willing to spend
money problem.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It is.
And it's not that there is noissue with some consumer
weakness.
That's what we would call acyclical thing, right, that sort
of comes and goes.
But what we're talking about,with population growth and the
restaurants that are growingsimultaneously, that's
structural right.
So, as we get through maybesome patches of uncertainty or
(05:57):
even go through anotherrecession, possibly right, a lot
of people are thinking that'swhat's coming up toward the end
of the year.
If that happens, then in someways, ways it's the double
whammy.
There's some structuralchallenges because getting your
message across as a marketercompeting against more units
that are out there, the consumerhas more options than if
(06:19):
they're simultaneously gettingweaker, than when we talk about
same store sales and scrappingto get your share of a growing
market, but of a market whereyour competitors and the options
are growing too.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Are you seeing signs that a recession is coming up?
Because I mean, I think of therecession as fully autonomous
vehicles where it's beensomething that is coming in the
next year for the last 11 yearsnow.
Is there going to be arecession, or is this just kind
of like will they, won't they?
I feel like Ross and Rachelhere, of the recession for a
(06:56):
long time?
Are you seeing anything in thedata to suggest that it might be
coming or it might not be?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, I think that one of the places that you tend
to look is the bond market, andI think that's where, back in
about a month ago, when thetariffs were announced and then
they got I don't know if theywere rolled back or if they were
postponed Right Either way, itwas a big victory, huge, it was
huge.
Yes, but what changed that?
(07:22):
What delayed those tariffswasn't the trade war.
It was because the bond marketstarted to go in the wrong
direction, right?
Because instead of the marketsaying, okay, well, we're going
to reduce yields because wemight be going into a recession,
there became some questionsabout the structural integrity
(07:42):
of US debt.
So that's when the bond marketstarted going a little bit crazy
.
So that's what you really needto watch, because that's what
changes the availability ofliquidity and borrowing costs
and so forth.
So that'll be sort of the finalword on whether we're going
toward a recession.
We might not, but I think thatlow growth and more inflation
(08:04):
can sometimes be even moremiserable than just negative
growth on the economy for ashorter period of time.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So is the solution, then, to tell people to stop
opening restaurants Like, or isit to tell bad restaurants to
just close your doors?
Stop taking the bottom of thebarrel, people.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You've seen a lot of record bankruptcies, lots of
unit growth over a certainamount of time.
I think that because we'redriven by franchising, that's an
(08:52):
important model.
You have to grow in order tostay not just relevant but
remain a good investment.
I think we're going to continueto see the unit growth.
I think that, to your point,there are a lot of zombie
concepts.
Right.
There are concepts out therethat probably should have closed
down closed their doors in 93,and they're still hanging on.
(09:13):
It took Howard Johnson's what50 years to finally say we're
closing our last unit, butthat's because, jacques Pepin,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
How do you close something that Jacques Pepin has
touched?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
That's right.
We're nostalgic, right.
We'll hold on to the original,no matter what.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, well look, I mean cracker barrel still lets
people camp overnight in theirrvs, so they're staying around
forever.
But as you're thinking aboutthis, mike, you said in the
beginning kind of cheekily, thatif you like a challenge, then
maybe get into restaurants.
As restaurants are facing thesechallenges ahead, what advice
do you have for them?
(09:49):
How should they be thinkingabout their menu, their
marketing, getting new people inretention, like all of these
levers and buzzwords are gettingflown around at every trade
show.
What should I be focused on asa restaurant owner?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Know your concept, know your customer and know your
local market dynamics.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now the last one's really tricky.
The first two, it's like okay,I get that, I get that, which
are, by the way, those first twoare hard enough as it is.
So talk to me about what do youmean by local market dynamics?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So it's never been more important to be able to
understand what's happening inyour local trade area and even
defining what that trade area is.
It's sort of shocking how somany of the chain restaurants
don't necessarily understandwhat's going on right outside
their four walls in each tradearea and this is an industry,
especially at the chain level,that likes to they almost drive
(10:42):
it like a giant tanker, right.
It's like okay, well, here'sthe simplified rules for how we
run our restaurants and how wethink about our marketing.
But if you're a 500 unitrestaurant chain, you're running
500 businesses, right?
500 local businesses, and youneed to understand that.
You need to know who yourcompetition is.
(11:03):
You need to know how far yourcustomers are coming.
If you don't understand thesefundamentals, you're at a
disadvantage.
And AI is a bit of a buzzwordright now, but the true
application is starting tosurface and understanding that
information, locally andgranularly, is now possible.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
What kind of information can help me make a
better decision and how do Ileverage that?
So, for example, you hadmentioned did you talk about
weather, or was that something Italked to Tammy about before
about, like you know, what'sgoing on in the local
environment, what's going on inthe local community?
Where are you people comingfrom?
What's the weather that day?
How do you actually leveragethis data in a practical way?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
People think that you have to have a CDP or a loyalty
program to understand who yourcustomer is.
But with the mobile data setsand with credit card sampling
data and weather data, localeconomic data, all of these
things help to really identifywhy your sales are what they are
mystery anymore, right, ifyou're actually tracking, where
(12:06):
am I marketing, how much am Ispending here and so forth?
For us, there's a lot ofcompanies that will sell the
mobile device data or sell thecredit card sampling data.
For us, it's an input, right,so we're ingesting that to then
understand okay, well, where arethese pockets of customers that
you should be targeting?
What are the demographics thatare growing or shrinking, and
(12:29):
how far are people traveling togo and what other concepts are
they going to when they're notvisiting you?
All of these things aren't justgood in rationalizing what
happened last week, but it'spart of being able to then model
out and understand what yourstrategy should be going forward
.
That's actually going to getyou more than your fair share,
because if you're just gettingyour fair share of traffic, then
(12:52):
on average you're down 6.5%versus six years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So what do I do with that data when it's like all
right, what other restaurants domy customers eat at?
What do I do with that that canhelp me bring in another 6.5%
on top of what we did last year.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So one of the ways that we're using it specifically
for that purpose is because weknow where customers live and
where they work, not just foreach restaurant brand, but also
for the segment that theyoperate within and bought this
(13:31):
small cluster of customers in,basically, residences that are
as low as like 500 peoplepopulation and as high as 3,000,
right, so it's prettymicro-targeted.
If you target thoseneighborhoods through any of the
social media platforms or anydigital platforms at that low
(13:52):
level, it's much less expensiveand much more effective.
It's been tedious, right,because it hasn't been the
easiest thing to do.
There aren't a lot of platformsbeen optimized for that type of
a purchase, but that's allchanging very quickly, right,
and that is on the back of AI,because the micro-targeting and
being very specific andautomating all of that those are
(14:12):
the types of things that agentsare going to start bringing us
with more ease in the very nearfuture.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I mean, I had a conversation with a guy who runs
a marketing agency and he wastelling me he's like in one year
, no local marketing needs toget done.
Everything will get done withAI.
The stuff that is gettingreleased right now is just so
good for local marketing, and Ilove the fact that you got to
(14:38):
really think global but actlocal.
It's a cliche that works,because when you have these
multi-location brands, you can'tthink of it as just a brand,
because the only reason thatyou're in business is because
people in that community aresupporting you, and so
everything needs to be local,and I think that's a great
reminder, no matter how big orhow small.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That's a really good point, Jack, because I think
that it's acting local right,but having the right strategy
right, Making sure that youunderstand what's appropriate
for your brand right, what'syour brand messaging, Because if
you just leave it, you know it100% to AI and the agents.
They can start reframing yourbrand for you.
So you need to have very tightguide rails on how you're using
(15:21):
these tools.
If you use them right, then youhave a real big advantage.
If you don't understand quitehow to use them, then you could
go off the rails pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, and not the data rails.
You want to stay on the datarails as well.
So, mike, just to wrap thingsup, who is someone that we
should be following?
Who deserves an ovation in therestaurant industry?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Our friend Tammy Billings.
I think her bite-sized andbossy podcast entirely for women
in the industry.
I think it's about time.
If you haven't listened to her,you should, because it's a
terrific podcast and she'salways got really great guests,
really talented women.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
She's a legend, Mike.
Where can people go to find andfollow you?
And Signal Flare.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So Signal Flare wwwsignalflareai that's our
website and you can find outmore about us there.
I also have a sub stack, theSignal Flare, or you can search
me, mike Likianoff, and a lot ofthe stuff that I presented at
Meg and each week, I'm releasingsome more data and some more
information.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Awesome Well, mike, for giving us the data to make
good decisions.
Today's ovation goes to you.
Thank you for joining us onGive an Ovation.
Thanks for having me, it's beenfun.
Thanks for joining us today.
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
(16:45):
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 to help
you create a five-star guestexperience.
But stay tuned, because thisepisode is going to be slightly
different.
This podcast, as always, ispowered by Ovation, the feedback
(00:22):
and operations platform builtfor multi-unit restaurants.
Get all the insights you needto improve without an annoying
long survey for your guests.
Learn more at OvationUpcom.
And today I am excited and thisis a little bit of a different
podcast because we have MikeLukianoff here with us today.
He is the CEO of Signal Flareand he's been all over the
industry.
(00:42):
He is a data guy.
He's been around for I mean,decades in data and hospitality,
and so Mike gave an incrediblekeynote at MEG, which is the
conference right before NRA,because NRA isn't long enough.
And after that I was like Mike,we got to get you on the
podcast and I'd love to justtalk about where you think the
(01:05):
industry is headed.
And so, first of all, thank youfor joining us on the podcast
and, second of all, tell us alittle bit about SignalFlare to
give some context to ourconversation today.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah, hey, zach.
Well, first, thanks a lot forhaving me on Excited to be here
and for our conversation.
Yeah, so SignalFlare is adecision intelligence company,
so we specialize in priceoptimization, market
optimization, and we're takingreally large data sets mobile
phone data, credit card paneldata, local economic data, all
of the right prices are, whatthe right marketing strategies
(01:39):
are, what the right expansionstrategies are, and so forth and
we're doing it with AI agentswhich, in the background, are
pulling together the data andcreating all the optimizations
(02:00):
ideas.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
When you go to LinkedIn and I look you up, Mike
, and it says more profilessimilar to Mike, the CEO of
Snowflake is there.
So just to kind of show youthat Mike knows his data stuff.
So, based on what you're seeingMike, should restaurants be
excited or depressed about thefuture?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I think they should be strategic.
I think that if you like achallenge, then the future is
for you.
What we're seeing in the dataand I think what I talked about
at MAG is maybe a slightlydifferent point of view, where I
think the industry measuresitself on same store sales.
So it's always how do we doversus last year and how do we
(02:46):
take the same comparative setthis year and compare it to the
same group stores last year?
So we end up tracking thesemetrics that say, okay, well,
we're down this much or we're upthis much versus the same
period in the prior year.
But if you look at justaggregate growth, the industry
is growing.
(03:06):
You know it has been reallyalmost uninterrupted a little
bit of an interruption in 2020.
Oh why what happened?
There was some of that.
I think you slept through it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Oh, okay, I must have missed it.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
But even with that, there were a lot of closures,
but then there were also a lotof opens, and I think that's
there were a lot of closures,but then there were also a lot
of opens, and I think that'swhat shifted a lot of the
dynamics in the restaurantindustry, because a lot of the
full service restaurants endedup closing, but if you had a
drive through, it was boom times, so lots of limited service
restaurants got funded.
So what's happening now is thatrestaurants are growing at a
(03:44):
faster pace than populationgrowth, and population growth is
really starting to slow down.
And that doesn't even includepotential effects of decreasing
immigration and so forth, rightJust our natural growth in
population.
So what we're seeing right nowis that if you were just to go
back six years and compare thepopulation that supports each
(04:10):
restaurant, if you're limitedservice, you're about six points
lower than you were in terms ofthe number of customers per
restaurant in the nation, Right?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So you're saying ticket counts are down even
though same-store sales might beup.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, not ticket counts.
So total restaurant traffic inaggregate is growing right.
We went from like $800 billionto we'll end this year at $1.5
trillion as an industry, right.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
But in terms of like the actual people walking into
an individual location, right,if you look at-.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Into an individual location right If you look at
Into an individual location,right.
That's where the issue happens,because six years ago you
might've only had fivecompetitors around you.
Now you might have six, seven,eight, nine, 10.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And another five dark kitchens or delivery only
options right.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
That's right, and convenience is really upping
their game.
So really it's about theconsumer.
Isn't, I think, as weak aspeople say the consumer is.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It's more the big structural change is about how
many options there are.
Can you say that in an Austrianaccent, please?
The consumer is not weak.
The consumer is not weak therewe go, nailed it.
Consumer is not weak there wego, nailed it.
So it's just the fact that whenpeople are saying, oh man, like
(05:32):
things are tough forrestaurants, it's more of a
supply and demand problem thanit is a people willing to spend
money problem.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
It is.
And it's not that there is noissue with some consumer
weakness.
That's what we would call acyclical thing, right, that sort
of comes and goes.
But what we're talking about,with population growth and the
restaurants that are growingsimultaneously, that's
structural right.
So, as we get through maybesome patches of uncertainty or
(05:57):
even go through anotherrecession, possibly right, a lot
of people are thinking that'swhat's coming up toward the end
of the year.
If that happens, then in someways, ways it's the double
whammy.
There's some structuralchallenges because getting your
message across as a marketercompeting against more units
that are out there, the consumerhas more options than if
(06:19):
they're simultaneously gettingweaker, than when we talk about
same store sales and scrappingto get your share of a growing
market, but of a market whereyour competitors and the options
are growing too.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Are you seeing signs that a recession is coming up?
Because I mean, I think of therecession as fully autonomous
vehicles where it's beensomething that is coming in the
next year for the last 11 yearsnow.
Is there going to be arecession, or is this just kind
of like will they, won't they?
I feel like Ross and Rachelhere, of the recession for a
(06:56):
long time?
Are you seeing anything in thedata to suggest that it might be
coming or it might not be?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, I think that one of the places that you tend
to look is the bond market, andI think that's where, back in
about a month ago, when thetariffs were announced and then
they got I don't know if theywere rolled back or if they were
postponed Right Either way, itwas a big victory, huge, it was
huge.
Yes, but what changed that?
(07:22):
What delayed those tariffswasn't the trade war.
It was because the bond marketstarted to go in the wrong
direction, right?
Because instead of the marketsaying, okay, well, we're going
to reduce yields because wemight be going into a recession,
there became some questionsabout the structural integrity
(07:42):
of US debt.
So that's when the bond marketstarted going a little bit crazy
.
So that's what you really needto watch, because that's what
changes the availability ofliquidity and borrowing costs
and so forth.
So that'll be sort of the finalword on whether we're going
toward a recession.
We might not, but I think thatlow growth and more inflation
(08:04):
can sometimes be even moremiserable than just negative
growth on the economy for ashorter period of time.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So is the solution, then, to tell people to stop
opening restaurants Like, or isit to tell bad restaurants to
just close your doors?
Stop taking the bottom of thebarrel, people.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
You've seen a lot of record bankruptcies, lots of
unit growth over a certainamount of time.
I think that because we'redriven by franchising, that's an
(08:52):
important model.
You have to grow in order tostay not just relevant but
remain a good investment.
I think we're going to continueto see the unit growth.
I think that, to your point,there are a lot of zombie
concepts.
Right.
There are concepts out therethat probably should have closed
down closed their doors in 93,and they're still hanging on.
(09:13):
It took Howard Johnson's what50 years to finally say we're
closing our last unit, butthat's because, jacques Pepin,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
How do you close something that Jacques Pepin has
touched?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
That's right.
We're nostalgic, right.
We'll hold on to the original,no matter what.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, well look, I mean cracker barrel still lets
people camp overnight in theirrvs, so they're staying around
forever.
But as you're thinking aboutthis, mike, you said in the
beginning kind of cheekily, thatif you like a challenge, then
maybe get into restaurants.
As restaurants are facing thesechallenges ahead, what advice
do you have for them?
(09:49):
How should they be thinkingabout their menu, their
marketing, getting new people inretention, like all of these
levers and buzzwords are gettingflown around at every trade
show.
What should I be focused on asa restaurant owner?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Know your concept, know your customer and know your
local market dynamics.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Now the last one's really tricky.
The first two, it's like okay,I get that, I get that, which
are, by the way, those first twoare hard enough as it is.
So talk to me about what do youmean by local market dynamics?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
So it's never been more important to be able to
understand what's happening inyour local trade area and even
defining what that trade area is.
It's sort of shocking how somany of the chain restaurants
don't necessarily understandwhat's going on right outside
their four walls in each tradearea and this is an industry,
especially at the chain level,that likes to they almost drive
(10:42):
it like a giant tanker, right.
It's like okay, well, here'sthe simplified rules for how we
run our restaurants and how wethink about our marketing.
But if you're a 500 unitrestaurant chain, you're running
500 businesses, right?
500 local businesses, and youneed to understand that.
You need to know who yourcompetition is.
(11:03):
You need to know how far yourcustomers are coming.
If you don't understand thesefundamentals, you're at a
disadvantage.
And AI is a bit of a buzzwordright now, but the true
application is starting tosurface and understanding that
information, locally andgranularly, is now possible.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
What kind of information can help me make a
better decision and how do Ileverage that?
So, for example, you hadmentioned did you talk about
weather, or was that something Italked to Tammy about before
about, like you know, what'sgoing on in the local
environment, what's going on inthe local community?
Where are you people comingfrom?
What's the weather that day?
How do you actually leveragethis data in a practical way?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
People think that you have to have a CDP or a loyalty
program to understand who yourcustomer is.
But with the mobile data setsand with credit card sampling
data and weather data, localeconomic data, all of these
things help to really identifywhy your sales are what they are
mystery anymore, right, ifyou're actually tracking, where
(12:06):
am I marketing, how much am Ispending here and so forth?
For us, there's a lot ofcompanies that will sell the
mobile device data or sell thecredit card sampling data.
For us, it's an input, right,so we're ingesting that to then
understand okay, well, where arethese pockets of customers that
you should be targeting?
What are the demographics thatare growing or shrinking, and
(12:29):
how far are people traveling togo and what other concepts are
they going to when they're notvisiting you?
All of these things aren't justgood in rationalizing what
happened last week, but it'spart of being able to then model
out and understand what yourstrategy should be going forward
.
That's actually going to getyou more than your fair share,
because if you're just gettingyour fair share of traffic, then
(12:52):
on average you're down 6.5%versus six years ago.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So what do I do with that data when it's like all
right, what other restaurants domy customers eat at?
What do I do with that that canhelp me bring in another 6.5%
on top of what we did last year.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So one of the ways that we're using it specifically
for that purpose is because weknow where customers live and
where they work, not just foreach restaurant brand, but also
for the segment that theyoperate within and bought this
(13:31):
small cluster of customers in,basically, residences that are
as low as like 500 peoplepopulation and as high as 3,000,
right, so it's prettymicro-targeted.
If you target thoseneighborhoods through any of the
social media platforms or anydigital platforms at that low
(13:52):
level, it's much less expensiveand much more effective.
It's been tedious, right,because it hasn't been the
easiest thing to do.
There aren't a lot of platformsbeen optimized for that type of
a purchase, but that's allchanging very quickly, right,
and that is on the back of AI,because the micro-targeting and
being very specific andautomating all of that those are
(14:12):
the types of things that agentsare going to start bringing us
with more ease in the very nearfuture.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
I mean, I had a conversation with a guy who runs
a marketing agency and he wastelling me he's like in one year
, no local marketing needs toget done.
Everything will get done withAI.
The stuff that is gettingreleased right now is just so
good for local marketing, and Ilove the fact that you got to
(14:38):
really think global but actlocal.
It's a cliche that works,because when you have these
multi-location brands, you can'tthink of it as just a brand,
because the only reason thatyou're in business is because
people in that community aresupporting you, and so
everything needs to be local,and I think that's a great
reminder, no matter how big orhow small.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
That's a really good point, Jack, because I think
that it's acting local right,but having the right strategy
right, Making sure that youunderstand what's appropriate
for your brand right, what'syour brand messaging, Because if
you just leave it, you know it100% to AI and the agents.
They can start reframing yourbrand for you.
So you need to have very tightguide rails on how you're using
(15:21):
these tools.
If you use them right, then youhave a real big advantage.
If you don't understand quitehow to use them, then you could
go off the rails pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Yeah, and not the data rails.
You want to stay on the datarails as well.
So, mike, just to wrap thingsup, who is someone that we
should be following?
Who deserves an ovation in therestaurant industry?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Our friend Tammy Billings.
I think her bite-sized andbossy podcast entirely for women
in the industry.
I think it's about time.
If you haven't listened to her,you should, because it's a
terrific podcast and she'salways got really great guests,
really talented women.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
She's a legend, Mike.
Where can people go to find andfollow you?
And Signal Flare.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
So Signal Flare wwwsignalflareai that's our
website and you can find outmore about us there.
I also have a sub stack, theSignal Flare, or you can search
me, mike Likianoff, and a lot ofthe stuff that I presented at
Meg and each week, I'm releasingsome more data and some more
information.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Awesome Well, mike, for giving us the data to make
good decisions.
Today's ovation goes to you.
Thank you for joining us onGive an Ovation.
Thanks for having me, it's beenfun.
Thanks for joining us today.
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
(16:45):
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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