🍽️ The Return to Experience-Led Dining — Live from Caravan Fitzrovia - Tech on Toast, The Hospitality Tech Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to a very special edition, the Technos Podcast.
And this week, it's not me, it'sPhil.
Street from Carrero hosting our panel that we hosted I think 2
weeks ago now in Caravan and Fitzrovia.
The panel was all about the return to experience LED dining
and it was hosted by Lunchbox and Shift 4.
On the panel that day we have Tom James, managing director at

(00:20):
Bill's restaurants, Harry Ridley, director of innovation
at Levy UK and Ireland, James Walker, CEO from Lunchbox and
Shaw Barton Rana Group operations director at Gaucho
and M restaurants. We'll join the conversation a
couple of minutes in as you hearJames answering a question from
Phil Enjoy the show, it's a cracker.
Thanks very much Phil for helping me out.

(00:40):
How do you? Straddle the balance between
like a company like Emirates having a a dossier on you as you
as you say versus coming across as stocking.
Yeah, I, I think it's a great question and I, I think it's
very hard to find kind of a simple, you know, this is the

(01:02):
policy and this is how we do it.I think if you're going to use
technology for non public information, I think you do have
to be careful with that and use,you know, probably every
possibility to keep that information secure and locked
away and be careful with it. I don't think there's one simple
answer. So in the US, we don't have the

(01:24):
PII kind of personal informationlaws that you have here.
You know, for Americans, you know, we feel like we're tapping
on our phones. What's this, cookies again?
Come on, stop. Kind of have proved this for my
whole trip. So I think some of it is
cultural, some of it is on a country by country basis.
And even though you're only 5 1/2 hours away from New York

(01:45):
here, it's a very different environment.
You move to mainland Europe, it's different again.
So I think you've got to look atyour customer base.
You've got to look at where you are and even in the US customers
and high end restaurants probably more willing to accept
kind of that information. What last time you were here,
you had this bottle of wine and you really enjoyed it and you

(02:07):
know, you had the steak has cooked a certain way.
It's a creative to the experience where if I went into
McDonald's and I walked up to the CSL and they're like, how
are your kids? I'd be like, Oh my God, I don't.
Think there's a simple. Answer.
But I think it if you're going to excel in this area and you're
going to dwell into it, I think you've got to take the requisite
time to do it correctly. Yeah, here, here.

(02:28):
Just a quick show of hands from within you guys.
Has anybody ever been anywhere where you've had that kind of on
you when you've arrived, when you and you felt that it's made
a difference to your experience?I also just tell us about it.
Yeah. So both of them really are

(02:48):
examples of places I've previously worked.
And it's quite funny because thestaff member starts to get that
concerned that they don't recognize you.
And it's like I still got a staff tag or something.
But there was a plethora of information about me because
I've worked there. But it does in in my view, I
think it only well, it it can enhance the experience massively

(03:09):
because your preferences are logged things that you like.
It gives the the sort of the serving team an an opportunity
to to wear you or bring over a drink and say it's a small
gesture, but we know that you you know, you really like our
margaritas. Not typecast in myself, but it's
always some kind of drink. Negroni.
Or anything like that. But yeah, it's, I think it's

(03:30):
always just a nice touch. And to your point, it's kind of
it's almost the simpler the better if if sort of no one
makes a big thing of it and theyjust.
Bring it over and go. What are you looking at the
menu? And it's just like a little nod
to yeah, we, we, we see you. We, you know, you're not just
another. It's not volume.
Yeah, yeah, don't worry. I'm not going to do that.
Every question, by the way, I feel like I'm a stand up comedy

(03:51):
show and I'm just picking on theaudience.
Holly. Desktop volume, because you get
one or two people through your hits every day.
Well, maybe not every day, but for events that you that you
have when you're rolling out cutting edge tech at huge venues
like you've got the O2, you've got Hotspur Stadium, you've got

(04:15):
new venues coming online all thetime, things like just walk out
that, that makes service seamless.
But does removing friction also risk removing the connection?
Because you must have to use tech in order to facilitate that
kind of volume. Come to your business.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

(04:35):
We need to try not to dehumanizethe whole experience.
We have to drive volume because otherwise we wouldn't be able to
serve everyone. Just give you a really good
example. Twickenham Stadium.
We're only live around 6 to 8 big events across the year, so
just being able to deliver that volume on a small amount of

(04:56):
events is really, really difficult.
If you're running a venue, whichyou have 365, everything is
running, all your infrastructurebehind, everything's ticking
over really nicely. It's relatively easy as long as
you maintain. So you have to do all these pre
checks before we launch at an event.
For me, it all comes down to what the challenge we're trying

(05:17):
to solve there. At half time or at peak period,
can we serve everyone? No, you can't serve everyone.
It's almost impossible. So this is where we leverage
technology to try and serve morepeople.
And it's not about taking away the taking away that human
experience. It's about getting people
through and getting them served.And this is on the retail, the
concourse, on the concrete. I live on the concrete.

(05:41):
It's about how do we serve people quickly and how do we
serve them quality products. So automation will help backup
house for us to get the productsthere.
But we need to make sure that weare removing those pain points.
So we're removing long queues, we're removing people tacking
stuff into a till. That isn't a great experience.

(06:01):
A great experience is moving those people.
And it's not about removing labour, it's about retraining
those people to become hospitality hosts.
So they're the people that you'll see at the gates to
frictions, you'll see inside thestore explaining a little bit
about what what the tech is doing, also about what the
products that we're selling. And it's the only way to serve a

(06:24):
huge amount of people is by leveraging the right technology.
I think it's I think we're now at this stage where we're
getting better adoption for the latest tech.
So Just Walk Out is a great example of technology that it
started around 8 years ago, but it's only really started
scathing this year. I've been in the frictionless
game for around four years and Ithought year one, we're going to

(06:47):
be there, we're going to, it's got hundreds of stores
everywhere. It's going to be on every street
corner. But even Amazon can get it to
work in their stores because it was just too new.
And I think we will get to a stage where we we accept that
level of automation, but it's not right at every level of the
venue. So where we look at our venues,
we have a try a triangle of hospitality, the top tier being

(07:10):
sort of the Royal Box at Wimbledon all the way down to
the concourses. I think concourse level where
we've got huge, huge volume, we have to leverage that tech.
So automated beer walls, frictionless, keeping the
products quality high, being able to get the volume out
really important and gain the communication to the fact we're

(07:31):
not looking to put this energy into slash loads of labour.
It's like getting the volume anddriving through that better
experience when you're not queuing, so you've got more
time. You're not actually at our our
venue. You have 73 venues.
You're not actually at our venuefor food and drink.
Normally you might go to couch outside the O2 for, you know, an

(07:51):
amazing experience for the event.
You're at our our venues for an amazing event.
We're really lucky we have that captive audience.
So you come to the O2, you want to see Lincoln Park at the O2,
which is great. Then really enjoyed it.
You're actually there to see Lincoln Park.
You're not there to go and eat, you know, delicious hot dogs and

(08:12):
burgers that we sell. We have to cater for your needs.
So another example is Billy Irish at the O2.
We converted the whole of our men into a plant forward plant
based menu and we actually had an uplifted sales because we
were fulfilling the demand of those customers.
And how do you fulfill that withthe right infrastructure behind,

(08:32):
with the right automation, with the right KMS screens, with the
right technology that supports the bulk, the bulk journey.
So it was really, really difficult not to go, OK, go and
scan the QR code and go and tap in on some order screen because
we don't really care about you. No, it's about we do care about
you. We want to remove those paint

(08:53):
points. Yeah, I suppose when you're you
look at it that way, what you'rereally talking about actually in
this particular circumstance is that the guest experience is
actually just getting served. Like, you know, that is your
fundamental problem, number one that you have to have to solve.
And then how you add value to that, it's where you can kind of
enrich the experience. Yeah, exactly.

(09:14):
So if you look at the Premier League clubs that we did
football clubs, there's a lot ofpeople that don't move from
their seats because they're justused to 20 years of not being
able to get their pints now. So as the bill is one of our
showcase venues and if you ever watch as the bill on on the TV
and maybe you're not a fan, maybe you are and maybe I can
get you some tickets. But anyway, you'll see that

(09:35):
people will be back to their seats before the football starts
again. And that's because we leverage
the right technology. So we don't just have, you know,
just walk out frictions everywhere.
We'll have, and I think there's some events coming up, but
asking, but it was definitely going to not just football, more
tech events. We have a variety of technology.
So we'll have, we have an area which the whole tent will be

(09:57):
what a frictionless bar. We've also got self ordered
screens, which is mainly wet leads you or your your pint for
now and your pint for later. And that's not about saving
labour, that's about stopping you queuing for a second time.
So half time you come down with your docket, you cash it in and
you get your pints straight away.
It's a 3 second festival journey, whereas before it was
about 15 minutes going through friction.

(10:19):
Yes, you've gone from a sort of 15 minute customer journey.
It's 12 seconds to go to the store.
It might be 3 minutes by the time you you've gone through to
the store. And then we've complemented
that. We had high volume bars which
have more expensive units behind.
So that's 6 pints and 10 secondsbehind.
And then we even compromised that more with, with beer walls.

(10:41):
So when I look, when I walk around stadiums, I just look at
dead walls and I think, OK, I'llput something in there other
than the seller buyers even better than pull the lines
through. It's about getting extra points
of transaction, not just to drive revenue, the revenues
grown as funds my, my tech dreams, but it's about serving
more people. And that's what's really

(11:02):
important. And that's and that's the number
one problem we have. Yeah, absolutely.
It sounds like really, I mean, if we look at, if we look at the
respective businesses that are on this panel, excuse me, as a
prime example, it's really you've just got to take it in
isolation. You've got to solve your own
problem and don't worry about what other people are doing.
You've just got to kind of look internally within to affect your

(11:24):
own guest experience. Absolutely.
And you've just got to ask the questions.
So there's probably some questions later on just around
feedback and the feedback loop. And I have to hold my hands up.
That's a gap that we have withinour businesses.
We know, we know when something's gone wrong.
It's straight on Instagram and Twitter and X and whatever it is
nowadays, but it's instantly on there.

(11:45):
So how do we make sure that we're listening to that to the
customer? And we have just such a variety
of events. And you take the O2 Arena, you
go from Linkin Park one day to Monster Trucks the next day, and
then Excel Arena. We've got, you know, conferences
throughout the year. And then we've got Formula A.
It's absolute madness. So it's all about what, what

(12:05):
does the data say? But what the data doesn't tell
you everything. You've got to go.
You've got to get out and walk the floors, walk the.
Concrete and talk to people. Absolutely, Tom.
It's a pretty budget type era that we're in at the moment.
Yes, it's all right for somebodylike Harry who's got a behemoth
of a company that can invest in all of this wonderful tech, but

(12:28):
casual dining is especially feeling the pinch a little bit.
I think that's probably that's safe to say.
How are you still managing to surprise your guests?
I suppose any small touch pointsanything or not.
I think there's a number of things to that question in terms
of actually the real moments of magic and things that make a

(12:49):
huge difference for guest experience are usually either
free or relatively low cost. And it's about creating that
culture of the business in termsof this is the most important
thing. This is why you work in
hospitality. And that's been the really hard
piece of work over the last three years.
It's it's taken the Bills team on that journey going, this is
what's important. Two things that you do to change
that is 1. There's a lot of work behind the

(13:10):
scenes in terms of the insight for data.
It's actually taking all the administration off the site.
So they're doing what you want them to do, which is interacting
with the guests. And you hear quite a lot when
you talk about technology, especially in some of the sort
of all the legacy businesses of,you know, I don't want people
coming in and using AQR code or,or my managers spending their
whole life on an iPad. I don't need technology.

(13:31):
Technology is the enabler to actually do what what you want
people to do, which is just to be on the floor interacting with
guests and creating those moments of magic.
So I think around that culture, we've done a lot of work on on
making a massive deal. You know, for example, every
single week, somebody when we get those special wits of
feedback and our obsession with looking at the the data and the
insights and the feedback every single day leads them to these

(13:54):
great moments At the end of an exec meeting on a Tuesday where
anyone who does something special gets a handwritten card
from the exec team because it's the single most important thing
to us that cost us nothing. But you know, I always remember,
I couldn't tell you which years I made bonus and which years I
didn't make bonus. I remember every single time my
MD chairman CEO has actually written to me or sent me an

(14:14):
e-mail saying thanks, well done.That was really, really special.
And we've seen that even with delivery, delivery we, we
launched six weeks ago. The biggest response we've had
from both teams and all the guests is putting a handwritten
card in every single delivery. And the teams who made the
competition, who can write the funniest card, who can write the
best rhymes you've ordered wise?Here's some extra fries.
Whatever. I'm not good at that.

(14:35):
I couldn't freestyle Eminem to say but but, but it's it's
crazy. And you sort of look at that
that cost us nothing other than a postcard, but the guest
response and the team response to now make competitions huge
and we recognise and reward that.
And it leads on to the other point is actually how we sort of
mitigate the budget is that onceyou create that culture, then
you know, we send the top moments of kindness every year,

(14:59):
the top ten in our awards. Do they go to Italy on the one
that's funded by our suppliers? And that relationship,
especially in this environment with suppliers that has
underpinned every single successful experiential thing
we've done so well. That's the Christmas campaign
last year. We, you know, Christmas was,
it's our record over Christmas. We did that with Cluedo.
Every guest got a Cluedo card game.
It was brilliant from a brand awareness perspective.

(15:21):
And that was conversation with Hasbro.
But we just said, look, this is going to win, win for both of
us. Dog Menu that we launched as
well. We're not paying for a lot of
stuff. The money is being printed by
the suppliers and there's so much you can do by sort of what
you know, what your strategy is and what you know, what
experience you need to create. You know, a lot of these
companies, certainly bigger companies, they have a lot of
cash, certainly for casual dime rally saying, look, this is what

(15:44):
we want to do. We think it's a great idea.
We've had so many positive responses.
Kids eat 3 change, introduce these stories, books to change
all the property. That's super fun.
We're not paying for that. That has been talking to the
supplier and saying that we've got this great campaign.
Then we can focus on what we really want to focus on, which
is actually getting the insights.
How do we better? What are the trends that we want
to follow? How do we increase that

(16:04):
experience for the guests and how do we make these modes of
magic? We sit there, we've got a
brilliant creative team in our marketing team and our brand
director. They sit down and they work out
what experiences we want to create based on the people we
want to attract, based on a lot of hard work of segmenting our
database and knowing exactly which guests are coming in to
build and where. Where are we over indexing?

(16:25):
What are we doing well? What then do we need to
OverDrive? And then I think it's having
that creative piece to go right,what do we want to talk about?
And then speaking to suppliers, partners and saying, listen, we
want to do this and it's a greatidea.
It's a win win for both of us. Give us some money and that's
been the play for the last threeyears and it's.
Such good. Working all right.

(16:45):
Yeah, I, I suppose I mean the work there is collaboration,
right? I mean you you can win by
bringing in other partners rather than just relying on all
of the the things coming from within yourself.
Totally and and they also just then to go back to that, you
know, I'm a little bit obsessed with data and insights.
Imagine that the data they have,you know, for, for these
companies that make dog treats and over there in terms of their

(17:09):
database, it's pretty attractivefor us when we're launching a
dog menu to say brilliant. And then something exciting
coming up in November that I don't think I'm allowed to talk
about yet. But but that's the point is that
then it's sort of snowballs. And once you find these partners
who have the same ambition and the same brand ambition, and
they want to create these moments of magic and these
experiences because that's what it's all about nowadays, it then
becomes a really exciting place.And then actually the discipline

(17:31):
is to calm me down and say, right, let's not do too much.
Let's just talk about these kindof milestone big win experiences
that we can do rather than too much.
Do you do that kind of experimentally in terms of like
you with the best will in the world and all the data that you
can have until you actually get it live out in the marketplace,
you don't really know if it's going to be a success.

(17:51):
So is that a case of, as you say, you've got to take that
puppy excitement, use your dog, yeah, friendliness around that
and to to then use that energy to get it out there, but also
kind of also have the the time to reflect on it.
I think we, we kind of have two different scenarios where if
it's a product, there's quite a rigorous test testers and we, we

(18:13):
change our specials and new lines every six weeks.
So that's the test bed. Anything we go, let's listen.
This looks quite exciting. You know, a year ago Piscoff was
going nuclear. And so we said, let's speak to
Piscoff and we should have this.Let's test the product and see
if there's a huge demand. Let's do a load of tailored
touch posts and see what reaction we get.
And that testing process, we'll do it 2 sites.
If it works, we scale up to five.

(18:35):
If that works, then then it goesnational.
And it's exactly the same with technology.
Lovely lady sitting there who who does all of our testing, who
genuinely can't make enough. That's her job.
Is that finding new tech, running through that test
process and it's rigorous. It's two sites.
Try it, see what the guest feedback is, see what the team

(18:55):
feedback is, see what the benefits of business.
Brilliant. Is it positive?
Does it fit in with our brand? Do the team like it?
Is our guest experience better? Then we roll up to five.
We do another 2-3 months test process at 5 sites and then we
roll it out nationally if it's gone through that, that rigorous
process. So it's two different sort of
with technology and products andfood and drink, but it is the

(19:18):
same same process in terms of that test.
But before we before we go national.
The other positive benefit for that is something that is good
and does work is that the peoplewho've been in the test site
then end up becoming the ambassadors.
You know, me saying to a group of people that is a really good
idea isn't going to have the same resonance with with the
team as as a general manager, one of their peers saying, hey,

(19:38):
listen, we did this, it was amazing, game changer.
It made a difference. And once you get that part in
actually anything, well, that product, the sweet spot for us
is when other sites before we decided to go live start saying,
can we have that? Can we have that product?
Can we have those pancakes? Can we have that drink?
I went to Leeds and they're testing this.
Can we have that tech and then you kind of know you're onto a

(19:59):
winner. Then you start the hard work's
done. That change management piece,
which is the biggest challenge Ithink for businesses now is, is
sort of, you know, we've made mistakes in the past as well
where we've sort of seen technology and cafe bars.
A good example to your point where, you know, we went to a QR
code model. Some brands do it really
successfully. We tried it to not what the
Bill's guest wanted. Luckily we only did it in two

(20:22):
sites. So we kind of rolled back and we
ended up with a sweet spot wherewe went actually the hybrid
model of offering. You know, the pay it table, but
not with the full yes, you have to use the QR code.
That's our switch spot and we'llroll that out as well.
But it's it's that testing process and letting your guest,
the data and your teams tell youwhat works for you.
And then yeah, yeah, absolutely.Sean, to you, we kind of already

(20:45):
alluded to a bit of storytellingearlier on, but also Sean's kind
of brought up the importance of team in here.
When storytelling plays such a massive part of the guest
experience. How do you how do you get the
team on board with that like in?Yeah, I mean, how does it
happen? Yeah, I mean it starts with LD
and the training and the onboarding process.

(21:06):
So people know Gaucho, probably part of the Gaucho Academy was
very famous back, you know, 10-15 years ago when I started,
seven years when the company I did, I did the Gaucho Academy.
It was 7 days of intense training, no matter what
position you were, you know, receptionist, bartender and
table host KP isn't after you did that seven days.

(21:26):
All right. And it was pretty intense back
then. And we used tech to try and
streamline that a little bit. And so we've now got it into
choose where we restructured into a five day program, not
quite as intense, but still 5 days worth of training, which
is, which is, which is very important.
And, and we obviously took away a lot of the Monday and sort of
first day, first day in training, fire Marshall

(21:47):
training. We put that all online using the
tech and we spent more time interacting with and with our
new employees. And the biggest change we did is
the first day of that, we call it lab announced to learn,
achieve, build. People that should be happy have
said that. And, but basically that first
day, the first interaction that all our new employees had was

(22:07):
just with myself, one of the office directors, either London
or the regional, depending on where that lab is based.
So they meet us as the first person they meet from the
company. We talk about the culture, we
talk about the values and we talk about the benefits as an
employee. All right.
So that's very important settingthat out and understanding the
vision of the company and how wewant them to move forward and

(22:27):
how we look after them. And after that, it's my favorite
thing that we do and it was cameup with OPS team and the people
team together. And every company does a mystery
diner or, or some sort of mystery guest.
OK, So what we do is after that first session, which is 2, which
is in two hours, we set all the new employees down to lunch.
We give them a mystery diner template and then we settle

(22:49):
them. So we show them straight away
what it looks like. And so they learn straight away
and what standards are what's expected of them and then what
that five days of training is going to entail.
So there's no surprises. And with that is at the end of
it as well. It's something I'm not sure if a
lot of places do as we do. They have a test.
So we want to make sure the end of that five days that they

(23:10):
absorbed all the knowledge that we've given them.
They get to taste every single dish that we have on the menu.
They get to taste our top 10 wines, our top 10 cocktails.
So there's no, there's no one thing in terms of the knowledge
gap that we can leave them to goon site where they know
everything that they should know.
So at the end of that five days,they set 100 question test.
It's multiple choice. There's a pass mark of 85%.

(23:31):
It's not a case if you fail, youdon't get the job, but it's the
case if you do. If you do fail, there's
reconstruction and then the feedback in terms of right, this
person's maybe lacking in wine knowledge.
We need to spend some extra timeand then before they hit site.
And so it's making sure that we set everyone up for success and
they land on site with the knowledge that they need.
From the day one employee to day20 employee, it should be the

(23:52):
same knowledge. And that's important for the
guest journey and for keeping that repeat, repeat custom
through our, you know, we're not, we're not cheap venues.
So we need to make sure that we deliver that 100% customer
journey 100% of the time and deliver that 100% hospitality,
which we tried to talk to our staff about as much as possible.
And the other thing we did was we introduced the chef's lab

(24:13):
because what we find was that sometimes the chefs didn't get
this whole experience. So they would also attend day
one APS, etcetera as well. And then they would shift to
what we call chefs labs. So what you find, what we find
with chefs as well as that they were getting thrown into the
kitchen to shadow behind someone, making a starter,
looking what's going on, trying to do some reason pass in the
background, trying to do some prep in the middle of service,

(24:35):
which wasn't proactive and it wasn't given their sort of
quality chefs and the training that we expect them to deliver.
So they're taking out the kitchen, they go to one of our
sites and maybe as a couple of kitchens close and they do the
full menu, tasting all the meat and past all the prep in the
kitchens out of the restaurant day-to-day environment.
Good stuff. Yeah.
I mean, I've been a benefactor of your brand on many, many

(24:57):
occasion. And the thing that I've always
loved about the the experience really is one that storytelling
that we've already spoken about,but actually the ability through
that storytelling in order to get me to change my mind as to
what I'm going to eat. Because I go in there with a lot
of the time a pre fixed idea of what I'm going to eat.
And then actually through your team, you're getting people to,

(25:20):
you know, maybe spend a bit morecash, but actually find the
thing that is important to them.How do you how do you go from
that? Is it, is it all to do with
that, that muscle memory of justgetting that base knowledge
nailed to allow them to then just like be the best person of
themselves? Yeah, I mean, the knowledge is
key, right? So if you're confident in what
you're selling or what what the product is, it's easy to sell

(25:42):
it. You know, the guys won't always
sell what what they tell them tosell.
They sell what they like, you know, because I mean, I've gone
to the restaurants and I've heard and they're like, I don't
want that. It's not so good.
You know, that's not what not what you like in terms of state.
So someone comes and said, I want to, I want to run.
Well done. You're like, you know, it's
going to be a little bit tough if you have it at that
temperature, of course we can dothat, but it's just trying to
guide and maybe you should try to fill it in well done.

(26:03):
That's, you know, that'll suit that temperature of cooking.
And it's just trying to guide the guests towards and it's
trying to do in a positive way the total changes.
We do you, you may say table hosts.
We don't call our waiters waiters, we call them table
hosts. We want them to host the table.
We want them to treat every guest that's in the venue as
their guest as you would in yourown home.
All right? That's another sort of small

(26:24):
touch that we do. And so it's trying to create
that experience that you're shooting someone that you would
in your own home and giving themthat experience.
You want someone to come into your house, you want to show off
a little bit. You want to get a nice spot of
wine, you want to get that lovely bottle of whiskey that's
sitting in the camera on the topshelf and bring it down and show
off a little bit, right? And it's kind of given that that
mindset that every guest that comes into our venues is that

(26:45):
person. Yeah.
So I mean, really what we're talking about ultimately with
any kind of experiences like getthe team on board, get engaged
and you know, anything's kind ofpossible.
Absolutely, yeah. And he's listening to feedback
as well, you know, so we've introduced another sort of talk
on the on the tech point. It's worth vivo and we're not
sure if anyone else uses it, butbasically it was a Facebook

(27:08):
basically app, but for an employee.
So encouraging engagement, like you said, with the competitions
in terms of some sites doing certain things and testing
things that they can post all the handbooks on there, all our
sort of modules are on there. And it creates especially, you
know, companies that have restaurants for all around the
UK and the sense of camaraderie.So everyone's talking about each
other, everyone's seeing what they're doing, everyone feels

(27:29):
included. I know myself seven years ago
when I ran in a site, I felt it was isolated.
And it's trying to get that culture and that sort of
everyone working together and not just seeing each other once
a year to have a Christmas, you know, shouldn't do.
And it's, it's trying to create that environment where everyone
wants to share their ideas, wants to collaborate and
listening to what our guests want as well as our staff.

(27:50):
Yeah. Absolutely, James.
Let's talk data. You get visual on a lot of data
and behaviour across a lot of different.
Brands. Are diners really leading back
into the on site experience overconvenience?
I think what we're seeing in theUS, and I believe we're seeing
it around the world, is really abifurcation of what consumers

(28:15):
are looking for and their definition of experience.
So yesterday alone here in London, I started out the day at
Blank Street Coffee came in, youknow, placed my order, got my
drink within probably 5 minutes and you know, fantastic
expectation. Middle of the day went to a
fairly popular unnamed chicken peri peri restaurant.

(28:39):
Don't remember the name, you probably haven't heard of it.
And you know, it took like an hour and 15 minutes to get a
piece of grilled chicken and youknow, for me just absolutely,
you know, didn't work for me at all.
And then some of us, the Ship Ford team and myself in another
restaurant tour went to Noble Rock.
And I think when I was leaving, I was like, you know, I've been
here for 3 1/2 hours and it was just such a brilliant

(29:02):
experience. So I think really what we're
seeing is a, a parsing out of what the experience is that
consumers are looking for. So if it's that breakfast
experience, you know, maybe you're looking for something
very quick, no friction in the ordering process.
Give me what, what I want, what I need as quickly as possible.

(29:23):
Get me in and Get Me Out that evening meal you want, you know,
more time, more high touch with the, with the consumers.
So I think it's a bit of a misnomer to say, you know, the
return of experience LED dining.I think what experience dining
means is really changing based on who the consumer is as well
as what the occasion is. So I don't think it's as simple

(29:46):
as saying, you know, probably 12years ago if you looked at the
Technomic data, 95% of consumerswere saying service and quality
are all that matter. And today convenience is way up
there. So understanding what the mix of
those deciding factors are basedon the consumer, based on your
product, the occasion, the time of day.

(30:08):
So I think it's more sophisticated than it's been in
the past. Yeah, I get you.
I mean, I've been a user of Leonfor a very, very long time.
Back in the day when it used to be a little bit more high touch
on on service. I thought when they moved to the
the more quick service that thatwould be the end of my love
affair with them. But it wasn't because the vast

(30:30):
majority of the time I'm having an egg pot for breakfast and I
just won it. And the fact that they say my
name at the end of it, I'm like,OK, I'll do it.
And we crack on and we got on with it.
So I take your point completely that actually maybe sometimes as
consumers, we don't really even know what we want from the
experience until it's kind of given to us.
I think that Steve Jobs certainly set it out.

(30:52):
You need to tell consumers what they want.
I think there's some of that andthere are certainly brands and
pizza where they just say, listen, we're going to be hyper
honed in on what our customer experience is.
We're not going to carry big brand name.
There's no Coca-Cola, there's noPepsi Cola.
We don't do those kinds of things.

(31:12):
And either that works for the consumer, it doesn't.
But for that consumer, we're 10 out of 10.
I think here in this market. A Danish company, Joe and the
Jews having spent a lot of time with their CEO, he says.
We would rather have a potentialfranchise partner or a potential
licensee or even a potential consumer leave before we change

(31:33):
our culture. We're very laser focused on
making sure that culture is as great as it possibly can be for
us and really fits within kind of the framework that we built
around the brand. So those consumers that are
looking for that are going to get it around the world day in
and day out. And if it's somebody says, you
know what, I'm really looking for coffee in 30 seconds, that's

(31:56):
not our model. Our model is to engage with the
consumer, to make something fresh, to make something from
scratch. And it's probably going to be
more of about a 5 minute servicetime that works for our
customers. If if it doesn't work, you know
there's Dunkin' Donuts or Greg'sor seven of them.
Yeah, absolutely, Honey. Experience is a big emotional
idea, but in your world of stadiums and arenas, you've got

(32:19):
to measure what actually works, right?
We're kind of already touched onthat a little bit, I guess, but
how do you know when your guest experience is actually hitting
the mark, especially in an environment like yours?
I can definitely tell you when it isn't hitting the mark, it's
straight on all the socials X Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn,
even Jesus, it's not horribly wrong.

(32:42):
So yeah, we know instantly when something's gone wrong.
I think boots on the ground is super critical.
It's like, like I said before, walk the country, understand
what people say. If there's big queuing, if
there's people, you know, peoplehave an argument.
What can we do to to solve solvethat?
Can we look at the data then? That's really important.
Can we capture the feedback? I think it's a it's a known gap

(33:06):
because we don't have a huge amount of events at some of
these stadiums. You take our football stadiums,
it's 25 and events as to go to Europe while they're going to
Europe and a couple of a couple of music, which is good.
I'm not, no. It is.
It is difficult. You have returning fans, you

(33:28):
have returning guests. So within football you can track
through the season ticket holders and their forums and the
fan forums. Take those fans on the journey,
especially if we're launching new tech.
Get them in to test it. They'll try and break it,
they'll tell you what's not working, but capturing that data
is really, really important and then reacting.
So there's no point in reacting really after the event.

(33:51):
I mean, you've got to react within the event.
So can you extract that data now?
So within, within my team, within maybe we have a data arm
and it's called E50 Insights that really poured the data from
all our points of transaction. And now we're looking at putting
the data from our labour. So we understand where our
labour is, you know, labour versus revenue, all that great

(34:13):
stuff that's really good for optimization.
Also what what does the customerfeedback say?
We're doing a couple of a coupleof trials, some cover secret
trials I can tell you about or leveraging AI on CCTV and
tracking sentiment of customers.Obviously all legitimate.

(34:34):
We have our own sort of labs, which is our innovation labs
where we take these concepts into the labs and say what, what
challenges are we trying to solve?
Can this technology solve those challenges and, and fill the
gaps of in our data landscape? So we're looking at trying to
understand what our feedback is.But I mean, as soon as you get

(34:56):
the feedback and you know what's, what's working, we can
double down on those areas and we can enhance those
experiences. As I said on the concrete, when
you're looking at bulk service and you're looking at just
people who want to get served, they don't want to be queuing,
they want to get back to the event that they're there for.
It's just reacting to those bitsof feedback getting the staff to
those locations to serve more people.

(35:18):
I've jumped behind the barn manya time just just following, but
just to get just to get more beers out there and get the fans
happy and just communication. So digital signage, you'll see a
bit of a shift changing digital signage now that you'll be
looking at, you'll be looking atcommunicating what we're
selling, but also communicating to what's going on in the event

(35:39):
we might be closing kiosks. And what's the worst possible
thing you can have is an Oasis gig and you walk out and half
the kiosk closed because we didn't think there was that much
demand. But if you've got on the digital
signage where there's a bar that's open over there and
within the Premier League clubs,we are actually allowed to open
some of the bars after the event.

(35:59):
If there's sports bars, there's a legal loophole there.
And so you can send people to those areas and keeping the fan
happy is really, really important.
And then how do we actually keepthat experience really
heightened? And passes is our people.
It's one of our pillars. So people, purpose, planet
people are super, super important within Levy and within

(36:20):
the Compass group, we have theseSO PS and operating procedures,
we call it signatures within Levy.
Basically every process from PCIcompliance on payment devices
through to baristas, bartenders,everything has a signature.
We'll just redo the technology and signature because
everything's changed every 5 minutes.

(36:43):
We have those procedures that people are trained up in.
And when we have when people join the Levy family, it's not a
mafia muddy. When you join the family, you're
not asking me. When you join, we bring you into
an induction or two production, one of our one of our venues and
we'll just run through end to end what our customer

(37:03):
experiences and what we expect. So yeah, it is, it is a tricky 1
to react to feedback if you're not open every day and we take
the learnings from, you know, the last time that we played
Manchester United or the last time we played Liverpool.
We've also got to respect those away fans a little bit.
They're here still here to have a great experience and we want

(37:25):
to serve them. We what was really nice
Birmingham City, which we launched last year, is all the,
all the digital signage on our first Rangers friendly.
We had Welcome Rangers and we had slightly different tweaked
food, food offer and drink offerbased on.

(37:48):
Which? Was an absolute moment.
If it's not a draft, it's relatively.
Slow. But enhancing that digital, I
think is sort of the next step in that.
I think I probably have to have to mention the D word dynamic
pricing, which I think is exactly, I think hotels,
airlines, they're getting away with their, you know, early

(38:09):
certificates or Senate. I think it's really tricky.
I, I love the idea of bringing people in earlier with a, with a
lower price point. I hate the idea of raising
prices that people think it's, you know, disrespectful to your,
to your customers. But a premium seed is great
example. We reduce the, the pine price
by, I think £1.50 or even 2 lbs.It's very, very low.

(38:33):
So we brought fans into the fan zone earlier, which is great
from their better experience. We had DJs, we put all our curb
street food out there. So they've got a full variety of
foods and we're reducing that price of what people come in and
they rather than coming for, youknow, a football event for three
hours, they're there for six hours.
And then we open our fan zones after the event.

(38:53):
And so it's really enhancing that experience.
Yeah, I do the I think there wasa statistic I can't remember
because I left that part of my notes at home, but it was was it
61% of hospitality businesses are are are a little clunky when
it comes to tech. To me that's like the old, you

(39:14):
know, hair in the soup kind of over or undercooked properly,
whatever you'll get. You go in in the world.
Is anybody, again, I'm going to do a little interactive thing
here, Is anybody they've ever experienced that moment whereby
you go to pay and they can't quite get it to work and they
have to take? It away or anything or any
other? Kind of tech clunk in your

(39:35):
experience as a consumer. I definitely have not going to
pick one you're getting. Yeah, it's just together because
like that can make or break, right.
I mean, that's that's almost like the the hotel equivalent of
the last thing that they remember is breakfast kind of
thing. You know, if the last thing they
remember is that actually you couldn't get stuff to work, then
that's a that's a tough one to do.
How do you guard? So this is, I suppose, an open

(39:56):
question because this wasn't on the questions that we actually
spoke of. So anybody how do you guard
against like tech clunk kind of breaking into your business?
I'll quickly start and then passalong.
So it's all about testing and it's about bringing the people
there to test it. So I, within the innovation labs
that I run, we, we put all the technology through this process,

(40:19):
which is proof of concepts and to make sure it actually works,
proof of value. If you're looking to reutilize
labour, you're looking to changetheir customer flow or change
the customer experience and thenharden ready to scale.
And if you're harden ready to scale, even though the highest
peaks at Wimbledon, the technology should be able to
handle it. That's great.

(40:40):
The technology can the customer handle the technology?
And that's a real tricky one. It's communication.
It's explaining to them the steps of the process, but it's
also getting people out in frontof them to explain.
So great example is at Wimbledonthis year we launched a new
frictionless little larder whichwas time and go and it's around

(41:01):
3. We've got around three times the
amount of three put through thatarea, which sadly doesn't mean
three times the revenue. But so but that is a new
experience and actually worked really well because we had
digital signage on the way in showing you get a card out stuff
engage you've done not queuing up at the end.
You walk out of the of the store.

(41:22):
You can scan for for receipts after, but it's it's is that
that really rigorous testing before you launch, during the
launch and then support that thecustomers on your journey to
make sure it doesn't go. I just want to say the price
tech clunk is now firmly embedded in my I love it.

(41:44):
I'm gonna use it. I think it's sad.
It's better than Scottish accents.
I apologize, but testing is the obvious one.
I think the other thing that we've really learned is know
what the Plan B is in terms of making sure the opera, when
things go down as they do, as they always do, what is Plan B?
Because you, you see it every single day in restaurants when

(42:06):
something isn't working, it's actually that panic that sound
nervous. You know the thing when you see
guest friction, it's because they don't know what's going on
and what's going to happen. And if you know and the team
know if this happens, the Wi-Fi goes down, this big kit wouldn't
work. If there is a Plan B that all
the management knows that if that happens, do this and just
make it really seamless. And then I just really notice

(42:27):
and I think it's that it is thattesting.
So hopefully you don't have to have to get there, but then it's
having a really clear brief of spec onto if A happens, do B
move on, make it look like it's intentional and you'll probably
get away with 90% of the that was my Scottish accent.
That's what. We'll have words later on.

(42:48):
Yeah. I mean, obviously we implement
both things we spoke about as well.
The other thing that we try and do is, but actually before we
introduce anything is that we bring staff from sites to the
meetings. So I'll pick a general manager
or a restaurant manager or someone who's actually working
in the venues day-to-day, understands the operation,
understands the steps of serviceto the meetings.

(43:09):
Initially with the tech company,you know, whether it's the
payment apps, whether it's, you know, the, the new, the new
point of sale system, because they're going to ask the
questions that really affect them.
It's easy for us directors to set a meeting and say, oh, that
sounds great, that's amazing. But reality is we're probably
not going to use it that much. So, you know, I do have to jump
in the past occasionally. But you know, it's important for

(43:30):
people who are dealing with it day-to-day to ask the important
questions to understand how thattest may help them, what time
balls could be. And then they're also, when
they're involved, they're the champion of that, you know, so
then they champion that to theircolleagues and they speak about
it and then they go to person and you just get them.
The more people you get involvedon a site level and to big
decisions, the better. Great.

(43:52):
And I think great answers here. So I don't have a lot to add
other than you would think somebody with the name James
Walker would have a Scottish accent other than that.
And I think Harry, you mentionedboth a Billy Eilish concert
where you did a complete. A vegetable menu.
And Oasis, I was at Oasis and itseemed that they also had a
vegetable menu, but mostly that they were smoking in the stands.

(44:15):
So I'm not sure exactly what you're doing there.
So when I hear testing, I, I hear that the that the
technology team is ensuring thatthings are working the way
they're designed to work and that there's fail safe in in
place and there's a backup plan.And I think most companies are
pretty good at doing that because I think it's part and

(44:35):
parcel to the technologists skill set to look at that.
Where I think there's a big piece missing is, is in folks
with my point of view is a chiefexecutive officer or the COO
when I'll go in and I'll meet with them being a now a
technology provider and I'll say, you know, are you happy
with your app or you're happy with your one PD on your web?

(44:56):
And they're, you know, they start quoting somebody else in
the company. They say, can you show me the
app on your phone? Well, I actually don't have it.
I think having senior managementreally experienced the
technology that's being providedas a customer, I can tell you
where I've done that. You know, you talk about clunk
and I know you're talking about maybe it's not working the way

(45:17):
it should. I'm talking about clunk.
It is working the way it should.It's just not working the way
the consumer really needs it to work.
So I think everybody needs to use that technology.
I think having everyone in the company focus on that
experience, really experiencing things through the guest eyes
and making sure they're comfortable as a consumer and

(45:38):
providing that feedback would bethe only thing I'd add to, I
think. Some really great comments.
Good stuff. Yeah, I think we're we're
probably a bit tight on time though, are we?
That's some. Time for some.
Questions, cool. There's just a couple of quick
fire ones. I'm just again, we can do a
little quick. There's probably maybe one word
or seven words or whatever answers, but and what's one
thing that people get wrong about experience like dining?

(46:00):
Just a quick answer. That wasn't on.
The just got one, I think one ofthe big challenges you've seen
not not just for building other brands is the experience that
you're selling through, you know, marketing, integrate
digital experiences, Instagram, it has to resonate.
It has to match exactly what you're actually your product is

(46:23):
in the venue and the restaurantsto go from there.
And that's where I think the experience sometimes you've seen
it where where it's very easy inthe digital age to sell a drink
if you didn't see that. And that captures your heart,
makes you passionate, makes you wanna go try it.
And that's not delivered in the restaurant, you're creating a
much bigger problem because thatgap between brand expectation
and brand reality is just a pissed off guest.

(46:46):
And I guess one of the really big challenges, there's
sometimes markings saying, oh, you're overselling us here, that
that looks that good thing, stack high pancake and that
stuff. People will expect that when
they go in the restaurant. So let's calm down because
that's correct an operation problem.
I think knowing that gap betweenbrand, you know, brand
expectation and brand reality iscrucial as an operator.

(47:07):
Thank you. And yeah, again, touching on
that is the offering being a carte blanche sort of offering.
So, you know, it's been guilty in the past of doing an offering
in London and then putting that again across all the regionals.
You know, selling Chandon at certain price is going to work
in in London, but it might not work in Glasgow.
There's difference in licensing laws that work in Scotland and

(47:27):
there is Wales, England, etcetera across all three
countries that use. So it's, you know, not just
seeing a blanket marketing campaign, which I think happens
when it's definitely my frustration when I was a general
man. This isn't going to work in
Edinburgh, but it might work in Richmond, you know.
Yeah. I think to answer your question
directly, I don't believe you. There's a mandate that you have

(47:47):
technology. So and I think of the US, one of
the most successful restaurant companies that you may not have
heard of is a company called In and Out Burger.
From a technology standpoint, they're still taking orders on
pieces of paper. They have fixed menu boards.
They don't do any delivery. They really don't do any off
premises. One of the most successful
brands, positive same store sales year on year.

(48:09):
Frankly, since they started, I think they've closed 1
restaurant and simply it was a security issue.
It was an area that became, let's call it disenfranchised
and they ended up closing a restaurant just from a security
standpoint. So I guess the, the advice I
would have and, and direct answer to your question is if
you are going to have technology, make sure that it's

(48:31):
up to date and that it works. So for example, I, I like wine.
I've heard a lot of wine and alcohol talk here, you know,
looking at a higher end restaurant that says, listen,
we're going to have a dynamic wine list.
I love the idea of that, right? Because it's not going to be a
paper wine list where you page through.
You look for 30 minutes and you're like, you know, I have

(48:51):
this one. Like, yeah, we don't have that
one. It's like, all right, great.
I guess I'll start over making sure that the technology's up to
date. So if you have a website and
it's listing pricing or hours orspecials, make sure that that's
up to date. You're not mandated to have that
technology, but if you're going to have that technology and
provide information, make sure it's up to date for us.

(49:15):
Yeah. I think there's one, one last
thing just around sort of the innovation labs is that you're
rolling out technology. You're not just beholding to
that technology. You've got to stop and review.
And if it isn't working, you've got to kill it.
So test and learn. And then if it isn't ready to
harden, if it hasn't asked that proof, the concept, proof of
value, then don't be afraid to, you know, lose a few quid and

(49:40):
kill it. Because if you roll out
something that doesn't work and people aren't happy with it and
then aren't using it, you've got, you've got a load of legacy
debt and you've got to get rid of, which is a lot more painful
than style and fresh, probably painful for the team as well,
right? It's not.
Just the guest in that world, possibly, possibly and I think
the. Other thing is everyone is now
so reliant on computers that sometimes you do need to have

(50:02):
that mental check. You know, the computer isn't
perfect. You look at AI, it's
hallucinating all the time. It's great for my masters I'm
doing at the moment, but sometimes I'm going to just
double check before I submit. But it's it isn't.
It isn't. Wikipedia is, and which isn't
always right. Yeah.
Wikipedia, I think, is actually better than AI.

(50:23):
It is tricky because we're so reliant on technology.
You hear, you know, horror stories of people getting their
phones nicked on the side of theroad and then the whole lives
are turned upside down. We'll just have a think about
that later on, like what would happen if you lost your phone?
And then just think, as an operator, if your system went
down and you didn't know where your stock was, you should be
able to manage everything without any technology.

(50:45):
Yeah, General on the way. Here my phone crashed literally
as I was. Walking from the Elizabeth.
Line to here and I thought yeah,I.
Was going to tap around to. Go home, but my ticket was on.
The on the phone so I. Wouldn't be able to get back on
the train, but final question before.
I open it up. To the floor, very quick one
again, we'll just go down the down, down the line if you could

(51:07):
automate 1 task in your businesstomorrow that just.
Freeze up a bit more time for your.
Your team to be a little bit more interactive with the guests
what would it be so this. This is this is a solution I.
Definitely need. So if you have it, come to the
talk. So AI, crowd management and flow

(51:27):
management around the stadium. So the hardest thing is moving
people around stadiums. People sit in, you know, G5,
they're only ever going to go toG6, They're not going to go any
further. So if a wave of one, I could
track everyone, you know, not scary stalker style, but track
people and reroute them ineffectively, move them to

(51:48):
other locations where I've got work and served them quicker.
I'm solving the challenge and wayfinding is an absolute
nightmare in every stadium. So how can we make, you know,
tracking people and moving to the right location?
Magic wand. OK, you're right at the bar
where there's no queue you were served.
That's a happy customer. So if you have that solution, I

(52:11):
think it's quite boring answer. For me it's.
Forecasting, like all of everything, breads and blows
from accuracy of forecast, all guest experiences, all financial
performance. If we got that to 100%, oh, I
would be a very happy man. That's it.
Mine is actually always coming through the moment, but it's,

(52:33):
it's then making reservation and, you know, putting up a
restaurant's time to the table. We're actually trialling an
automated AI person at the moment, which you phone up and
you make a booking through this AI program, which is putting all
the algorithms in the background.
It makes a booking for you. It listens, listens to you.
You want to make an amendment, special occasion and notes on

(52:53):
and you get text messages from your phone.
It's just a really seamless process rather than having to
press option one, option 2 tell you exactly what you want.
It's, it's AI listening to you. And there's not that sort of
transactional element of a of booking a table.
Yeah, I would say specific to. QSR quick casual if you think of

(53:13):
the the multiple digital. Touch points so you have.
An app You probably have a web. You have Deliveroo, soon to be
DoorDash, Uber Eats. You might have a kiosk.
You may have drive through menus.
You have in restaurant menus, ifyou run out of a ingredient, not
necessarily a menu item, but an ingredient.

(53:35):
If you're a burger restaurant and you run out of, you know,
God forbid cheese, the ability to remove all menu items that
are reliant on that one SKU is really problematic.
You today we provide some of this software in the US and and
are doing so now, but here to four being a restaurant

(53:56):
operator, having to remind a general manager if you need to
go to 7 different places and think of every item that uses
cheese and remove that versus the ability to say, you know,
the technology understands all of the recipes.
If it's if it knows you don't have cheese or bacon, it can
remove all of those items from every digital experience until
that's back in stock. Very good.

(54:20):
Any questions anybody go ahead. Yes, you are.
Obviously. All.
Restaurants must surprise their guests.
And all guests, I may like to besurprised that.
We. Will know that even like a 2%

(54:42):
difference in food costs throughout the year, it could be
10s of thousands even a. 100 thousands for some restaurant
groups. How can you ensure that when
you're giving value, money or something for free that that?
Isn't eroding your margins and can be.
Agile by doing that a lot of thetime.
Anyone else? I think.

(55:02):
Sorry. It's quite.
Relevant for us because you know, going back to the three
years, very tricky conversation.I bundled it up all in the same
conversation of speaking to the group CFO and saying if you'd
like to change bonus scheme. So no financial measures,
they're all guest measures. I want to introduce Kids Inc
free and we want to do 5 LB pancakes on a Friday that was.

(55:23):
It was a tense meeting, but but.It was.
It was underpinned. Purely by the fact that we've
seen huge benefits of that generosity.
And the honest answer is modelling.
It is a lot, a lot of work on modelling.
So you've got all the scenarios and we knew we need to see a 20%
uplift in footfall when we introduced this five.

(55:44):
That's the target we're actuallygenerating for.
And so I think you know, the insights, the data, the the
stock packages, they're all really good.
Now we're very lucky in that we've got a very good commercial
finance team as. Well, with.
Those kind of specific models, they've been game changing for
us because they make it much more.
Digestible and we. Know exactly for any kind of
promotion discount would be really good at predicting if we

(56:06):
drop this, this will be the impact on margin.
Therefore this is the cover uplift we need to do.
Therefore this is the amount I can spend on SEO or paid
marketing because I need to drive this this cover uplift,
football uplift to compensate the discount and so it it is all
down to to modeling. Can I give an an opposite
answer? So one of the things I used to

(56:27):
say running, let's call it brands that were very focused on
guest experience is my job as ACEO was to make terrible
business decisions for the sake of the guests.
Yeah. And I remember running a company
called Baja Fresh where I paid thousands of dollars to
overnight skirt steak on a Friday for Saturday morning to

(56:49):
have the CFO come in and say, I've done the math.
There's no way that we would sell enough steak on those two
days to cover what it cost to FedEx that in.
You should have waited till Tuesday.
And I said, you're missing a point.
It's not about modelling. It's not about the fact that
you've got a spreadsheet that cruises this out.
It's about making sure every guest leaves here delighted,

(57:11):
excited to come back and willingto recommend.
So I think it's really importantif you're if you're looking at a
long term decision or an LTO, that you're making wise,
informed decisions using analytics and insights.
But I would also be prepared sometimes as restaurant tours
and you're talking about experience, you have to do what
you think is right. I've been very lucky to have

(57:31):
been associated with a. Number of restaurant.
Founders who founded great brands and I can tell you
they're not making decisions based on a spreadsheet, they're
making decisions based on creating an experience that once
that consumers want to enjoy andwant to come back for, you need
to. You need to have your CFO.
Meetings, by the way. It's I'm sort of not on counter

(57:57):
the counter, but it's I think you can model that now actually.
And that's what's really interesting.
What we've said is we know through generosity what uplift
it has. And so, you know, I'm not a
boring Sasha telly sort of spreadsheet guy who's computer
says we should or shouldn't. But I do think there are now
really good data insights to saywe can now track guest behaviour

(58:18):
to know our generosity at this level to discount.
And that's what actually so interesting on pricing
strategies and price points to go.
There's definitely the starting point has to be that passion
we're giving them generosity. But I think what is interesting
now is we can actually build in modeling terms of predicting
guest behaviour based on your levels of generosity and
fightback is probably the best example we've done with that to

(58:40):
go. We know what that level of
generosity was great in terms ofshortly, you know seeing the
repeat visits and when they'll come back.
There was a question over there.I think this answer.
Yeah. Pauline, for James, Shawn and
Tom, just going back to what youoriginally said, James, about

(59:03):
your experience with Emirates. It reminded me of one of my
clients in Dubai who essentiallytook the M&D manual for Airbus
and also took some of the data insights from Apple and then 95
steps of service for a guest experience.

(59:24):
Is that something for them? It was a great success.
There were a family entertainment centre in in Bill
Waters, It really cemented them doing something completely
different. Do you feel that perhaps in the
UK we are completely perhaps notas demanding as other markets

(59:45):
And is that something that for yourself, yourself Tom that
would implement here in your brands in perhaps looking at non
hospitality industries to bring some of those experiences in to
offer something different? And I can start off but
obviously. And gauge will be take gas knots

(01:00:07):
and similar to what Emirates do.So every guest that comes into
then you recognise them. That tells you the OpenTable
works with the law, half of the point of sale system and we can
put every single bill of that guest has had.
So we so when we talk about guest notes, what we got into
habit, obviously was where our table hosts taking guest notes
and saying, oh, they haven't done penny on they have this
wine. We already have that knowledge

(01:00:28):
because we have all the bills onthe system now.
So what we're trying to do is trying to make it more
personable. So what does that guest like to
say? You know, do they want to accept
business and do they want to be in and out?
Do you want to have their bags ready when they leave the table
ready to go? Because they're not, they're in
a rush and, you know, try to customise the guest experience
based on their personal preferences rather than what
they drank, you know, you know, it's sort of they drank this.

(01:00:51):
And so, yeah, using other industries is beneficial, but
the biggest thing for me at the moment is that emotional,
emotional intelligence and it's understanding what the guest
wants. That's the biggest thing.
You know, as I said, like alluded to the business meal,
someone comes in in a suit with suitcases that they're probably
going to the airport and we givethem a little bit of water,
taking the journey. And it's adding those little,

(01:01:11):
what we call magic moments. We have a magic play that every
restaurant has. And in that magic playbook is
certain things and gestures thatwe do for guests.
And we add those magic moments onto the guest notes to make
sure that, you know, your first meal, you come in, you have a,
instead we're going to give you a complimentary sauce that you
didn't have to make sure that goes onto the plate, onto the
guest notes. So then the next time they come,
they'll get that same magic, youknow, and it's trying to just

(01:01:34):
create those experiences. And not just that every time
someone come in, they get a freesauce, they get a free set of
broccoli. It's trying to make sure that
that magic moment is tailored tothat guest.
We've got time for one more. Question.
I'm not the fun to it. It's generally, you know, I'm
actually really fun. Last question, anyone on them?
Yeah. Hello.

(01:01:56):
Thank you. Hi, guys.
Thank you so much for this morning.
Some really, really interesting insights.
I actually had a question. I don't think is this all.
I had a question about. Loyalty and in particular
loyalty schemes, I think we've spoken a lot this morning about
more kind of spontaneous incentives and you know, that's

(01:02:19):
one thing is kind of gifting. Element.
When you come in, but how would you, from all of your
experience, sort of cultivate that loyalty and loyalty
schemes, I guess through tech and bonus points if any of you
can sort of help within the luxury space.
That is the space that I work in.
And I think within the luxury space, there's often this

(01:02:40):
argument of, you know, you don'tnecessarily want to cheapen your
brand by putting out these loyalty schemes.
But yeah, just really interestedto see what you guys have to say
about that. I'll just go off.
Briefly. Within even the leaving
stadiums, it is actually very difficult to to gain a loyalty
following other than as the fans.

(01:03:00):
But generally across our stadiums that are all sites so
diverse and you look at the O2 Arena as an example, you only go
there one, one or two times a year.
So very difficult even to download the app.
So for us, we'll come on to VIP in a second, but for the general
admission, if you're forcing people likely to download the

(01:03:21):
apps, then they've got their ticket, then you're halfway
there. Then when you're providing them
rewards, it shouldn't be just a case of, OK, you've had eight
drinks and here's another drink.It needs to be personalized.
Hi, Harry, you're back at the O2.
You know, here's here's your give, give, give them
information that they actually want.
So here's your nearest bar that's got the lowest queues

(01:03:42):
that you know, there's a merch store over there.
Here's 10% off and give them stuff that's tangible that
people want. And then if you go up the tiers
to sort of the Super VIP, so rawbox or any of our sort of
hospitality boxes, there really isn't any apps yet.
So we're looking into an app at the moment to cover that off.

(01:04:03):
But it needs to be almost invisible that you don't or you
almost don't want them to download the app.
And that's the challenge. That's the challenge at the
moment. If you send out an RFID card and
then we track you with the cars and we know when you arrive and
you have that dossier legally onthem and how we can help and

(01:04:24):
personalize that experience. I think it's really, really
tricky. The higher the VIP you go.
And these are people that don't want to be downloading apps.
They want people to know who they are probably do they want
the White Bluff service? So that probably doesn't help
any of your answers, but that's really my feedback, I think.
I mean, for us it's a. Really hot topic at the moment.

(01:04:45):
We've been debating the last year fascinating tech on toast
panel last month on loyalty appswith Prezzo.
We're going to add slightly rootactually, which I think there's
a massive opportunity for us in getting totally forensic on our
CRF and our database. And actually, I do think there's

(01:05:06):
resistance to downloading and you know, we get e-mail address
or or phone number from 9798% ofour guests because they're
booking, they're coming in, we're logging them on the system
to go from there. And if we can make that whole
CRM system better, well, we're talking to you personally
because we have your information.
You don't need to learn that. We can give you loyalty through

(01:05:27):
our database where we know you've come in and we can entice
you to come back again. That feels more exciting than
having to download the app. And it's sort of, you know, a
lot of the loyalty acts are not missing them, that they are an
access to discount scheme. That's why people download them
because they want to have this. And I I think to create those
more magical, more specialised, interesting moment.
And do you think there's an opportunity that actually retail

(01:05:49):
my wife's acdo in in Clutcher retail.
So we have some very romantic conversation about that retail
so far ahead. And they do it so brilliantly.
When you feel that someone is writing to you about the
product, you want to let you know that they're going to do
this for you because you are special to them.
That's more engaging to me than but going on to my app and going

(01:06:09):
brilliant like 20% if I go another two times and that's not
dismissed. There's so many good case
studies on loyalty apps. I just think for us and it is a
cost thing to go back to the budget, loyalty apps are
expensive. We have a team managing, we're
doing well too. And I think that there is
definitely an opportunity on on sort of database and that CRO
management. But we're pretty excited.
It's a big project for us over the next 12 months.

(01:06:31):
That's answers. We've got time answers.
No, this is from me. Thanks to.
Our Co host shift ball and lunchbox for doing today.
Our gorgeous panel. Thank you, James, Sean, Tom and
Harry and our guest host, Phil Thank you very much.

(01:06:54):
And you guys, thank you so much.

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