October 1, 2025 • 34 mins
Norman Wu of Conscious Hospitality Group reveals how he manages nine fast-casual brands across the Pacific Northwest, from Just Poke's 40 franchise locations to community-focused concepts like Haps burgers. Wu discusses his regional growth strategy, sustainability commitments from day one, and why operations must come first in multi-brand management. Plus, Won Jeong from Smart Trainer demonstrates how AI is transforming restaurant operations—from three-second schedule generation to sales predictions that factor in weather, events, and traffic patterns. Learn why going deep in your home market beats wide expansion, and how AI can enhance (not replace) your team's capabilities.
FastCasualNation #RestaurantTech #RestaurantAI
Get Your Podcast Now! Are you a hospitality or restaurant industry leader looking to amplify your voice and establish yourself as a thought leader? Look no further than SavorFM, the premier podcast platform designed exclusively for hospitality visionaries like you. Take the next step in your industry leadership journey – visit https://www.savor.fm/
Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.
Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory
FastCasualNation #RestaurantTech #RestaurantAI
Get Your Podcast Now! Are you a hospitality or restaurant industry leader looking to amplify your voice and establish yourself as a thought leader? Look no further than SavorFM, the premier podcast platform designed exclusively for hospitality visionaries like you. Take the next step in your industry leadership journey – visit https://www.savor.fm/
Capital & Advisory: Are you a fast-casual restaurant startup or a technology innovator in the food service industry? Don't miss out on the opportunity to tap into decades of expertise. Reach out to Savor Capital & Advisory now to explore how their seasoned professionals can propel your business forward. Discover if you're eligible to leverage our unparalleled knowledge in food service branding and technology and take your venture to new heights.
Don't wait – amplify your voice or supercharge your startup's growth today with Savor's ecosystem of industry-leading platforms and advisory services. Visit https://www.savor.fm/capital-advisory
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are back here on another episode of Fast Casual Nation,
the podcast that started it all. Today is going to be
a little bit different. We've got share Kanzler, You're stepping
out beside me, and of course she is going to
be taking the day off, but not to matter, because
we have an unbelievable show for you and it's going
to be a good one that really focuses in a
(00:21):
multi brand concepts. This episode is brought to you by
Philadelphia Cream Cheese Chefs. Take the heat all day, every day.
(00:44):
Performing under pressure is what we do. Just like Philadelphia
Cream Cheese, Phillies creamy texture holds up every time, less cracking,
more binding. Ask your distributor for the original Philadelphia Cream
Cheese originals. Deserve the original. Norman wu is joining me,
of course from a conscious hospitality group. How are you, Norman?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Good? Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, so I had a chance to look a little
bit into what you guys are doing, and I would
say this right now when you look at the multi
unit brands, and we've had several people on here that
have a fairly good job on multi unit brands, but
I was surprised at just how many brands you guys
have rolling here and pretty impressed with it. How many
(01:31):
total brands right now are you guys operating currently?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
We have nine brands that we are operating. We have
actually a couple more that we're working on, but nine
kind of active brands.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Of all of these that I'm scrolling across from Mount
Joy Island, finn Sugo, Macha, which one of these brands
is the oldest of all of them.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So everything started with just Poke. That was our first
concept that we opened up back twenty sixteen, and then
the other ones have kind of layered on in the
you know, subsequent years.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, when you look at running multiple brands and kind
of the vision of what you guys are trying to
do as an operator, what would you say right now?
Because I can I can't imagine running this many brands
in terms of marketing and all that much less operations
in real estate. What right now though, is like your
biggest department to be able to manage this many brands?
(02:27):
Is it marketing, culinary, what's the what's the Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Good question, I would say operations Still, I think, you know,
when it comes to restaurants and retail concepts, at the
end of the day. You are a operations company first
and foremost, and making sure that the back end is
smooth and also the front end experience for customers as
smooth as well. So I would say the bulk of
our the bulk of our team is sits in operations.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, I like the you know, when you look at operations,
does this work with the ability to blend the two
to get I mean, the multiple brands together in operations?
Can you, I guess, in the way, can you use
training facilities for one brand that translate to another brand?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I would say so, I think, you know, even though
we have a lot of brands, we've tried to stay
in somewhat of a niche of being kind of in
the QSR fast casual space and then also kind of
focusing on I would say health and wellness brands, and
I think that allows us to at least be know
enough to still maintain some good continuity between the brands.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah. Well, I think you know when you look at
just poke the uniqueness that you have here with this brand,
especially around health and wellness. Let me kind of share
that to those who are watching you guys are franchising
this system. So is franchising available for all of the
different brands or is it specific.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's not currently for all the brands. I think that's
eventually the vision. Right now, it's available for a couple
of the brands. Just Poke is our biggest franchise. We
have about forty franchise locations currently.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, where all mortally northeast or are you spreading.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Out mostly in north mostly in Washington State right now?
But we have one in Canada and then we're starting
the branch out to other states as well.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Now, okay, so the Canadian market, I mean, obviously you're
right there. That's is that. Do you feel like Canada
could be one of the potential opportunities for your your
network of brands or is it just kind of dialed
into Just Poke?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I think so. It actually started because we met just
an amazing couple in Vancouver, BC. I met them through
like a local network, and even though we weren't really
thinking of expanding to Canada at the time, just felt
such good synergy and energy from them that we were like, hey,
let's figure it out and make it work. And that
being said, it's gone off to a pretty good start.
And I think, you know Vancouver, the Vancouver British Clumbate
(05:00):
market is somewhat similar to Seattle, So I think there
are synergies there where there could potentially be a play
to kind of expand out that a little bit further well.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And I think, you know, when you look at the
regional side of things, sometimes I wonder if regional and
this is I guess a question I always ask, is regional.
Are regional brands going to be kind of the future
of fast casual because people, you know, being able to
develop a marketing plan, development plan, real estate, all those things.
(05:32):
When you're dealing with markets that are way outside you know,
in many cases their sweet spot, it becomes very difficult.
I'm not knocking Sweet Greens, but Sweet Greens did that,
you know, they they started in d C and they
started to expand. Obviously they repopulated their brand over in
LA which became kind of their home hub hub, and
(05:54):
I think, you know, they've struggled a little bit. I
don't know it's if it's that reason, but that could
be definitely one of those Is that something that you
guys are feeling comfortable with in just focusing on certain
areas of the country.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, I think so, I mean, I think you know,
for both me and my co founder Danny the Pacific
north West start home. We're both born and raised here,
so I think our mindset has always to kind of
stay more regional. And I do think as you expand
outside of the region, you know, there's pros and contst
expanding outside the region, I think you have to kind
of rebuild the foundation as you continue to develop new markets.
(06:32):
So I think again, you know, there isn't a right
or wrong, but I think for us right now, we've
built such a good foundation here in the P ANDW
that it feels like instead of going to wide, we'd
rather go a little bit deeper. And that's why we
started to expand other brands as well.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, tell me about this brand, because I was I
felt like this brand felt a little bit different than
the others, and that is Happs. Yeah, talk to me
about how this one started. What was your goal here
with with apps?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah? Absolutely, So it's actually there's only one location and
it is so we were born in a little city
called Mercer Island, just about fifteen minutes east of Seattle
and perhaps is on the island. Mercer Island is a
very very small town. There's very few restaurants and growing
up the only burger place was McDonald's, and you wanted to,
(07:26):
you know, have something that was just a little bit
better for people in terms of the quality of the food.
And it actually is in an old gas station that
was converted, and yeah, I think the whole idea was,
you know, we want to do like grass fed burgers,
higher quality of food. And I think the people on
the island have really appreciated that well.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
And I think the key here is that you're flexing
concepts around communities and sometimes that those to me, are
the best kinds of concepts to grow on. If if
you can dial one in that really met matches up
to a community, I think that's a Those are almost
always going to be big winners. Is there are there
(08:05):
plans to start to repute like replicate apps or is
this do you feel like this is a one off?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah? Good question. Our team has fiercely debated this internally
on whether or not I should be a point off
or if we should expand that. I think we're still
dialing it in. I think if at some point we
fully dialive in, and I think there is another location
that makes sense. We're not a scrowing yet, but also
we're okay with having it be more of a one
(08:31):
off and having it be a local community hub where
you know, it's kind of its fun one of one.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So yeah, right, Well, I think the key here is,
you know, as you as you start to become kind
of a blueprint model for brands. One thing that is
unique to me is, first of all, you got and
we talked about this in the pre show, is the design.
Theming seems to be very well dialed in. I was
(08:58):
curious how you were able to lockdown and you said
you got like a Jedi that is working for you
in the marketing department. What what was How did that happen?
How did you get a find like that one in
terms of selecting teams?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, good question. I think just he's someone in my network.
We've been talking a long time and really shared the
same vision and kind of values, and I think I
was actually over the course of the year that we
kind of came to just two years ago, came to
aligning and bringing him on the team. But his name
is Charles. He's fantastic, i'd say, again master service craft,
(09:33):
but really has an eye for creating brands that stand out,
and I think in this day and age, we live
in a you know, attention economy, and I think your
brand has to stand out from whatever POV that's trying
to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, you have an incubation section on your website.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
What is that.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Good question? I think for us? You know, so most
of our brands initially started off as brands that we've create,
So you know, ones we've both from scratch. Ones we've
created the brand, created the menu, kind of created every
aspect of it. And I think there's a lot of,
I would say, people out there who are looking to
(10:13):
start their own brands, but I think maybe might not
know where to start. And I think one thing that
we're really good at is helping scale brands from maybe
one or two locations to hopefully twenty to thirty plus.
And our goal is to either align with or help,
you know, other entrepreneurs who kind of have a great
(10:35):
idea but don't know kind of how to execute it
in the future, be able to you know, jump start
their brand and really take it to the next level.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
One question I want to jump on is when you
look at the values. I'm kind of showing this on
screen for everybody right now, sustainability, stewardship, community. You know,
this is one of the things that you guys have
kind of locked in on. And I will be honest,
I hear this from a lot of brands. Okay, you know,
it's like the the it's the table stakes. I look
at and I'm like, sustainability, Okay, a lot of people
(11:04):
are trying to lock in on that, trying to do
things that are good for the community, but really dialing
it in and especially around kind of the good for
you concepts that you guys are building. To me, it
feels like with good for you, this match is a
little bit better than like if you're a Hot Chicken
brand or you're you know, and I'm not knocking Hot Chicken,
(11:30):
but we just had Jim Bidigs on not too long
with Dave's, and you know they've exploded. But point being
is is that this is one of those things that
communities can really get into. Has that been the case
for you guys. Have you seen community uptake with what
your mission is?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah? I would say so. And I should start with
just poking our very first concepts and first locations up
in back twenty sixteen. But back then, before we even
open the doors, Dany and I aligned on that. You know,
we are doing it in our neighborhood, our community, and
we want to do it the right way. And so
this is kind of back I think even before the
big compostable movement. But when we opened our doors for
(12:08):
our first location, everything we use in the source postable,
all of our tuna salmon was certified sustainably caught. And
I think it's just for us a way like the
right way to do business. And I think being able
to look in the mirror and be proud of the
business that you're building every day. And I do think
that people, at least in this area, they care about it.
Historically have been bad at kind of telling the story
(12:31):
and marketing kind of what we've been doing. But once
we were able to kind of do so, I think
people were I think again, you know, very excited to
kind of support the brands.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Well, I think the key here is when you have
when you have brands that are building that tie into
communities at the same time that they're building, maybe something
that is actually good for the community. You know, because
a lot of times the if you look at young
families or you look at certain demographics, I'll call it
maybe the Mollennial and the gen z right now, which
(13:02):
are adapting very well to better for you food. They're
starting to get much more educated. Obviously, there's a lot
more information out there, and that obviously dictates to brands
how they go forward. But for you guys, you started
in this space on the good for you. Have you
found other concepts in the area that have started to
(13:23):
try to pivot to compete and how have you been
able to deal with that?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah? I think so. I think in my philosophy is
always a rising tide. I think, you know, whenever we
see other brands either get started in the good few
space or kind of a pivot, I think that's a
good thing. I think at the end of the day,
you know, the food that we eat is so not religious,
not really just to our short term health, but our
long term macro health that it's important for There'd be
(13:51):
lots of options out there of getting quality food for people.
And I think for us, to me again, the rise
and tide effect is more information. The more education there
is out there for why we should be eating certain things,
I think the better that is for everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So well, and you know, I think the point that
you guys have been able to hit on is just
locking into a certain regional area, really focusing in on that,
and then it works as a brand and then you
can you know, kind of multi print out these concepts.
Let's talk a little bit about technology because this is
something that you know, brands either they have a really
(14:28):
good tech stack or they don't. Many brands right now
are kind of struggling with so many different services that
are out there. Let's kind of go into the AI
side of things for right now. Sure, because I am
talking to a lot of founders that are implementing AI tools,
maybe not completely, but they're utilizing them at least in
(14:49):
their infrastructure. What have you guys been able to do
in the space around AI to help your brand kind
of you know, not only scale, but maybe maintain what
you're doing from a values and culture side of thing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I mean we are definitely dabbling. I think right
now we're in a very exploratory phase, so just seeing
all the tools are out there and figuring out which
ones are the right complete tech stack. There are a
couple that we've leveraged right off the bat that felt
like kind of low hanging fruit, no brainers. I think
one of them was for our sushihandrow Bar and kind
(15:24):
of an AI phone automated system where instead of having
someone have to you know, rush to grab the phone
any time someone calls, you kind of have a service
that can help guide the initial interaction for the customer.
And then the other one that we think we're about
to actually launch that we're super excited about is with Haying.
So it's a loyalty marketing system that leverages AI and
(15:46):
on the back end, it allows our general managers to
be able to search and sift through data much easier.
I think historically, you know, if you want to find
your sales per hour or what's your best selling item,
that's all, but you kind of have to go into
the system and really navigate it well. And now you
can just essentially it's like a chat GPT version for
(16:07):
that and to search, hey, you know, what are my
sales per hour for this location for this item, and
it can split it round out black A you so excellent.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Well, I think this is the key to me is
I will tell you this. I was a skeptic of
AI in the beginning. You know, eighteen months ago we
started implementing some large language models into some of the
tool sets that we're doing here on our own research,
and slowly I started to see real benefits pay out,
(16:39):
and then I started to see almost new areas that
we had never really uncovered before. Has that happened for you, guys?
Have you been able to see the tools, use them,
and then go This has opened up a whole new
area for us to implement better operations, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I think so. And I think I mean the
way we view AI is it's not meant to necessarily
replace headcount, but it allows headcount and the team to
spend more time in other areas in which AI can
kind of do the heavier lifting on some of the
data sifting. And I think one philosophy that we use
for our instore team is, you know, it's meant to
allow you to spend more time with customers and provide
(17:19):
better service. So I think we very much view any
information of tech as ais hey, instead of just a
labor cost savings. It allows us to reallocate some of
that labor and cost towards continuing to improve the experience
we have. And I think we kind of live in
a day and age where I do feel like customer
service is a little bit lost in the retail rus
(17:42):
Bold and I think for us, part of being part
of the community is, hey, we want to deliver that
world class customer service experience, and we're going to leverage
AI to help with some of the other tasks, help
us spend more time there.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, it's good to see that you guys are innovating
in that area and the cool l I think, especially
when you look at something like a AI and then
a multi brand approach, it's one thing to kind of
scale certain tech stacks across multi brand because in many
cases it may not necessarily work perfectly unless you're doing
(18:15):
a lot of proprietary builds. I know some guys are
building their own pos because of that very need. We
talked to a guy last week that was doing that
because they have a whole slew of basically food trucks
and they couldn't find a solution out there, so they
had to build, you know, pretty much a homegrown point
of sale. And I think the AI component is it
(18:36):
has that flexibility to kind of blend around each individual
brand uniquely and differently. So that is a very cool thing, which,
by the way, guys, we're going to have an expert
on AI here in a minute on the podcast, coming
over from Smart Trainer, to basically dive into some of that.
Before I bring him in, I want to finish up
here with you and Norman and focus in on a
(19:00):
couple of key questions, and that is growth fast casual.
The market sector continues to explode. We're seeing a lot
of new brands rushing into the space right now. How
do you guys plan to grow when you have this
many concepts in a I won't say constrained, but at
(19:21):
least in a very targeted area like the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, great question. I think, you know, for us, for
most of our brands, we see them as more regional brands.
So I think we're really just focused on going in
the Pacific Northwest. I think this area has just naturally
grown a lot in the last ten years. I think
there's plenty of growth here for us to still kind
of go after and accomplish. I think, you know, as
(19:47):
we continue to scale some of our brands, if one
of one or two of them makes sense to kind
of go outside of the Pacific Northwest, will kind of get
to that point. But again, I think, you know, the
PNWS are home. We're super excited to be here. I
think the people in the community really align with kind
of the brands and the values that are behind our brands,
and so I think for us, it's a great area
(20:08):
to continue to build our foundation, saturate the market, and
continue to kind of focus our time here for now well.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
And I think the cool thing is you've dialed in
to that market marketing wise, it's probably an easy thing
for you guys to transition from one spot to the
next target.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
It's very possible.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Do you know the customer makeup for you guys, are
are you finding customers that are going from one brand
to the next understanding what you guys are doing?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, I think again, you know, even though we
have a wide variety of brands, we really try to
focus have a little bit more of a tactical approach
in terms of hey, you know, fast, casual, healthy food, sustainable,
and then also kind of a certain demographic. I think,
you know, you can't reach too far in terms of
trying to create something for everybody, but I think I
want to really focus on who you think the you know,
(21:00):
middle of the bulls eye for your customer and your
brands are going to be, and I think that's kind
of where we're continuing to hone in on.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So I like it one last thing to take away
because you you have you know, you're kind of walking
the walk here, Norman. You know, you get a chance
to help others, and that is when you are building
brands right now. If you could do anything a little
bit differently in the startup of what Conscious Hospitality Group
(21:30):
is doing today, what would that be.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
That's a great question, I think, you know. So when
we opened up our very first locations, just Poke, my
co founder and I. We actually both of us worked
in the shop all day, every day for about a year.
I mean literally every single day, no weekends, no vacations,
Founder Mode, Baby, the Mode. Yeah, I learned how to
do every single thing, cut the fish, wash the dishes.
(21:57):
But I think we would have found mentors a little
bit faster. I think one thing I've learned is obviously
it's you have to experience everything, you have to learn everything,
and you have to go through it. But at the
same time, there's lots of great resources out there, and
I think it's important to you know, find those resources.
And we've had so many people be so generous with
(22:18):
their time, their advice, and it's really helped us scale
and jump much faster. I think for us, we feel
the same way in terms of wanting to return the
favor or pay it forward in terms of helping others. Yeah,
so I think, you know, there's just so many good
people out there that are, you know, willing to help.
You have to kind of.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Ask, Yeah, that's a good one, I think, because I
would say that is a heavy you know is obviously
here at Saber, we do a lot of investing in
startup brands, and when I talk to founders and we
get into this discussion, that's one of the things they
always talk about is it's difficult when you're a leader,
a CEO, it's difficult one to relate to other people.
(22:59):
You know, it's very lonely, and finding those mentors has
has been a big part of what their mission has been.
So it's interesting that you say that that it's dialed
in with even you and your co founder. Did you
guys when you started, did you guys come into the
business together? Was it what was that?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, we did. We've actually been best friends since elementary school.
You always want to do some easy yeah, so very
fortunate again in that in that situation.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, very cool, Norman wo coming in from Conscious Hospitality Group.
You guys go check them out. Lots of amazing brands.
I'll just bring them up here on screen one more time.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Pretty cool that they have this many successful ones. When
I'm out there, I'm going to try this Macha Tea one.
That's the one I'm interested in.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I would love you.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, and uh and eat Dirt. This is a good
one too. First of all, I like the branding on it,
so that's not one we didn't talk about. But you
guys go check it out. And Norman, it's been great
having you on the show today. Thank you so much
for stopping in with appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Likewise, thanks Ball you bet all right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So we're going to be getting into a section of
the show now that is going to be breaking down
an area that I think you guys are going to love,
and that is how to extend within AI. And this
is something that many brands have have talked to us about,
what are you guys seeing in the market. I know
with Sharon and I we were constantly interviewing and talking
(24:26):
to tech companies et cetera, and one of them that
I wanted to bring in today is a company called
smart Trainer, and this one is a little different because
they do things a little bit different. So Wan is
joining us today.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So Wan, how are you good? How are you?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Thank you excellently, So you got a chance to sit
in the green room listen to Norman. First of all,
what was your thought about the number of brands that
he's managing? I mean, is that crazy?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
You know, I've been an operator prior to starting Smart Trainer,
and I don't know how he does it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
That would drive me nuts.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, you get every single men adam knowing that the
standards for it. Yeah, back and forth.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's going to be a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, kudos to him because that's this is one of
those things that is just unbelievable. If you guys have
not seen Smart Trainer, I'll bring up their website real quick.
It is smart Trainer app dot com. And I want
to dive into this one because not everybody understands how
to implement AI. You guys, of course, have kind of
(25:27):
doubled down on this. Tell me a little about how
you got started. What was the solution that you guys
were trying to solve for the industry.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So I've been in the restaurant industry for the last
nineteen years, typically in training, worked anywhere from dishwasher all
the way to training manager and regional training manager all
the weight director of training for a national brand. And
over the last nineteen years, I open hundreds of stores,
train hundreds of team members from all different levels, and
(25:58):
we always had the same problem every time were opening
a new store, we had to teach the team member
from the basics again. Yeah, and to us, it's like
we will actually start it off as a food smart
bin that basically lights up in the order of the
built when okay comes in. And then we started to
actually implement AI and we pivoted into the AI company
(26:19):
that you see today. So Smart Trainers a little bit
of background about us. Since we're new. We're basically like
your Alexa Siri. You could basically talk to Smart Trainer
and just say, hey, what's in a deluxe pizza? Or
how many pepperonis? Or hey, how many calorie does this
dish have? Or what should I do if there's a
(26:39):
food recall. It's basically your CHATCHYBT that knows all of
your answer but just has proper guardrails behind it, and
then it has access to all of your data so
that you could get sales prediction, prepless to overtime food variants.
You could even ask to make your schedule for next
week and within three seconds your whole schedules created.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So integration into scheduling, you're diving into some of the
back office side of what is being done in terms
in terms of operations for restaurants in general. When you
were building Smart Trainer, and you obviously as an operator,
you kind of knew how the sausage was made. So
(27:21):
is there something that you really said, this is the
area that we got to focus on. This is the
point of the spear that we got to really nail.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I think you mentioned that in the previous interview
with Norman, is that as an operator, especially with so
much brand like Norman, you start to have so much
different vendors and there's so many text tacks out there,
and when you have so much text tax out there,
managing different vendors is a role for itself. Yeah, for us,
you wanted to create that one tech solution, your primary
(27:52):
solution for all of your techs So we started to
bring everything in to become your primary tech solution for
all of your back of the house operation.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, so that's hard to do. I mean when you
think about back of house, I've seen several back of
house concepts that have been built over the years. You know,
it's digesting point of sale data. Sometimes it's digesting in
many cases HR and training data trying to come in.
Then you've got food costs and all those kind of things.
(28:22):
How do you guys integrate to different systems that are
out there in back of house front of house because
obviously point of sale, you've got in some cases existing
training systems. What would be a typical onboarding process for
a brand to say, Okay, I want to plug this in,
but what all do I have to talk to?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, we make it as simple as possible. So your POS company,
we get an API, we get all of your data
directly from there, we get anywhere from your food vendors,
et cetera. All we ask is an intro and then
we basically our team takes it from there and says
we'll set up API behind a scene so that we
get all of your data ingested into our system and
(29:04):
from there, our core AI that we have built up
that basically knows how to take that data and starts
plugging in the endpoints and you get your data.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Okay, so dialing into all of these I see right
here on screen we're showing you, guys, a handful of
brands has started to move on this you look at.
The big question to me is how to operators respond
to this act? They are they open to it? Is
it something they're skeptical of?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
What is kind of that?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Because we've seen it in social media, we've seen it
in integration and different marketing models. Obviously back a house,
in many cases people are not sure they're going to
get everything. What has been your experience so far with
the people who've rolled out Smart Trainer.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, it's actually funny. The last brand that I rolled
out to, I went to a store to go meet
with the managers as we're doing the rollout, and they said, oh,
you shoul showed up. I thought you were a scam.
And that day okay, they actually thought we were not
going to show up. So we actually came in, provided
them with their tablets and the docking station to speakers,
(30:13):
and basically started our phase one rollout. Typically we do
a couple of different phases for rollout to really gain
their trust. But we typically start with their training materials,
get their team on board to start using the materials,
and then we get their analytics in and then get
them to really trust Indie analytics behind it.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Okay, so when you say analytics, explain that a little
bit more. What all do I get?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah? So think about sales prediction. It's not just looking
at your historical sales prediction for your last five weeks
or last year trend. We look at all that. We
look at weather, We look at your live traffic flow,
We look at live events.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So if there's a.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Foot oh that's happening, how much tickets are being sold?
Is it away game, is it a home game? What's
the weather going to be? Like? We take all those information.
You say, hey, there's a high school that always does
really well, if there's an event that happens, We put
an aipot on that website to constantly check for any
new events, et cetera, and we have that running against
(31:11):
previous data to get to your sales prediction. Wow, just
type of the iceberg, because if you could get the
sales prediction right, you could get all your labor, food
ordering prep lists all correctly and more accurate.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Have you guys been able to dial in any solutions
for throughput on drive through? Because drive through has you
have home run days and you have days that are
kind of like singles and doubles, and it depends if
it's a rainy day, drive through is usually the best
you know, one of the best performing days. So obviously
weather plays into that. But back to your point, you
(31:45):
also have community events and things like that that also
contribute to that. Have you guys dialed in to drive
through yet?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, So there's a couple brand that actually has drive
through with us, and typically we see a large college events,
we see a lot of you know, after the event,
the drive through goes out before they close, so we
are able to dial that in. So, for example, when
we do our scheduling, we actually break apart your carry
(32:12):
out orders to go orders, to even delivery orders, how
many orders for every fifteen minute, and then we take
all that data using all the predictions that we just
made to basically say how much drivers do you need,
how much people do you need for the inside, and
build all that out within three seconds.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, for sure. Well, anybody wants to if you guys
are looking to check this out, go over to smart
trainer app dot com. You guys can learn little bit
more there. We're going to be doing a whole series
of AI tools for operators. So obviously what you guys
have done one has been amazing. What where can they
find you besides the web?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Just go to the website and if they want to
learn more.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, you guys can go to smart trainer app dot com.
There's a section at the bottom that says, please send
us a message, or you can always find me on
LinkedIn a message.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Okay, perfect, there it is right there. I'm going to
bring it up on screen for you guys. We'll leave
a link down in the description. If you are out
there listening in on this podcast and you haven't subscribed,
whether you're on YouTube or maybe you're over on the
audio version of the podcast, make sure and do that
right now. We love five stars as well, so Wood's
our one. It's been great having you on the show
(33:22):
so much. Thank you for coming in today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
All Right, guys, we're going to bring back Shrek Cansler
next week. You do not want to miss that. We've
got a big show next week that is absolutely going
to blow your mind. And don't forget the Fast Casual
Executive Summit is coming up very fast. It's going to
be in Austin. Get ready first week of October. A
lot of things are happening there. If you haven't checked
out that, we'll leave a link down in there in
(33:48):
the description as well to get over to the Fast
Casati's Executive Summit so you guys can get your own invite.
We'll catch you next time right here on Fast Casual
Nation sh
We are back here on another episode of Fast Casual Nation,
the podcast that started it all. Today is going to be
a little bit different. We've got share Kanzler, You're stepping
out beside me, and of course she is going to
be taking the day off, but not to matter, because
we have an unbelievable show for you and it's going
to be a good one that really focuses in a
(00:21):
multi brand concepts. This episode is brought to you by
Philadelphia Cream Cheese Chefs. Take the heat all day, every day.
(00:44):
Performing under pressure is what we do. Just like Philadelphia
Cream Cheese, Phillies creamy texture holds up every time, less cracking,
more binding. Ask your distributor for the original Philadelphia Cream
Cheese originals. Deserve the original. Norman wu is joining me,
of course from a conscious hospitality group. How are you, Norman?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Good? Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah, so I had a chance to look a little
bit into what you guys are doing, and I would
say this right now when you look at the multi
unit brands, and we've had several people on here that
have a fairly good job on multi unit brands, but
I was surprised at just how many brands you guys
have rolling here and pretty impressed with it. How many
(01:31):
total brands right now are you guys operating currently?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
We have nine brands that we are operating. We have
actually a couple more that we're working on, but nine
kind of active brands.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Of all of these that I'm scrolling across from Mount
Joy Island, finn Sugo, Macha, which one of these brands
is the oldest of all of them.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
So everything started with just Poke. That was our first
concept that we opened up back twenty sixteen, and then
the other ones have kind of layered on in the
you know, subsequent years.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Yeah, when you look at running multiple brands and kind
of the vision of what you guys are trying to
do as an operator, what would you say right now?
Because I can I can't imagine running this many brands
in terms of marketing and all that much less operations
in real estate. What right now though, is like your
biggest department to be able to manage this many brands?
(02:27):
Is it marketing, culinary, what's the what's the Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Good question, I would say operations Still, I think, you know,
when it comes to restaurants and retail concepts, at the
end of the day. You are a operations company first
and foremost, and making sure that the back end is
smooth and also the front end experience for customers as
smooth as well. So I would say the bulk of
our the bulk of our team is sits in operations.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, I like the you know, when you look at operations,
does this work with the ability to blend the two
to get I mean, the multiple brands together in operations?
Can you, I guess, in the way, can you use
training facilities for one brand that translate to another brand?
Speaker 2 (03:09):
I would say so, I think, you know, even though
we have a lot of brands, we've tried to stay
in somewhat of a niche of being kind of in
the QSR fast casual space and then also kind of
focusing on I would say health and wellness brands, and
I think that allows us to at least be know
enough to still maintain some good continuity between the brands.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah. Well, I think you know when you look at
just poke the uniqueness that you have here with this brand,
especially around health and wellness. Let me kind of share
that to those who are watching you guys are franchising
this system. So is franchising available for all of the
different brands or is it specific.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's not currently for all the brands. I think that's
eventually the vision. Right now, it's available for a couple
of the brands. Just Poke is our biggest franchise. We
have about forty franchise locations currently.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah, where all mortally northeast or are you spreading.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Out mostly in north mostly in Washington State right now?
But we have one in Canada and then we're starting
the branch out to other states as well.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Now, okay, so the Canadian market, I mean, obviously you're
right there. That's is that. Do you feel like Canada
could be one of the potential opportunities for your your
network of brands or is it just kind of dialed
into Just Poke?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I think so. It actually started because we met just
an amazing couple in Vancouver, BC. I met them through
like a local network, and even though we weren't really
thinking of expanding to Canada at the time, just felt
such good synergy and energy from them that we were like, hey,
let's figure it out and make it work. And that
being said, it's gone off to a pretty good start.
And I think, you know Vancouver, the Vancouver British Clumbate
(05:00):
market is somewhat similar to Seattle, So I think there
are synergies there where there could potentially be a play
to kind of expand out that a little bit further well.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
And I think, you know, when you look at the
regional side of things, sometimes I wonder if regional and
this is I guess a question I always ask, is regional.
Are regional brands going to be kind of the future
of fast casual because people, you know, being able to
develop a marketing plan, development plan, real estate, all those things.
(05:32):
When you're dealing with markets that are way outside you know,
in many cases their sweet spot, it becomes very difficult.
I'm not knocking Sweet Greens, but Sweet Greens did that,
you know, they they started in d C and they
started to expand. Obviously they repopulated their brand over in
LA which became kind of their home hub hub, and
(05:54):
I think, you know, they've struggled a little bit. I
don't know it's if it's that reason, but that could
be definitely one of those Is that something that you
guys are feeling comfortable with in just focusing on certain
areas of the country.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, I think so, I mean, I think you know,
for both me and my co founder Danny the Pacific
north West start home. We're both born and raised here,
so I think our mindset has always to kind of
stay more regional. And I do think as you expand
outside of the region, you know, there's pros and contst
expanding outside the region, I think you have to kind
of rebuild the foundation as you continue to develop new markets.
(06:32):
So I think again, you know, there isn't a right
or wrong, but I think for us right now, we've
built such a good foundation here in the P ANDW
that it feels like instead of going to wide, we'd
rather go a little bit deeper. And that's why we
started to expand other brands as well.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, tell me about this brand, because I was I
felt like this brand felt a little bit different than
the others, and that is Happs. Yeah, talk to me
about how this one started. What was your goal here
with with apps?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah? Absolutely, So it's actually there's only one location and
it is so we were born in a little city
called Mercer Island, just about fifteen minutes east of Seattle
and perhaps is on the island. Mercer Island is a
very very small town. There's very few restaurants and growing
up the only burger place was McDonald's, and you wanted to,
(07:26):
you know, have something that was just a little bit
better for people in terms of the quality of the food.
And it actually is in an old gas station that
was converted, and yeah, I think the whole idea was,
you know, we want to do like grass fed burgers,
higher quality of food. And I think the people on
the island have really appreciated that well.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
And I think the key here is that you're flexing
concepts around communities and sometimes that those to me, are
the best kinds of concepts to grow on. If if
you can dial one in that really met matches up
to a community, I think that's a Those are almost
always going to be big winners. Is there are there
(08:05):
plans to start to repute like replicate apps or is
this do you feel like this is a one off?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah? Good question. Our team has fiercely debated this internally
on whether or not I should be a point off
or if we should expand that. I think we're still
dialing it in. I think if at some point we
fully dialive in, and I think there is another location
that makes sense. We're not a scrowing yet, but also
we're okay with having it be more of a one
(08:31):
off and having it be a local community hub where
you know, it's kind of its fun one of one.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So yeah, right, Well, I think the key here is,
you know, as you as you start to become kind
of a blueprint model for brands. One thing that is
unique to me is, first of all, you got and
we talked about this in the pre show, is the design.
Theming seems to be very well dialed in. I was
(08:58):
curious how you were able to lockdown and you said
you got like a Jedi that is working for you
in the marketing department. What what was How did that happen?
How did you get a find like that one in
terms of selecting teams?
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, good question. I think just he's someone in my network.
We've been talking a long time and really shared the
same vision and kind of values, and I think I
was actually over the course of the year that we
kind of came to just two years ago, came to
aligning and bringing him on the team. But his name
is Charles. He's fantastic, i'd say, again master service craft,
(09:33):
but really has an eye for creating brands that stand out,
and I think in this day and age, we live
in a you know, attention economy, and I think your
brand has to stand out from whatever POV that's trying
to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, you have an incubation section on your website.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
What is that.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Good question? I think for us? You know, so most
of our brands initially started off as brands that we've create,
So you know, ones we've both from scratch. Ones we've
created the brand, created the menu, kind of created every
aspect of it. And I think there's a lot of,
I would say, people out there who are looking to
(10:13):
start their own brands, but I think maybe might not
know where to start. And I think one thing that
we're really good at is helping scale brands from maybe
one or two locations to hopefully twenty to thirty plus.
And our goal is to either align with or help,
you know, other entrepreneurs who kind of have a great
(10:35):
idea but don't know kind of how to execute it
in the future, be able to you know, jump start
their brand and really take it to the next level.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
One question I want to jump on is when you
look at the values. I'm kind of showing this on
screen for everybody right now, sustainability, stewardship, community. You know,
this is one of the things that you guys have
kind of locked in on. And I will be honest,
I hear this from a lot of brands. Okay, you know,
it's like the the it's the table stakes. I look
at and I'm like, sustainability, Okay, a lot of people
(11:04):
are trying to lock in on that, trying to do
things that are good for the community, but really dialing
it in and especially around kind of the good for
you concepts that you guys are building. To me, it
feels like with good for you, this match is a
little bit better than like if you're a Hot Chicken
brand or you're you know, and I'm not knocking Hot Chicken,
(11:30):
but we just had Jim Bidigs on not too long
with Dave's, and you know they've exploded. But point being
is is that this is one of those things that
communities can really get into. Has that been the case
for you guys. Have you seen community uptake with what
your mission is?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah? I would say so. And I should start with
just poking our very first concepts and first locations up
in back twenty sixteen. But back then, before we even
open the doors, Dany and I aligned on that. You know,
we are doing it in our neighborhood, our community, and
we want to do it the right way. And so
this is kind of back I think even before the
big compostable movement. But when we opened our doors for
(12:08):
our first location, everything we use in the source postable,
all of our tuna salmon was certified sustainably caught. And
I think it's just for us a way like the
right way to do business. And I think being able
to look in the mirror and be proud of the
business that you're building every day. And I do think
that people, at least in this area, they care about it.
Historically have been bad at kind of telling the story
(12:31):
and marketing kind of what we've been doing. But once
we were able to kind of do so, I think
people were I think again, you know, very excited to
kind of support the brands.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Well, I think the key here is when you have
when you have brands that are building that tie into
communities at the same time that they're building, maybe something
that is actually good for the community. You know, because
a lot of times the if you look at young
families or you look at certain demographics, I'll call it
maybe the Mollennial and the gen z right now, which
(13:02):
are adapting very well to better for you food. They're
starting to get much more educated. Obviously, there's a lot
more information out there, and that obviously dictates to brands
how they go forward. But for you guys, you started
in this space on the good for you. Have you
found other concepts in the area that have started to
(13:23):
try to pivot to compete and how have you been
able to deal with that?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah? I think so. I think in my philosophy is
always a rising tide. I think, you know, whenever we
see other brands either get started in the good few
space or kind of a pivot, I think that's a
good thing. I think at the end of the day,
you know, the food that we eat is so not religious,
not really just to our short term health, but our
long term macro health that it's important for There'd be
(13:51):
lots of options out there of getting quality food for people.
And I think for us, to me again, the rise
and tide effect is more information. The more education there
is out there for why we should be eating certain things,
I think the better that is for everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
So well, and you know, I think the point that
you guys have been able to hit on is just
locking into a certain regional area, really focusing in on that,
and then it works as a brand and then you
can you know, kind of multi print out these concepts.
Let's talk a little bit about technology because this is
something that you know, brands either they have a really
(14:28):
good tech stack or they don't. Many brands right now
are kind of struggling with so many different services that
are out there. Let's kind of go into the AI
side of things for right now. Sure, because I am
talking to a lot of founders that are implementing AI tools,
maybe not completely, but they're utilizing them at least in
(14:49):
their infrastructure. What have you guys been able to do
in the space around AI to help your brand kind
of you know, not only scale, but maybe maintain what
you're doing from a values and culture side of thing.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I mean we are definitely dabbling. I think right
now we're in a very exploratory phase, so just seeing
all the tools are out there and figuring out which
ones are the right complete tech stack. There are a
couple that we've leveraged right off the bat that felt
like kind of low hanging fruit, no brainers. I think
one of them was for our sushihandrow Bar and kind
(15:24):
of an AI phone automated system where instead of having
someone have to you know, rush to grab the phone
any time someone calls, you kind of have a service
that can help guide the initial interaction for the customer.
And then the other one that we think we're about
to actually launch that we're super excited about is with Haying.
So it's a loyalty marketing system that leverages AI and
(15:46):
on the back end, it allows our general managers to
be able to search and sift through data much easier.
I think historically, you know, if you want to find
your sales per hour or what's your best selling item,
that's all, but you kind of have to go into
the system and really navigate it well. And now you
can just essentially it's like a chat GPT version for
(16:07):
that and to search, hey, you know, what are my
sales per hour for this location for this item, and
it can split it round out black A you so excellent.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Well, I think this is the key to me is
I will tell you this. I was a skeptic of
AI in the beginning. You know, eighteen months ago we
started implementing some large language models into some of the
tool sets that we're doing here on our own research,
and slowly I started to see real benefits pay out,
(16:39):
and then I started to see almost new areas that
we had never really uncovered before. Has that happened for you, guys?
Have you been able to see the tools, use them,
and then go This has opened up a whole new
area for us to implement better operations, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Yeah, I think so. And I think I mean the
way we view AI is it's not meant to necessarily
replace headcount, but it allows headcount and the team to
spend more time in other areas in which AI can
kind of do the heavier lifting on some of the
data sifting. And I think one philosophy that we use
for our instore team is, you know, it's meant to
allow you to spend more time with customers and provide
(17:19):
better service. So I think we very much view any
information of tech as ais hey, instead of just a
labor cost savings. It allows us to reallocate some of
that labor and cost towards continuing to improve the experience
we have. And I think we kind of live in
a day and age where I do feel like customer
service is a little bit lost in the retail rus
(17:42):
Bold and I think for us, part of being part
of the community is, hey, we want to deliver that
world class customer service experience, and we're going to leverage
AI to help with some of the other tasks, help
us spend more time there.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Well, it's good to see that you guys are innovating
in that area and the cool l I think, especially
when you look at something like a AI and then
a multi brand approach, it's one thing to kind of
scale certain tech stacks across multi brand because in many
cases it may not necessarily work perfectly unless you're doing
(18:15):
a lot of proprietary builds. I know some guys are
building their own pos because of that very need. We
talked to a guy last week that was doing that
because they have a whole slew of basically food trucks
and they couldn't find a solution out there, so they
had to build, you know, pretty much a homegrown point
of sale. And I think the AI component is it
(18:36):
has that flexibility to kind of blend around each individual
brand uniquely and differently. So that is a very cool thing, which,
by the way, guys, we're going to have an expert
on AI here in a minute on the podcast, coming
over from Smart Trainer, to basically dive into some of that.
Before I bring him in, I want to finish up
here with you and Norman and focus in on a
(19:00):
couple of key questions, and that is growth fast casual.
The market sector continues to explode. We're seeing a lot
of new brands rushing into the space right now. How
do you guys plan to grow when you have this
many concepts in a I won't say constrained, but at
(19:21):
least in a very targeted area like the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, great question. I think, you know, for us, for
most of our brands, we see them as more regional brands.
So I think we're really just focused on going in
the Pacific Northwest. I think this area has just naturally
grown a lot in the last ten years. I think
there's plenty of growth here for us to still kind
of go after and accomplish. I think, you know, as
(19:47):
we continue to scale some of our brands, if one
of one or two of them makes sense to kind
of go outside of the Pacific Northwest, will kind of get
to that point. But again, I think, you know, the
PNWS are home. We're super excited to be here. I
think the people in the community really align with kind
of the brands and the values that are behind our brands,
and so I think for us, it's a great area
(20:08):
to continue to build our foundation, saturate the market, and
continue to kind of focus our time here for now well.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
And I think the cool thing is you've dialed in
to that market marketing wise, it's probably an easy thing
for you guys to transition from one spot to the
next target.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
It's very possible.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Do you know the customer makeup for you guys, are
are you finding customers that are going from one brand
to the next understanding what you guys are doing?
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah? Absolutely, I think again, you know, even though we
have a wide variety of brands, we really try to
focus have a little bit more of a tactical approach
in terms of hey, you know, fast, casual, healthy food, sustainable,
and then also kind of a certain demographic. I think,
you know, you can't reach too far in terms of
trying to create something for everybody, but I think I
want to really focus on who you think the you know,
(21:00):
middle of the bulls eye for your customer and your
brands are going to be, and I think that's kind
of where we're continuing to hone in on.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So I like it one last thing to take away
because you you have you know, you're kind of walking
the walk here, Norman. You know, you get a chance
to help others, and that is when you are building
brands right now. If you could do anything a little
bit differently in the startup of what Conscious Hospitality Group
(21:30):
is doing today, what would that be.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
That's a great question, I think, you know. So when
we opened up our very first locations, just Poke, my
co founder and I. We actually both of us worked
in the shop all day, every day for about a year.
I mean literally every single day, no weekends, no vacations,
Founder Mode, Baby, the Mode. Yeah, I learned how to
do every single thing, cut the fish, wash the dishes.
(21:57):
But I think we would have found mentors a little
bit faster. I think one thing I've learned is obviously
it's you have to experience everything, you have to learn everything,
and you have to go through it. But at the
same time, there's lots of great resources out there, and
I think it's important to you know, find those resources.
And we've had so many people be so generous with
(22:18):
their time, their advice, and it's really helped us scale
and jump much faster. I think for us, we feel
the same way in terms of wanting to return the
favor or pay it forward in terms of helping others. Yeah,
so I think, you know, there's just so many good
people out there that are, you know, willing to help.
You have to kind of.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Ask, Yeah, that's a good one, I think, because I
would say that is a heavy you know is obviously
here at Saber, we do a lot of investing in
startup brands, and when I talk to founders and we
get into this discussion, that's one of the things they
always talk about is it's difficult when you're a leader,
a CEO, it's difficult one to relate to other people.
(22:59):
You know, it's very lonely, and finding those mentors has
has been a big part of what their mission has been.
So it's interesting that you say that that it's dialed
in with even you and your co founder. Did you
guys when you started, did you guys come into the
business together? Was it what was that?
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah, we did. We've actually been best friends since elementary school.
You always want to do some easy yeah, so very
fortunate again in that in that situation.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, very cool, Norman wo coming in from Conscious Hospitality Group.
You guys go check them out. Lots of amazing brands.
I'll just bring them up here on screen one more time.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Pretty cool that they have this many successful ones. When
I'm out there, I'm going to try this Macha Tea one.
That's the one I'm interested in.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I would love you.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, and uh and eat Dirt. This is a good
one too. First of all, I like the branding on it,
so that's not one we didn't talk about. But you
guys go check it out. And Norman, it's been great
having you on the show today. Thank you so much
for stopping in with appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Likewise, thanks Ball you bet all right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So we're going to be getting into a section of
the show now that is going to be breaking down
an area that I think you guys are going to love,
and that is how to extend within AI. And this
is something that many brands have have talked to us about,
what are you guys seeing in the market. I know
with Sharon and I we were constantly interviewing and talking
(24:26):
to tech companies et cetera, and one of them that
I wanted to bring in today is a company called
smart Trainer, and this one is a little different because
they do things a little bit different. So Wan is
joining us today.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So Wan, how are you good? How are you?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Thank you excellently, So you got a chance to sit
in the green room listen to Norman. First of all,
what was your thought about the number of brands that
he's managing? I mean, is that crazy?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
You know, I've been an operator prior to starting Smart Trainer,
and I don't know how he does it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
That would drive me nuts.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Yeah, you get every single men adam knowing that the
standards for it. Yeah, back and forth.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's going to be a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, kudos to him because that's this is one of
those things that is just unbelievable. If you guys have
not seen Smart Trainer, I'll bring up their website real quick.
It is smart Trainer app dot com. And I want
to dive into this one because not everybody understands how
to implement AI. You guys, of course, have kind of
(25:27):
doubled down on this. Tell me a little about how
you got started. What was the solution that you guys
were trying to solve for the industry.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So I've been in the restaurant industry for the last
nineteen years, typically in training, worked anywhere from dishwasher all
the way to training manager and regional training manager all
the weight director of training for a national brand. And
over the last nineteen years, I open hundreds of stores,
train hundreds of team members from all different levels, and
(25:58):
we always had the same problem every time were opening
a new store, we had to teach the team member
from the basics again. Yeah, and to us, it's like
we will actually start it off as a food smart
bin that basically lights up in the order of the
built when okay comes in. And then we started to
actually implement AI and we pivoted into the AI company
(26:19):
that you see today. So Smart Trainers a little bit
of background about us. Since we're new. We're basically like
your Alexa Siri. You could basically talk to Smart Trainer
and just say, hey, what's in a deluxe pizza? Or
how many pepperonis? Or hey, how many calorie does this
dish have? Or what should I do if there's a
(26:39):
food recall. It's basically your CHATCHYBT that knows all of
your answer but just has proper guardrails behind it, and
then it has access to all of your data so
that you could get sales prediction, prepless to overtime food variants.
You could even ask to make your schedule for next
week and within three seconds your whole schedules created.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
So integration into scheduling, you're diving into some of the
back office side of what is being done in terms
in terms of operations for restaurants in general. When you
were building Smart Trainer, and you obviously as an operator,
you kind of knew how the sausage was made. So
(27:21):
is there something that you really said, this is the
area that we got to focus on. This is the
point of the spear that we got to really nail.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
And I think you mentioned that in the previous interview
with Norman, is that as an operator, especially with so
much brand like Norman, you start to have so much
different vendors and there's so many text tacks out there,
and when you have so much text tax out there,
managing different vendors is a role for itself. Yeah, for us,
you wanted to create that one tech solution, your primary
(27:52):
solution for all of your techs So we started to
bring everything in to become your primary tech solution for
all of your back of the house operation.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, so that's hard to do. I mean when you
think about back of house, I've seen several back of
house concepts that have been built over the years. You know,
it's digesting point of sale data. Sometimes it's digesting in
many cases HR and training data trying to come in.
Then you've got food costs and all those kind of things.
(28:22):
How do you guys integrate to different systems that are
out there in back of house front of house because
obviously point of sale, you've got in some cases existing
training systems. What would be a typical onboarding process for
a brand to say, Okay, I want to plug this in,
but what all do I have to talk to?
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah, we make it as simple as possible. So your POS company,
we get an API, we get all of your data
directly from there, we get anywhere from your food vendors,
et cetera. All we ask is an intro and then
we basically our team takes it from there and says
we'll set up API behind a scene so that we
get all of your data ingested into our system and
(29:04):
from there, our core AI that we have built up
that basically knows how to take that data and starts
plugging in the endpoints and you get your data.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Okay, so dialing into all of these I see right
here on screen we're showing you, guys, a handful of
brands has started to move on this you look at.
The big question to me is how to operators respond
to this act? They are they open to it? Is
it something they're skeptical of?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
What is kind of that?
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Because we've seen it in social media, we've seen it
in integration and different marketing models. Obviously back a house,
in many cases people are not sure they're going to
get everything. What has been your experience so far with
the people who've rolled out Smart Trainer.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Yeah, it's actually funny. The last brand that I rolled
out to, I went to a store to go meet
with the managers as we're doing the rollout, and they said, oh,
you shoul showed up. I thought you were a scam.
And that day okay, they actually thought we were not
going to show up. So we actually came in, provided
them with their tablets and the docking station to speakers,
(30:13):
and basically started our phase one rollout. Typically we do
a couple of different phases for rollout to really gain
their trust. But we typically start with their training materials,
get their team on board to start using the materials,
and then we get their analytics in and then get
them to really trust Indie analytics behind it.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Okay, so when you say analytics, explain that a little
bit more. What all do I get?
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah? So think about sales prediction. It's not just looking
at your historical sales prediction for your last five weeks
or last year trend. We look at all that. We
look at weather, We look at your live traffic flow,
We look at live events.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So if there's a.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Foot oh that's happening, how much tickets are being sold?
Is it away game, is it a home game? What's
the weather going to be? Like? We take all those information.
You say, hey, there's a high school that always does
really well, if there's an event that happens, We put
an aipot on that website to constantly check for any
new events, et cetera, and we have that running against
(31:11):
previous data to get to your sales prediction. Wow, just
type of the iceberg, because if you could get the
sales prediction right, you could get all your labor, food
ordering prep lists all correctly and more accurate.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Have you guys been able to dial in any solutions
for throughput on drive through? Because drive through has you
have home run days and you have days that are
kind of like singles and doubles, and it depends if
it's a rainy day, drive through is usually the best
you know, one of the best performing days. So obviously
weather plays into that. But back to your point, you
(31:45):
also have community events and things like that that also
contribute to that. Have you guys dialed in to drive
through yet?
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, So there's a couple brand that actually has drive
through with us, and typically we see a large college events,
we see a lot of you know, after the event,
the drive through goes out before they close, so we
are able to dial that in. So, for example, when
we do our scheduling, we actually break apart your carry
(32:12):
out orders to go orders, to even delivery orders, how
many orders for every fifteen minute, and then we take
all that data using all the predictions that we just
made to basically say how much drivers do you need,
how much people do you need for the inside, and
build all that out within three seconds.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, for sure. Well, anybody wants to if you guys
are looking to check this out, go over to smart
trainer app dot com. You guys can learn little bit
more there. We're going to be doing a whole series
of AI tools for operators. So obviously what you guys
have done one has been amazing. What where can they
find you besides the web?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Just go to the website and if they want to
learn more.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, you guys can go to smart trainer app dot com.
There's a section at the bottom that says, please send
us a message, or you can always find me on
LinkedIn a message.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Okay, perfect, there it is right there. I'm going to
bring it up on screen for you guys. We'll leave
a link down in the description. If you are out
there listening in on this podcast and you haven't subscribed,
whether you're on YouTube or maybe you're over on the
audio version of the podcast, make sure and do that
right now. We love five stars as well, so Wood's
our one. It's been great having you on the show
(33:22):
so much. Thank you for coming in today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
All Right, guys, we're going to bring back Shrek Cansler
next week. You do not want to miss that. We've
got a big show next week that is absolutely going
to blow your mind. And don't forget the Fast Casual
Executive Summit is coming up very fast. It's going to
be in Austin. Get ready first week of October. A
lot of things are happening there. If you haven't checked
out that, we'll leave a link down in there in
(33:48):
the description as well to get over to the Fast
Casati's Executive Summit so you guys can get your own invite.
We'll catch you next time right here on Fast Casual
Nation sh
Popular Podcasts
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com