December 13, 2024 • 49 mins
The restaurant industry is on the brink of a technological transformation that goes beyond mere efficiency, focusing on using innovative technologies like AI and augmented reality to create more meaningful, engaging, and career-driven workplace experiences. By implementing smart tools that provide real-time coaching, personalized career insights, and recognition systems, restaurants can address high turnover rates and empower employees to see their jobs as genuine career opportunities rather than temporary positions.
#RestaurantInnovation #EmployeeTech #FutureOfWork
RestaurantInnovation #EmployeeTech #FutureOfWork
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#RestaurantInnovation #EmployeeTech #FutureOfWork
RestaurantInnovation #EmployeeTech #FutureOfWork
🫶 Subscribe NOW - Unlock a world of knowledge, innovation, and growth from the largest podcast network in food service! - https://savorfm.substack.com/
📈 Learn More ~ Restaurant Power Index featuring the top 50 brands' performance in consumer sentiment based on 12 performance markers in food, service, and overall brand consumer sentiment. The RPI features historical and current sentiment analysis for key brands based on the overall market sentiment data. Subscribe for weekly reports on the top brands in the restaurant industry. https://www.savor.fm/restaurant-power-index
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of of course, Rock My
Restaurant and co hosting with me again today is Michelle
Rupel coming in from Devour. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm doing good, Paul, can't believe it's almost the end
of the year.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, we are almost wrapped another season here on Rock
My Restaurant, and we're going to have we have one
more show that we're going to do together, and then
we have a couple of show episodes over the holidays
that we'll be doing the best of. So if you
guys want to catch kind of the full breath of
what's happened all year long, catch those last two episodes
for the year. And just so you guys know, we
(00:35):
have been building like crazy over on sav dot FM
and of course the website. So if you're not checking
out the program, not only on Rock My Restaurant, but
some of our other shows, I'll bring some of those
up just to show you what we've got going on
over there. These are all the podcasts on the network,
(00:55):
So if you're listening on the audio side of right now,
Restaurant Reports are kind of our icons show. Restaurant Masterminds
is our multi industry experts show. Rock my restaurant. You're
listening to Earl Dardick over on catering, Cage Chef and
Rare and then our Accelerate restaurant technology, and then of
course the Icon of Icon shows Fast Casual Nation. That's
(01:17):
like the OG Show. It might be the oldest show
on the network as well, but building quite a franchise there, Paul, Hey, listen,
it's coming along just fine. And if you guys have
never checked out Devour, you've got to go over and
visit their website. It's very simple to do. Just go
to just go and you guys can find it devour
(01:40):
dot io learn a little bit more about rewards and commerce.
Shelley's doing a great job over there, so we've been
very fortunate of having her here on the show. Have
you two hundred and twenty seven million gamers in the
United States? Is that worldwide or is that US? That's
where in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There are three billion worldwide and that number, you know,
I do a lot of obviously pitching and promotion of Devour.
It was two hundred and twelve million, and I just
had to update that stats.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Sixty five percent of the population play video games at
least once a week.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, and you look at e commerce in the games
big Goo. You look at the generation that we're talking about,
they are very tech forward. Today's episode is going to
be that we're going to be talking about technology that
restaurant operators should be using in twenty twenty five. Instead
of all the fluff and all the you know what
(02:32):
that's out there, use the stuff that's going to work.
You guys are going to want to miss this one,
So stay tuned right here.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Turn up the volume and subscribe now to Rock My Restaurant,
the podcast setting your brand on fire on far coming
into you live every week. Branding, marketing, innovative tech, don't
get left behind. The future is now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
All right, we're back here and we're going to get
into it today with mister John Pepper. He's an old
old friend of mine. John taught me so many great
things about fast casual. I would fly to Boston to
go visit Bolocos and he would he and I would
meet in his Boloco restaurants and in his office there
(03:22):
and what is that Newberry Street? When you were right
there near Newberry Street, Boylston Street, Okay, And I had
so many good conversations with him in the early days
of fast casual, one of the guys that has really
been a leader in the fast casual sector. So John Pepper,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Thanks glad to be here. Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It's good. I want to put you on up here
on top reposition the videos there all right, now you're
in lead position there. So John, let's get into a
little bit about what you're doing now. And I mean
you've had your hands in a lot of different industry
ventures but also obviously from the operator side, but also
from the technology side, so kind of share with our
(04:06):
audience kind of where you are today.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Sure. So I am still a quasi restaurant operator. I
have three of the restaurants that I started almost twenty
eight years ago still operating, despite my best efforts to
stop operating restaurants for the last I would say ten years,
maybe eleven. So today I have three restaurants. They're called Bloco,
(04:29):
as you mentioned earlier. There's two in Boston, one up
where I live in Hanover, New Hampshire. I started the
business as a student back in nineteen ninety seven. I
was a second year up here at Dartmouth in their
MBA program, and it was a side project.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
We ultimately built what became Beloco to twenty two restaurants,
sold to private equity in two thousand and seven. I've
taken a hiatus here and there, and I also co
founded somewhere along the line two thousand and four another
chain called be Good, which is through to eighty units
before we sold that. So that's my restaurant side. I've
(05:09):
invested in a number of restaurants. You know, current ones
are Starboard, former ones Clover and some others.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Is Clover still operational it is?
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I sold my steak luckily COVID. I sold you know,
any anytime you could sell most restaurants steaks privately before COVID. Yeah,
usually a good thing. Yeah, Clover is still operating. They
did file Chapter eleven in the last few months.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
But yeah, that's terrible. That's a great concept. I had
a chance to visit it when I was in Boston
last and very interesting and still to this day. I
was intrigued by that kind of the mission of what
they were trying to do, you know, from the quality standpoint,
which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Air Mure Airs we Are is the founder is an
MIT Harvard guy and really a tech guy, which is
so interesting. He built his own pols, He built his
own menu boards, any change on the fly. Like if
there was anybody who was like forward thinking in tech
and restaurants, it was him. He was building it on
(06:16):
his own. It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, and the interesting thing to me, and this is
something I think it'll be a good topic for today,
is when you look at operators like that. And we
had a chance to be on the phone before the
show this morning. We just had a major chain here
in South Florida go into Chapter eleven fall bankruptcy and
then their assets just liquidated, which was Burgerfi. This is
(06:38):
a fast casual concept that at one time I felt
maybe was the darling of the better burger business. And
they went down. Of course, along with them was Anthony's
Coal Fire Pizza, which was one of the other assets.
And you know, one of the things that we've had
a chance to look at in some of these brands
has been the brands who have succeeded have been able
(07:02):
to solve the tech stack. The brands who are failing,
maybe they solved the tech stack, but they were unable
to implement. You know, really make it work for the
customer and kind of go from there. So that, I
guess will be my first question to you is when
you look at how much you've been involved in the
industry and then what's happening out there today, and especially
(07:24):
with what like we just mentioned there on the front
of the show, this shift in dynamic of the demographic
because you and I have had a chance to live
through the gen X and the boomer population that really
put I think the fast casual market on the map
total and now we're dealing with gen Y and gen Z,
(07:45):
which just is a completely different animal. What are you
focused on? You know, when you think about a restaurant operator,
what do you think should be like their number one goal,
especially going into twenty twenty five from a state point
of where should I put my efforts around building a
tech stack? What's my number one focus right now? Is
(08:07):
it loyalty? Is a point of sale? Where'd you go?
For me?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Personally? It's been a pretty consistent theme throughout my restaurant careers.
How do we put people first? How do we put
employees first? And I've always felt there was a big
miss in terms of how technology interacts with the people
actually facing customers. How can we make them feel heroic
in their jobs, if that makes any sense. So number one,
(08:35):
and I've been working on this in so many different
ways of it the last since twenty fourteen. Actually, how
do we help our team members know that their value
beyond the once in a while like hey, nice job,
or you know, hey we've opened up tips so you
get some type thing. How do we help them know
(08:55):
that this job that we are employing them to do
isn't that there's visibility to a future, right, And I
think that's one of the things that's really missing in
the restaurant business. We pay a lot of lip service
as an industry to oh, it's a great starter job,
and you can there's all kinds of opportunity, but when
you actually talk to people shouldered or shoulder in the restaurant,
(09:16):
they don't see that path most of the time, even
in the beginning that do have good development programs, you know,
think about Starbucks and Chipotle, which to their credit, have
great programs, it's still like an invisible pathway for people.
And I feel like technology, I hope it's in twenty
twenty five. I won't say I'm totally optimistic, but needs
(09:38):
to start opening up and presenting pathways to learning, to
taking on more responsibility in the business, and frankly helping
people get out of restaurants.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I see, yeah, and you're hitting on something that's very
important here, because there has been some major disconnects with
some of the biggest brands out there with the customer.
And usually the reason that the disc connect happens is
because of the employee. You know, the brand message or
the employee delivering that brand message doesn't necessarily connect where
(10:08):
that customer is like, Hey, I'm going to come back
here for whatever reason, that person is really excited about
this job, and there must be a reason that kind
of thing is I think missing, you know, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Think about this for a second. You've got a screen.
You know, we've got kiosks facing customers, we've got our
menu boards facing customers, we've got our poss that we
just type into orders. But imagine the screen that's that
the employees see that identify as a customer who just
walked through the door. Maybe they did an optional you know,
(10:42):
a tap that I'm here, and it's like, you know,
Paul just walked in or Shelley just walked in and
they have visited. This is their eight hundred and thirtieth visit. Yeah,
and that employee has that information. I mean, talk about
being able and that there's context and they have a minute.
They have a minute to figure it out before the
person actually shows up. But just starting to help. We
(11:04):
always talk about deliver a great service, remember people's name,
but how about technology really starting to at least give
a little. This is a great customer walking in the door.
Let's celebrate them in our world, like, just give them
a cookie.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You know, give me a cookie. Hey, cookie goes a
long way, man, a long way. You don't realize how long,
how much of an impact em Hey. So that's a
very interesting point to make, and it's one that I
think works along with what some of the things you
and I have talked Shelley, and that is gamifying you know,
(11:38):
experiences both from a customer standpoint, but now flip that around,
what about gamifying the employee side of things? You know,
whether it's achievement levels, badges. I mean, we pitched a
deal to I won't say the big brand, but it's
a Big Burger brand, and the concept was to talk
about gamification for the employees from a blockchain standpoint, so
(12:02):
or are they could earn rewards. These words could go
toward you know, different kinds of achievements or even gifts
or goodies. And I know that the game, the gamification
side of it from a customer standpoint, is real. Shelley,
have you seen anything out there that has gone to
what John's talking about on the on the employee side.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
No, you know, as John was describing that, the data
is there, right, we all know, like the the information
is there. What isn't what hasn't been built is the
technology or the gamification on that side. Now again, I
will say I get asked about that because we're doing
the things with gamification that we are of Well are
you are you thinking about this from the employee side?
(12:45):
That's not been our focus, but it's like it just
makes sense because you want to you want to incentivize them.
I think mostly we use it within fine dining or
full service restaurants more so right of that know the
customer from their reservation kinds of things, but definitely within
fast casual and even qs are that data is there
(13:08):
and the technology of being able to know that customers
just walked in also is there.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We just that hasn't been put together. But I think
see that's why we wanted to have you on the show, John,
for that very reason. You just came up with a
good piece. But you look at this because this is
something that we're maybe at a point in the industry.
I mean, this is the first time I've seen fast
casual brands struggle. I've never seen them struggle before twenty
(13:36):
twenty four to where we see closures, bankruptcies, executive departures,
all these things that are not good for brands. And
to your point, this next year is probably going to
be even harder because the customer very impacted right now
from inflation issues with jobs. I just looked at the
jobs numbers coming out this day, unemployment now rising up
(13:59):
to four point two. We're probably going to see that
continuing to climb, which means you're going to have a
much more difficult consumer environment. So the brand that figures
out the tech that can change that interface between customer
and the employee WinCE because this is still a hospitality space.
(14:20):
Is there anything John, when you look at like, who
would be the potential that could bring something like that
to the forefront? Would it be a POS company? Do
you think it would be a kiosk? Is it a
mobile app? What would be your thought of where that
could come from.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I've spoken to a lot of companies, and I do think,
first of all the pos companies that are focused on
all in one right have they do have a right
to tap into this right Whether or not they will
resource it or see it as a priority versus core product,
I don't know, right, you know, I've had really interesting
conversations with Jordan from seven Shifts Yep, very topic. I mean,
(15:00):
he's very empathetic to that need for the employees, and
obviously they have their core product as well, but this
feels like one step out. It's not like you know,
seven builds away in twenty thirty one. Is this is
clearly something that companies like seven Shifts have the right
(15:21):
to pursue.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you think that AI advancements that we've seen in
some of these models could possibly take this role?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So AI plays a few different roles in my mind, right,
So we did a company myself, right, I raised a
priest one of those pre set rounds back in eighteen nineteen,
and really, you know, tried to help restaurant employees feel
(15:51):
like they had to say in the workplace like they
It was sort of like driven from my days where
I drove uber briefly back in twenty fourteen and got
us sense of what it felt like to receive feedback
all the time. And I really felt like there was
the feed The consistent feedback and mechanism in restaurants was missing.
(16:13):
You weren't sure how you were doing or performing. You
might be stuck with a boss who wasn't giving you
the performance room unless they were required to once a
year exactly so. But where AI would come in is
taking that data about you as an individual, just like
you can take your resume now or your LinkedIn and
you can be like, what could I be? What would
(16:34):
be a path I could take and what would be
the steps I would need to fill in to achieve that?
How can I become an assistant manager? Right? What would
I need to do? AI is that sort of that
coach that can help employees with the data that they're
receiving about their performance, about their strengths, about their areas
(16:55):
for improvement. The managers weren't trained to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah you're pro, you're pro AI right now?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Me?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, Well, I'm curious AI, I'm.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Curious AI aggressively. I'm curious. I love it because I've
seen you know, we've had a lot of people on
the show, Shelley, what would be your position right now?
I mean you you get a chance to work with
these tools a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I think it's powerful and I also think, you know,
I've watched a few, whether documentaries or different things on it.
It is technology moving at the speed of light that
as a culture are not like, we don't have the
time to catch up with it at this point. And
that's that's where I have apprehension is what what does
that mean? But it's the power and what's possible with it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's well, okay, so I have a story here because
when we when we got hit by the situation with
the pandemic, our media company, we probably had forty people
running production and you know, all over the country filming
and producing, and you know, we were producing documentary on
Netflix and Amazon. Anyway, all that's shut down quickly for
(18:04):
obvious reasons. The podcasts side of our business kind of
grew fast, and we kind of were really i would say,
top heavy until we started utilizing AI for a variety
of things. For a lot of our metadata creation, we
do it for our scripting. Now we do it for
even some of our RSS feed enhancements. And we've basically
(18:24):
taken the tools of AI. And what used to take
me two or three engineers now is you know, kind
of a B level programmer. I wouldn't even say a
top level programmer. That this levels that person up to
do the job of about four people. So yeah, when
(18:46):
if you think that in the in the restaurant industry, John,
do you think that that could happen? Could we see
you know, maybe AI just being an accouterment of more
value from a single good employee versus trying to have
three or four average employees. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (19:04):
A lot of thoughts on that. There's you know one,
I'll just say it so I don't forget it. One.
You know, we have a lot of Spanish speaking employees
in Boston and the one thing they would never be
able to do on their own. Back when we had
marketing teams and we were a much larger company, we
had a marketing team that would be comfortable sending out
emails to customers, but the team on the ground would
(19:28):
never you know, go forward and try to put a
marketing email together. But even today with AI, they can
do it, and they can do it with confidence. It's
not going to be the wow they just broke through
the innovation of marketing type of email, but it's better
than nothing, and it's like way good enough. And these
(19:50):
are people who weren't trained in marketing but are able
to use AI now And that's happening in our company
right now, so I can speak to it knowledgeably where
all of a sudden people are like I am a
market yeah, you know, and they work, they make burritos,
They're not sitting in some office, so that's kind of cool.
The other piece I will say is, and this gets
into you know, more hard deck and machines and automations.
(20:14):
But one of the things I've been investing in behind
is the theory that not all jobs and restaurants are
good jobs. There are a lot of jobs that are
difficult on you physically, emotionally. They're repetitive, they don't serve
you for long periods of time. They certainly serve you
for periods of time. So the question is is which
(20:36):
are what jobs are those? And are that where Where's
that automation going to take place of individuals such that
every job in the restaurant business is a good job
in ten years from now. So like hyphen is a
good example of that, you know in Chipotle. Yeah, you know,
put money behind that and who knows where that goes.
But there's a lot of effort being put into reduce
(20:59):
the monotony. Let us be humans in the restaurant, and
since there will be less of us, there probably just
will be Let's accept that fact for a second. We
didn't get paid more too, There's going to be more
room to pay people to do good jobs. So I
look at all you know, AI and automation and whatever
(21:20):
whatever combinations of those as.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I have a theory that, you know, this whole movement.
I had a chance to see the Optimist robot in
person by Tesla, and I'm an early investor in Tasla
was you know, have been to many of their events,
and I was amazed. I'm going to show you something
here on their careers page. This is the AI engineering
(21:44):
stack in Palo Alto, you know, in terms of the
amount of jobs that are available, and it is mind
boggling how many jobs that they're developing around AI and robotics.
I think that Tesla is a out to really make
an impact on maybe real use case for robots, like like,
(22:07):
this could be real within maybe our like next to
the next decade here, So how much of an impact
do you think that would really have on the restaurant
industry if you could just unbox a robot today and
it's running your back of house production, uh, you know,
inventory management, prep, food prep, name it. You just need
(22:29):
three or four rock star front house front of house
facing people that can kind of manage a fleet of
two or three optimists. Would that make a difference in
the industry.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I think it'd be a game changer in the industry.
Restaurants are stepping into this already, like Comby ovens, right,
takee up neck grill and just wipe out, you know,
forty five minutes an hour of someone randomly cooking chicken
hopefully hopefully God that it's the right temperature and we're
not going to like get everybody, you know, e COLI
like happens. You know that those ago and it's a
(23:01):
seven minute push up the button to get the same
thing done. These things are going to make the jobs easier.
And you know where the actual robot with the arms,
I don't know, maybe they'll be Scooping Rice as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, sure, I like Scoop and Rice, So I don't
know if I all right, So let's I want to
get into something around this generational shift because you you
kind of touched on it a little bit, and I
know Shelley has a lot of experience in this because
I kind of lean on her when we talk about
you know, gen Z and the digital transformation of society
(23:35):
and how they're interfacing, which is really mobile app more
than anything. And Shelley, this is for you when you
look at when you guys are building stuff over at
Devour and you think about gen Z as really the
target audience. Maybe Jena to a certain extent. Gamification is
(23:56):
a big part of this. But do you feel that
we are seeing a shift in society to almost this
always on instant gratification mobile And do you think that's
going to hurt us in the you know, kind of
the the map going forward here?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I you know, I think social obviously to converted us
to that mobile always on texting everything, right, Like it's
a prior prior to the iPhone. Even with our Blackberries,
it wasn't that we were attached to the screen like
we are now. We can have a computer in our pocket,
and we can be attached to anything that we want, uh,
(24:36):
you know, more and more. What I'm thinking about is, hey,
there's the mobile, but it's a it's a any place
where they at. Of course, we're very interested in doing
everything we're doing in gaming, but that could be you know,
in streaming, in in you know whatever hardware devices at TV.
I was watching the Black Friday game and Amazon had
the the interactive ads where hey, are you interested in that?
(24:59):
You could click your remote control and get information set
on that. So we think mobile so much because that's
our mini computer in our in our pockets, but we
live in so many other virtual environments, especially you know
gen Z and Alpha, you know they they definitely do well.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
We just did a piece on PB on the PBN Show,
which is our other network that covers blockchain and advanced tech,
and one of the things that we covered the other
day was this revolution that's happening on the device for headwear. So,
going away from what Meta is doing, Metaquest, the Metaquest
(25:38):
three most likely going to be the number one selling
item this Christmas. I saw the numbers and it's just
astronomical how many of these headsets they're selling. And now
they've got the devices, which the new glasses, which are
the ray bands. But then they have the new version
of this from Meta that is to replace the headset,
and then there's another company that's developing this. So John,
(26:01):
my question to you would be if you look at
augmented reality and you think about, Hey, I'm working in
a restaurant, and to your point that you mentioned earlier,
if I put on a set of glasses like what
I'm wearing right now, and I've got a fixed feed
to the data that you're talking about saying in my
field of view, I see Paul walk In or John
(26:22):
walk In. This is his eight hundredth visit. Here's his
last two orders, by the way, you know, here's his
last tweet, here's his last Facebook post. That kind of thing.
That technology is almost here now, I mean we're like
really close within maybe a year or at max two.
(26:46):
Would a restaurant be good to start going down the
ar VR path for like employee training, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, obviously for training and all that. But it's funny.
I got the vis vision Pro as soon as you could.
And then my son, my eleven year old, who I
guess that is jen a right off of Yep, we
have twenty we're twenty one to nineteen and eleven. Our caboose,
we call him, but we were going to do a
podcast where he tries to convince me to keep it
(27:15):
and not eBay eBay the very use lize okay, vision
pro right. So we really weren't able to see a
lot of use cases there. That being said, there's two
reasons why in restaurants, I think this there is a
future is number one. It's more fun of the employee,
you know, just in Gamston, especially for a first mover,
which I would love to be. I now have the
(27:36):
Medaquest up on my screen right here. I'm probably gonna
have to order it thanks to you guys. That's not
this is well.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
That's those that one actually has use We have the
meda Quest and there's real games in there. I looked
at the vision Pro the Apple device, and I think
Apple missed the boat here. Yeah yeah, I think Meta
far so far, Yeah, so far, I think Meta has it.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
We'll see similar to the know the headset where you
can talk to each other. I really do think that
people are going to be able to collaborate on taking
care of customers in a much more human, personalized way.
And I think that, you know, you asked me early
on when we started this show, you know what I
really thought was going to differentiate. Yes, I always think
employees making that the hero somehow, but it's going to
(28:20):
be the way they'll become the heroes by being able
to give more personal service to each customer, right and technology,
our brains aren't going to be able to do that
on their own. We're just not. We're not capable of
remembering more names than we do, et cetera. Yeah, this
is where technology and like you said, augmented reality could
make and combined obviously with some because we're all training now.
(28:44):
I mean, oftentimes I'll have one earbud, you know, in
my ear and I can have a conversation and still like,
you know, I kind of know what's happening on you know,
whatever podcast I'm listening to.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, yeah, well that's a natural I think that's a
natural thing that you know, we're seeing even more so
of right now is just this interactive It's like my
kids they're nine and seven, and you know, I was
I walked in on him the other day. He is
you know, he's building a Lego, and he's got Netflix
(29:16):
on his TV and he's got a game on his
iPad building a Lego. I'm like, what the hell three
devices running at him all at once, and I'm thinking,
what if he was just you know, had an interface
that allowed that, you know, to multitask. Which is interesting
because I'm seeing a development cycle and this happens in
(29:37):
the gaming side as well of people that are capable
of doing things like that that are true multitask. That's
the emergence of the kind of people we're hiring in
restaurants today is a lot of younger. They kind of
get it, you know, they completely understand maybe ar VR training,
(29:57):
which is most likely going to be a big part
of that now next year and the year after. But
definitely something that to your point is that that it's
this kind of cross modal information ingesting that we're going
to deal with. And then if you plug in AI,
oh man, I don't even know where that's going to go.
That'll be interesting. What about from a consumer standpoint, you're
(30:21):
a customer now and you have the tool of AI
in your pocket for selecting restaurants, selecting menu items. You know,
where do you see that because at that point it
empowers the customer in a way that they hadn't really
had before. You know, it used to be if I
(30:41):
wanted to find a good restaurant in Boston, I just
look on TikTok.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Now I can ask perplexity.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
That's all I use. By the way, no I have
perplexity has been reaching out to me because I have
the domain pep perplexity. Ooh, I like that. I like
my blog about being perplexed about all this tech, you know,
but yeah, it's funny. I have that perplexity and I'm
going to use it.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So that's funny. I love that that. You should make
that an AI language model. Yeah, just create an ll M.
I mean most of them are open anyway. Just you know,
put some put some balcoisms in there. The boo lawyer.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It's their lawyers of course.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Oh that would be interesting.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Yeah, Well back to the question to answer, you know,
to answer your question, one of the pieces on the
men let's just go to menu selection, menu item selection
that I've thought about for a long time is you
walk in and you know, there was that this innovation
of create your own and let's give Chipotle credit for that.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
For the lack of being back who did that before?
They did many but where you get to kind of
create your own thing and you know, and there's this, been, this,
this in some cases where you memorize, right, your favorite right,
so it's Starbucks, you can get it with it's like
half this quarter that multiple scoops of this save that's
(32:07):
my favorites. What I've always thought is let's toggle that
on to public view, right, similar to vision, and so
that all of a sudden you have social menus and
then where AI comes in as is helping you with
your tastes. Not just be like, well that restaurant over
there is pretty good, but be like here, the here,
(32:30):
the menu items the best match what you're looking for
right now and years how you get it and it's
not necessarily constrained to you know, let's go over to
you know, mos over here, pew Dooba there. But it's
really a social menu and you get cred when people
like your pepper plexity burrito. They can like it or
(32:52):
they can save it themselves, and then that starts to
build customer engagement at a different level, similar to all
the social networks that we see. And so the menu
is actually the way to start to build a different
kind of loyalty, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Well, yeah, and I think you're dead on there, because
that's the thing, you know, when you look at customer
interaction and what that might look like in the future. Today,
it's not, you know, it's not How can I say
this without a sound of weird. I don't know that
the customer is armed with enough information about a restaurant
other than the reviews they get, which are basic, but
(33:35):
they don't really understand maybe completely, what that restaurant is about,
whether it's a sourcing model, how they treat their employees,
there's just sustainability function, all those different little elements that
would play into that. That's what I'm anticipating that we're
going to see this kind of stuff right here, I'll
show it to you on screen so you can see it.
(33:56):
This is the company, it's called x Reel, and these
are the glasses that they're talking about, and I imagine
these are going to get even thinner and thinner, you know,
in comparison. And essentially they've got the interface to all
of these different kinds of tool sets that we're out there,
including PC, iPhone, Android, et cetera. But that's that's the
(34:18):
kind of potential that maybe a customer is going to
have access to in a very short period of time,
which could benefit you, Shelley, if gaming really starts to
take off here yep, are you seeing are you seeing
any demand from you know, from some of the brands
that you're talking with now where they're starting to consider
(34:40):
ar vr.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
No. Now, there's some of the bigger brands, of course
that have done some of the things we've talked about,
you know, Pizza Hut and the point phone at the
box and it turns into a pac Man game and
different things like like that. But I don't think you've
seen that trickling down yet. There there's still I think
again that's where things are moving fast for restaurant operators
(35:03):
when it comes to whether it's it's blockchain, the metaverse, AI,
ar V ruh what you know. And And while it
felt like after the pandemic we moved very fast on
anything that was new, we've almost now kind of gotten
a lot of them are like, oh wait, wait a minute,
I'll I don't want to be the tip of the spear.
(35:26):
I'll wait for that to come along, you know, medium
or or laggered on that that crossing the chasm, So
I don't hear a lot of talking about it. Now
you have your Jeff Alexander's of the world, and there's
no doubt he's he's talking about whatever is going to
be in the future. But uh, but not.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Did you see his recent little fun Yes, yeah, yeah,
the taped taped a bow. That's funny inside joke for
those of you guys, Go check out Justin Son and
the Banana and that'll tell you enough for there. Okay, John,
I want to get into my last two questions here.
First is before we get in, and we're going to
(36:07):
share some ideas into twenty twenty five of if you're
an operator, what you should be really focused on. We'll
ask you on that question. So I'm gonna give him
a chance to think about them for a second. But
first up is third party delivery. So we're seeing real
potential here now for autonomous delivery within grasp now. So
(36:30):
there's talks of Tesla buying Lift, there's talks of Uber
trying to do more robotic and full self driving tool sets.
We're already starting to see that now roll out within Waymo,
along with many other platforms outside of Tesla. Do you
think that third party delivery is at any risk right
(36:53):
now in terms of future technology could get outpaced by
another tech company or possibly someone that just acquires you know,
the fleet, or or and just says, let's say, just
for instance, if Tesla took over lift and then gave
every lift driver a Tesla and that would be somewhat
(37:15):
full self driving, and that at some point down the
road maybe there's no driver and that operator becomes a
fleet runner for food delivery. Do you feel that that
is within reach right now for third party delivery? Something
like that or at least a phase shift phase shift
for sure.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I don't know. I don't see that exact scenario at
the moment. I love I love the idea of you know,
taking putting more resources behind a company like Lyft to
do what you just said. I love the idea of
those drivers getting a bunch of Teslas. No, I think
(37:53):
there's I don't think their third party is in jeopardy
right now. I mean, just staying close to people, you know,
higher upsite door Dash, not an uber, but door Dash,
I feel like they feel like their journey is just beginning.
Oh really, Okay, Yeah, Yeah, there's this. They're not there's
no endpoint right now, interesting opportunity unconstrained.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
As they also like to say at toast, So would
they would they look at third party delivery numbers because
they've been sliding. You know, in the last eighteen months,
we've seen less delivery, less lift on the average check
of delivery. I think that's been mostly consumer driven. I
just wonder is there maybe a psychological shift that's occurring
(38:41):
with the American consumer today saying Okay, I'm gonna pick
up my food instead of get it delivered.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I mean sometimes, but honestly, we are such creatures of
convenience and this you know, the group that we were
just talking about, these gen zs and jen alpha's, they
are more they how you convenience more than I am
happy about, to be honest right, it's uh. They'll do
anything not to go pick up the food. And we're
(39:09):
not seeing this. We're like, you know, you and I
are seeing we are basing our judgment off of usually
Gen xers, sometimes millennials, you know, the Baby boomers. To
go back to your generation thing, we used to talk
about eighteen to thirty four as our target. The boomers
were in that group always.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Thinks, yeah, exactly, you think about that.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I don't think door Dash or Uber Eats or any
of these guys. I think they're just beginning. I think
it will warp obviously into different something format. Yeah, and
I think autonomous driving is a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
It's just going to be an add on. I think
these companies will adjunct this to a service to help
you know, whether it's reducing costs or figuring out new
models and service models drone, whether it's whether it's actually
autonomy vehicles or drone delivery or you know, other styles
of that. I just don't know if it's going to
happen very soon. That's the real question is how quickly.
(40:03):
But then again, I don't know. Man, that's full self
driving is getting wickedly good, it really is.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I have you know a Tesla why and it's got
the full full service. It's I mean, we play it might,
We play with it often just to see how good
is it? Well? Yeah, two or three years obviously, and
it's night and day difference today than it was other
than if you even dare look at anything, whoever's looking.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
At Yeah it's beeping yet, Well it'sactly love camera yeah, constantly,
but really it's really you're you're attending it more than anything.
Uh hey, John, Last question to you. I don't know
if Shelley lost your camera or not, but last if
you're if you're still on Shelley, let me know and
we'll bring you back in. Last question to you is
when you look at twenty twenty five and you think
(40:51):
about the near term, okay, for an operator, a brand maybe,
I mean, you've had a chance to build a brand
from scratch, invest in a lot of restaurant brands. You
understand the tech side as well, Where would you say
for an operator and I'm going to give you a
fixed one, an operator under ten units okay, which is
(41:11):
a lot of people. Includes that would include in independence
and young startups, where would you say they should focus
their technology? You know, Bullseye for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I mean I hesitate to say it because I you know,
I'm wrong more often than I'm right, But I you know,
and I've made decisions in terms of how I spend
my time based on this small SMBs as they call it,
you know, the small medium sized independent restaurants. They don't
have time or resources to be constantly trying to figure
(41:50):
out how to evaluate best in breed solutions. Yeah, exactly,
as they get bigger, that becomes not just an opportunity,
but like a mandate to begin to say, I got
to leave, I got to leave my all in one
at least as things have stood. But right now, technology
and as you mentioned this, you know with respective Burger
(42:11):
Fi and many others, technology can actually really harm restaurants
if it's not integrated properly, it can cause really significant distractions.
As an early adopter, I've experienced this, you know, where
we've made changes, made switch has made big pronouncements and
lost half of our customers. As I think I told
(42:33):
you earlier today.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yes, that was amazing to me when you talk.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Back to the day level up right was celebrating our
thirty five thousand people on the on the new app
back when we launched with them, and we had come
down from eighty thousand on our prior chatform.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well that was.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
A that was a significant switching cost. It didn't matter
how much free software we got it. That was pretty
detrimental to our business at that time. So I just think,
you know, try to keep it simple, don't be you know,
be thoughtful, when you switch talk to others. I find
(43:09):
a lot of restaurants people don't don't converse with other
restaurant people when they make us switch. You've got one
who's switching the one and the other one is doing
the exact opposite, and they don't even know why. So
I really and I do think making it easier for
your employees to like the job. However, you've got to
(43:32):
do that, whether it's training through technology. There are some
really good training apps. You know, we use elpis that
help managers be able to do more with less. Managers
don't always have time to train like they'd want to,
but you've got these add ons in technology that help
get team members up to speed, not just on skill sets,
but right, how is this business and business in the
(43:54):
first place? You know, what do we really stand for?
Am I a good fit? Is this for me? Those
types of things come out in well done training apps
through technology?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, for sure. Well I know and I know that.
You know when you look at some brands that listen,
some of them just make mistakes and that's understandable. But
unfortunately technology if you make the if you make a
mistake in certain tech like to your point, it literally
can be detrimental to the brand life, you know, so,
and then if you miss something that could be detrimental
(44:29):
because your competitor could get it, and then you've lost
through competitive disadvantage, you know. So, it is a very
razor thin scenario. We're going to continue to kind of
cover this topic in future episodes because this, of course
market branding and tech is really the focus of our show,
So we'll continue to go on that. What about you, Shelly,
(44:53):
When you look at because you get a chance to
talk to a lot of these brand leaders, you see
the early adopters right now, we also see the slowness
of adoption in certain technology. Is there anything you're watching
that you think in twenty twenty five would be this
is what you've found brands are focusing on more, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I think one obviously you know AI and what they
continue to do with that. I think loyalty and engagement
continues to be that, you know, a top thing do
do do brands both from SMB to to enterprise and
(45:34):
repeatable gamification in that of engagement. I was thinking as
as John was sharing a number of things back in
the day when I started with with Toast, you'd go
into to an SMB restaurant. It was like toast, are
you selling? Are you selling bread?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
You know what? What?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And then now you can't go in, you know, to
a trendy restaurant without it. Often that you're going to
see toast being used, the awesome handheld and things like that,
and so just that that that transition of how much
technology has changed over the last seven years. Where we're
going now and what's there It always kind of still
(46:12):
cycles cycles back. What are they using to engage and
make the customers feel important and loyal to them as
a brand, and customers now have so much noise, so
much going on, and what's that going to look like?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, I think you hit it on the head for
both of you guys, So always good to kind of
break this down. John, it's been great having you on
the show. Thanks for coming in today. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
Happy to have stayed in my office.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So well, that's the beauty about podcasts is that you
get to do these things virtual nowadays with all this
new tech that you know, we've got to run this.
But it's been great seeing you. We'll definitely catch up
at a conference or something soon. So yeah, have a
great holiday. Okay, sounds good. All right, we'll see you soon.
(47:04):
All right, that was a good one. I love. I
love to bring guys in like Pepper because he has
you know, he's seen the good, the bad, and the
ugly of the industry, you know, so he's got all
those stories and he has this uh, pragmatic approach that
I I don't know that a lot of people when
they meet him understand his personality. It's a good personality,
(47:25):
but it's very no nonsense. It's like, no, this is
kind of what you need to do.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
I think we need more and more of that in
the the industry. I love the you know, some of
the background on how long YouTube have known each other
and and yeah, I think that you know, that's a
that's something that's that's needed in the industry.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Hey, so we're gonna we're gonna cover another big topic
on our next episode. So you guys, of course, stay
tuned here on the podcast, make sure and subscribe to
the show. If you're over on YouTube, you can catch
us there and it's very simple. Just go over to Actually,
when you're on YouTube, hit Savor dot fm. I'll bring
up our show page for you guys to see By
(48:05):
the way, we just hit one hundred thousand subs on
the channel. Yeah, so, and hey, we got your feature
right there with the Forbes there. The yeah many was
Oh my god, that was such a great episode. So
we're showing this right now. If you missed that Forbes episode, everyone,
we've got it on the homepage of the YouTube channel
right now. Go listen to that one because it was fantastic.
(48:29):
So it was a good thing to meet.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
With her again on Tuesday. I'm gonna let her know
that I saw the view numbers on there on letters
and how it's still flying.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Well yeah, I mean Forbes is a big that's a
big brand, so people kind of get that. But hey, listen,
it has been great having you on the episode again, Shelley,
have a great holiday if I don't talk to you
before then, and we'll catch you guys next time. Right here,
Unrock my restaurant, Fat
Welcome back to another episode of of course, Rock My
Restaurant and co hosting with me again today is Michelle
Rupel coming in from Devour. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm doing good, Paul, can't believe it's almost the end
of the year.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, we are almost wrapped another season here on Rock
My Restaurant, and we're going to have we have one
more show that we're going to do together, and then
we have a couple of show episodes over the holidays
that we'll be doing the best of. So if you
guys want to catch kind of the full breath of
what's happened all year long, catch those last two episodes
for the year. And just so you guys know, we
(00:35):
have been building like crazy over on sav dot FM
and of course the website. So if you're not checking
out the program, not only on Rock My Restaurant, but
some of our other shows, I'll bring some of those
up just to show you what we've got going on
over there. These are all the podcasts on the network,
(00:55):
So if you're listening on the audio side of right now,
Restaurant Reports are kind of our icons show. Restaurant Masterminds
is our multi industry experts show. Rock my restaurant. You're
listening to Earl Dardick over on catering, Cage Chef and
Rare and then our Accelerate restaurant technology, and then of
course the Icon of Icon shows Fast Casual Nation. That's
(01:17):
like the OG Show. It might be the oldest show
on the network as well, but building quite a franchise there, Paul, Hey, listen,
it's coming along just fine. And if you guys have
never checked out Devour, you've got to go over and
visit their website. It's very simple to do. Just go
to just go and you guys can find it devour
(01:40):
dot io learn a little bit more about rewards and commerce.
Shelley's doing a great job over there, so we've been
very fortunate of having her here on the show. Have
you two hundred and twenty seven million gamers in the
United States? Is that worldwide or is that US? That's
where in the US.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
There are three billion worldwide and that number, you know,
I do a lot of obviously pitching and promotion of Devour.
It was two hundred and twelve million, and I just
had to update that stats.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Sixty five percent of the population play video games at
least once a week.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, and you look at e commerce in the games
big Goo. You look at the generation that we're talking about,
they are very tech forward. Today's episode is going to
be that we're going to be talking about technology that
restaurant operators should be using in twenty twenty five. Instead
of all the fluff and all the you know what
(02:32):
that's out there, use the stuff that's going to work.
You guys are going to want to miss this one,
So stay tuned right here.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Turn up the volume and subscribe now to Rock My Restaurant,
the podcast setting your brand on fire on far coming
into you live every week. Branding, marketing, innovative tech, don't
get left behind. The future is now.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
All right, we're back here and we're going to get
into it today with mister John Pepper. He's an old
old friend of mine. John taught me so many great
things about fast casual. I would fly to Boston to
go visit Bolocos and he would he and I would
meet in his Boloco restaurants and in his office there
(03:22):
and what is that Newberry Street? When you were right
there near Newberry Street, Boylston Street, Okay, And I had
so many good conversations with him in the early days
of fast casual, one of the guys that has really
been a leader in the fast casual sector. So John Pepper,
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Thanks glad to be here. Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It's good. I want to put you on up here
on top reposition the videos there all right, now you're
in lead position there. So John, let's get into a
little bit about what you're doing now. And I mean
you've had your hands in a lot of different industry
ventures but also obviously from the operator side, but also
from the technology side, so kind of share with our
(04:06):
audience kind of where you are today.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Sure. So I am still a quasi restaurant operator. I
have three of the restaurants that I started almost twenty
eight years ago still operating, despite my best efforts to
stop operating restaurants for the last I would say ten years,
maybe eleven. So today I have three restaurants. They're called Bloco,
(04:29):
as you mentioned earlier. There's two in Boston, one up
where I live in Hanover, New Hampshire. I started the
business as a student back in nineteen ninety seven. I
was a second year up here at Dartmouth in their
MBA program, and it was a side project.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
We ultimately built what became Beloco to twenty two restaurants,
sold to private equity in two thousand and seven. I've
taken a hiatus here and there, and I also co
founded somewhere along the line two thousand and four another
chain called be Good, which is through to eighty units
before we sold that. So that's my restaurant side. I've
(05:09):
invested in a number of restaurants. You know, current ones
are Starboard, former ones Clover and some others.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Is Clover still operational it is?
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
I sold my steak luckily COVID. I sold you know,
any anytime you could sell most restaurants steaks privately before COVID. Yeah,
usually a good thing. Yeah, Clover is still operating. They
did file Chapter eleven in the last few months.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
But yeah, that's terrible. That's a great concept. I had
a chance to visit it when I was in Boston
last and very interesting and still to this day. I
was intrigued by that kind of the mission of what
they were trying to do, you know, from the quality standpoint,
which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Air Mure Airs we Are is the founder is an
MIT Harvard guy and really a tech guy, which is
so interesting. He built his own pols, He built his
own menu boards, any change on the fly. Like if
there was anybody who was like forward thinking in tech
and restaurants, it was him. He was building it on
(06:16):
his own. It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, and the interesting thing to me, and this is
something I think it'll be a good topic for today,
is when you look at operators like that. And we
had a chance to be on the phone before the
show this morning. We just had a major chain here
in South Florida go into Chapter eleven fall bankruptcy and
then their assets just liquidated, which was Burgerfi. This is
(06:38):
a fast casual concept that at one time I felt
maybe was the darling of the better burger business. And
they went down. Of course, along with them was Anthony's
Coal Fire Pizza, which was one of the other assets.
And you know, one of the things that we've had
a chance to look at in some of these brands
has been the brands who have succeeded have been able
(07:02):
to solve the tech stack. The brands who are failing,
maybe they solved the tech stack, but they were unable
to implement. You know, really make it work for the
customer and kind of go from there. So that, I
guess will be my first question to you is when
you look at how much you've been involved in the
industry and then what's happening out there today, and especially
(07:24):
with what like we just mentioned there on the front
of the show, this shift in dynamic of the demographic
because you and I have had a chance to live
through the gen X and the boomer population that really
put I think the fast casual market on the map
total and now we're dealing with gen Y and gen Z,
(07:45):
which just is a completely different animal. What are you
focused on? You know, when you think about a restaurant operator,
what do you think should be like their number one goal,
especially going into twenty twenty five from a state point
of where should I put my efforts around building a
tech stack? What's my number one focus right now? Is
(08:07):
it loyalty? Is a point of sale? Where'd you go?
For me?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Personally? It's been a pretty consistent theme throughout my restaurant careers.
How do we put people first? How do we put
employees first? And I've always felt there was a big
miss in terms of how technology interacts with the people
actually facing customers. How can we make them feel heroic
in their jobs, if that makes any sense. So number one,
(08:35):
and I've been working on this in so many different
ways of it the last since twenty fourteen. Actually, how
do we help our team members know that their value
beyond the once in a while like hey, nice job,
or you know, hey we've opened up tips so you
get some type thing. How do we help them know
(08:55):
that this job that we are employing them to do
isn't that there's visibility to a future, right, And I
think that's one of the things that's really missing in
the restaurant business. We pay a lot of lip service
as an industry to oh, it's a great starter job,
and you can there's all kinds of opportunity, but when
you actually talk to people shouldered or shoulder in the restaurant,
(09:16):
they don't see that path most of the time, even
in the beginning that do have good development programs, you know,
think about Starbucks and Chipotle, which to their credit, have
great programs, it's still like an invisible pathway for people.
And I feel like technology, I hope it's in twenty
twenty five. I won't say I'm totally optimistic, but needs
(09:38):
to start opening up and presenting pathways to learning, to
taking on more responsibility in the business, and frankly helping
people get out of restaurants.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I see, yeah, and you're hitting on something that's very
important here, because there has been some major disconnects with
some of the biggest brands out there with the customer.
And usually the reason that the disc connect happens is
because of the employee. You know, the brand message or
the employee delivering that brand message doesn't necessarily connect where
(10:08):
that customer is like, Hey, I'm going to come back
here for whatever reason, that person is really excited about
this job, and there must be a reason that kind
of thing is I think missing, you know, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Think about this for a second. You've got a screen.
You know, we've got kiosks facing customers, we've got our
menu boards facing customers, we've got our poss that we
just type into orders. But imagine the screen that's that
the employees see that identify as a customer who just
walked through the door. Maybe they did an optional you know,
(10:42):
a tap that I'm here, and it's like, you know,
Paul just walked in or Shelley just walked in and
they have visited. This is their eight hundred and thirtieth visit. Yeah,
and that employee has that information. I mean, talk about
being able and that there's context and they have a minute.
They have a minute to figure it out before the
person actually shows up. But just starting to help. We
(11:04):
always talk about deliver a great service, remember people's name,
but how about technology really starting to at least give
a little. This is a great customer walking in the door.
Let's celebrate them in our world, like, just give them
a cookie.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
You know, give me a cookie. Hey, cookie goes a
long way, man, a long way. You don't realize how long,
how much of an impact em Hey. So that's a
very interesting point to make, and it's one that I
think works along with what some of the things you
and I have talked Shelley, and that is gamifying you know,
(11:38):
experiences both from a customer standpoint, but now flip that around,
what about gamifying the employee side of things? You know,
whether it's achievement levels, badges. I mean, we pitched a
deal to I won't say the big brand, but it's
a Big Burger brand, and the concept was to talk
about gamification for the employees from a blockchain standpoint, so
(12:02):
or are they could earn rewards. These words could go
toward you know, different kinds of achievements or even gifts
or goodies. And I know that the game, the gamification
side of it from a customer standpoint, is real. Shelley,
have you seen anything out there that has gone to
what John's talking about on the on the employee side.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
No, you know, as John was describing that, the data
is there, right, we all know, like the the information
is there. What isn't what hasn't been built is the
technology or the gamification on that side. Now again, I
will say I get asked about that because we're doing
the things with gamification that we are of Well are
you are you thinking about this from the employee side?
(12:45):
That's not been our focus, but it's like it just
makes sense because you want to you want to incentivize them.
I think mostly we use it within fine dining or
full service restaurants more so right of that know the
customer from their reservation kinds of things, but definitely within
fast casual and even qs are that data is there
(13:08):
and the technology of being able to know that customers
just walked in also is there.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We just that hasn't been put together. But I think
see that's why we wanted to have you on the show, John,
for that very reason. You just came up with a
good piece. But you look at this because this is
something that we're maybe at a point in the industry.
I mean, this is the first time I've seen fast
casual brands struggle. I've never seen them struggle before twenty
(13:36):
twenty four to where we see closures, bankruptcies, executive departures,
all these things that are not good for brands. And
to your point, this next year is probably going to
be even harder because the customer very impacted right now
from inflation issues with jobs. I just looked at the
jobs numbers coming out this day, unemployment now rising up
(13:59):
to four point two. We're probably going to see that
continuing to climb, which means you're going to have a
much more difficult consumer environment. So the brand that figures
out the tech that can change that interface between customer
and the employee WinCE because this is still a hospitality space.
(14:20):
Is there anything John, when you look at like, who
would be the potential that could bring something like that
to the forefront? Would it be a POS company? Do
you think it would be a kiosk? Is it a
mobile app? What would be your thought of where that
could come from.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
I've spoken to a lot of companies, and I do think,
first of all the pos companies that are focused on
all in one right have they do have a right
to tap into this right Whether or not they will
resource it or see it as a priority versus core product,
I don't know, right, you know, I've had really interesting
conversations with Jordan from seven Shifts Yep, very topic. I mean,
(15:00):
he's very empathetic to that need for the employees, and
obviously they have their core product as well, but this
feels like one step out. It's not like you know,
seven builds away in twenty thirty one. Is this is
clearly something that companies like seven Shifts have the right
(15:21):
to pursue.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you think that AI advancements that we've seen in
some of these models could possibly take this role?
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So AI plays a few different roles in my mind, right,
So we did a company myself, right, I raised a
priest one of those pre set rounds back in eighteen nineteen,
and really, you know, tried to help restaurant employees feel
(15:51):
like they had to say in the workplace like they
It was sort of like driven from my days where
I drove uber briefly back in twenty fourteen and got
us sense of what it felt like to receive feedback
all the time. And I really felt like there was
the feed The consistent feedback and mechanism in restaurants was missing.
(16:13):
You weren't sure how you were doing or performing. You
might be stuck with a boss who wasn't giving you
the performance room unless they were required to once a
year exactly so. But where AI would come in is
taking that data about you as an individual, just like
you can take your resume now or your LinkedIn and
you can be like, what could I be? What would
(16:34):
be a path I could take and what would be
the steps I would need to fill in to achieve that?
How can I become an assistant manager? Right? What would
I need to do? AI is that sort of that
coach that can help employees with the data that they're
receiving about their performance, about their strengths, about their areas
(16:55):
for improvement. The managers weren't trained to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah you're pro, you're pro AI right now?
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Me?
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, Well, I'm curious AI, I'm.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Curious AI aggressively. I'm curious. I love it because I've
seen you know, we've had a lot of people on
the show, Shelley, what would be your position right now?
I mean you you get a chance to work with
these tools a lot.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
I think it's powerful and I also think, you know,
I've watched a few, whether documentaries or different things on it.
It is technology moving at the speed of light that
as a culture are not like, we don't have the
time to catch up with it at this point. And
that's that's where I have apprehension is what what does
that mean? But it's the power and what's possible with it.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's well, okay, so I have a story here because
when we when we got hit by the situation with
the pandemic, our media company, we probably had forty people
running production and you know, all over the country filming
and producing, and you know, we were producing documentary on
Netflix and Amazon. Anyway, all that's shut down quickly for
(18:04):
obvious reasons. The podcasts side of our business kind of
grew fast, and we kind of were really i would say,
top heavy until we started utilizing AI for a variety
of things. For a lot of our metadata creation, we
do it for our scripting. Now we do it for
even some of our RSS feed enhancements. And we've basically
(18:24):
taken the tools of AI. And what used to take
me two or three engineers now is you know, kind
of a B level programmer. I wouldn't even say a
top level programmer. That this levels that person up to
do the job of about four people. So yeah, when
(18:46):
if you think that in the in the restaurant industry, John,
do you think that that could happen? Could we see
you know, maybe AI just being an accouterment of more
value from a single good employee versus trying to have
three or four average employees. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (19:04):
A lot of thoughts on that. There's you know one,
I'll just say it so I don't forget it. One.
You know, we have a lot of Spanish speaking employees
in Boston and the one thing they would never be
able to do on their own. Back when we had
marketing teams and we were a much larger company, we
had a marketing team that would be comfortable sending out
emails to customers, but the team on the ground would
(19:28):
never you know, go forward and try to put a
marketing email together. But even today with AI, they can
do it, and they can do it with confidence. It's
not going to be the wow they just broke through
the innovation of marketing type of email, but it's better
than nothing, and it's like way good enough. And these
(19:50):
are people who weren't trained in marketing but are able
to use AI now And that's happening in our company
right now, so I can speak to it knowledgeably where
all of a sudden people are like I am a
market yeah, you know, and they work, they make burritos,
They're not sitting in some office, so that's kind of cool.
The other piece I will say is, and this gets
into you know, more hard deck and machines and automations.
(20:14):
But one of the things I've been investing in behind
is the theory that not all jobs and restaurants are
good jobs. There are a lot of jobs that are
difficult on you physically, emotionally. They're repetitive, they don't serve
you for long periods of time. They certainly serve you
for periods of time. So the question is is which
(20:36):
are what jobs are those? And are that where Where's
that automation going to take place of individuals such that
every job in the restaurant business is a good job
in ten years from now. So like hyphen is a
good example of that, you know in Chipotle. Yeah, you know,
put money behind that and who knows where that goes.
But there's a lot of effort being put into reduce
(20:59):
the monotony. Let us be humans in the restaurant, and
since there will be less of us, there probably just
will be Let's accept that fact for a second. We
didn't get paid more too, There's going to be more
room to pay people to do good jobs. So I
look at all you know, AI and automation and whatever
(21:20):
whatever combinations of those as.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I have a theory that, you know, this whole movement.
I had a chance to see the Optimist robot in
person by Tesla, and I'm an early investor in Tasla
was you know, have been to many of their events,
and I was amazed. I'm going to show you something
here on their careers page. This is the AI engineering
(21:44):
stack in Palo Alto, you know, in terms of the
amount of jobs that are available, and it is mind
boggling how many jobs that they're developing around AI and robotics.
I think that Tesla is a out to really make
an impact on maybe real use case for robots, like like,
(22:07):
this could be real within maybe our like next to
the next decade here, So how much of an impact
do you think that would really have on the restaurant
industry if you could just unbox a robot today and
it's running your back of house production, uh, you know,
inventory management, prep, food prep, name it. You just need
(22:29):
three or four rock star front house front of house
facing people that can kind of manage a fleet of
two or three optimists. Would that make a difference in
the industry.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
I think it'd be a game changer in the industry.
Restaurants are stepping into this already, like Comby ovens, right,
takee up neck grill and just wipe out, you know,
forty five minutes an hour of someone randomly cooking chicken
hopefully hopefully God that it's the right temperature and we're
not going to like get everybody, you know, e COLI
like happens. You know that those ago and it's a
(23:01):
seven minute push up the button to get the same
thing done. These things are going to make the jobs easier.
And you know where the actual robot with the arms,
I don't know, maybe they'll be Scooping Rice as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, sure, I like Scoop and Rice, So I don't
know if I all right, So let's I want to
get into something around this generational shift because you you
kind of touched on it a little bit, and I
know Shelley has a lot of experience in this because
I kind of lean on her when we talk about
you know, gen Z and the digital transformation of society
(23:35):
and how they're interfacing, which is really mobile app more
than anything. And Shelley, this is for you when you
look at when you guys are building stuff over at
Devour and you think about gen Z as really the
target audience. Maybe Jena to a certain extent. Gamification is
(23:56):
a big part of this. But do you feel that
we are seeing a shift in society to almost this
always on instant gratification mobile And do you think that's
going to hurt us in the you know, kind of
the the map going forward here?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I you know, I think social obviously to converted us
to that mobile always on texting everything, right, Like it's
a prior prior to the iPhone. Even with our Blackberries,
it wasn't that we were attached to the screen like
we are now. We can have a computer in our pocket,
and we can be attached to anything that we want, uh,
(24:36):
you know, more and more. What I'm thinking about is, hey,
there's the mobile, but it's a it's a any place
where they at. Of course, we're very interested in doing
everything we're doing in gaming, but that could be you know,
in streaming, in in you know whatever hardware devices at TV.
I was watching the Black Friday game and Amazon had
the the interactive ads where hey, are you interested in that?
(24:59):
You could click your remote control and get information set
on that. So we think mobile so much because that's
our mini computer in our in our pockets, but we
live in so many other virtual environments, especially you know
gen Z and Alpha, you know they they definitely do well.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
We just did a piece on PB on the PBN Show,
which is our other network that covers blockchain and advanced tech,
and one of the things that we covered the other
day was this revolution that's happening on the device for headwear. So,
going away from what Meta is doing, Metaquest, the Metaquest
(25:38):
three most likely going to be the number one selling
item this Christmas. I saw the numbers and it's just
astronomical how many of these headsets they're selling. And now
they've got the devices, which the new glasses, which are
the ray bands. But then they have the new version
of this from Meta that is to replace the headset,
and then there's another company that's developing this. So John,
(26:01):
my question to you would be if you look at
augmented reality and you think about, Hey, I'm working in
a restaurant, and to your point that you mentioned earlier,
if I put on a set of glasses like what
I'm wearing right now, and I've got a fixed feed
to the data that you're talking about saying in my
field of view, I see Paul walk In or John
(26:22):
walk In. This is his eight hundredth visit. Here's his
last two orders, by the way, you know, here's his
last tweet, here's his last Facebook post. That kind of thing.
That technology is almost here now, I mean we're like
really close within maybe a year or at max two.
(26:46):
Would a restaurant be good to start going down the
ar VR path for like employee training, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, obviously for training and all that. But it's funny.
I got the vis vision Pro as soon as you could.
And then my son, my eleven year old, who I
guess that is jen a right off of Yep, we
have twenty we're twenty one to nineteen and eleven. Our caboose,
we call him, but we were going to do a
podcast where he tries to convince me to keep it
(27:15):
and not eBay eBay the very use lize okay, vision
pro right. So we really weren't able to see a
lot of use cases there. That being said, there's two
reasons why in restaurants, I think this there is a
future is number one. It's more fun of the employee,
you know, just in Gamston, especially for a first mover,
which I would love to be. I now have the
(27:36):
Medaquest up on my screen right here. I'm probably gonna
have to order it thanks to you guys. That's not
this is well.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
That's those that one actually has use We have the
meda Quest and there's real games in there. I looked
at the vision Pro the Apple device, and I think
Apple missed the boat here. Yeah yeah, I think Meta
far so far, Yeah, so far, I think Meta has it.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
We'll see similar to the know the headset where you
can talk to each other. I really do think that
people are going to be able to collaborate on taking
care of customers in a much more human, personalized way.
And I think that, you know, you asked me early
on when we started this show, you know what I
really thought was going to differentiate. Yes, I always think
employees making that the hero somehow, but it's going to
(28:20):
be the way they'll become the heroes by being able
to give more personal service to each customer, right and technology,
our brains aren't going to be able to do that
on their own. We're just not. We're not capable of
remembering more names than we do, et cetera. Yeah, this
is where technology and like you said, augmented reality could
make and combined obviously with some because we're all training now.
(28:44):
I mean, oftentimes I'll have one earbud, you know, in
my ear and I can have a conversation and still like,
you know, I kind of know what's happening on you know,
whatever podcast I'm listening to.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, yeah, well that's a natural I think that's a
natural thing that you know, we're seeing even more so
of right now is just this interactive It's like my
kids they're nine and seven, and you know, I was
I walked in on him the other day. He is
you know, he's building a Lego, and he's got Netflix
(29:16):
on his TV and he's got a game on his
iPad building a Lego. I'm like, what the hell three
devices running at him all at once, and I'm thinking,
what if he was just you know, had an interface
that allowed that, you know, to multitask. Which is interesting
because I'm seeing a development cycle and this happens in
(29:37):
the gaming side as well of people that are capable
of doing things like that that are true multitask. That's
the emergence of the kind of people we're hiring in
restaurants today is a lot of younger. They kind of
get it, you know, they completely understand maybe ar VR training,
(29:57):
which is most likely going to be a big part
of that now next year and the year after. But
definitely something that to your point is that that it's
this kind of cross modal information ingesting that we're going
to deal with. And then if you plug in AI,
oh man, I don't even know where that's going to go.
That'll be interesting. What about from a consumer standpoint, you're
(30:21):
a customer now and you have the tool of AI
in your pocket for selecting restaurants, selecting menu items. You know,
where do you see that because at that point it
empowers the customer in a way that they hadn't really
had before. You know, it used to be if I
(30:41):
wanted to find a good restaurant in Boston, I just
look on TikTok.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Now I can ask perplexity.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
That's all I use. By the way, no I have
perplexity has been reaching out to me because I have
the domain pep perplexity. Ooh, I like that. I like
my blog about being perplexed about all this tech, you know,
but yeah, it's funny. I have that perplexity and I'm
going to use it.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
So that's funny. I love that that. You should make
that an AI language model. Yeah, just create an ll M.
I mean most of them are open anyway. Just you know,
put some put some balcoisms in there. The boo lawyer.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
It's their lawyers of course.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Oh that would be interesting.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
Yeah, Well back to the question to answer, you know,
to answer your question, one of the pieces on the
men let's just go to menu selection, menu item selection
that I've thought about for a long time is you
walk in and you know, there was that this innovation
of create your own and let's give Chipotle credit for that.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
For the lack of being back who did that before?
They did many but where you get to kind of
create your own thing and you know, and there's this, been, this,
this in some cases where you memorize, right, your favorite right,
so it's Starbucks, you can get it with it's like
half this quarter that multiple scoops of this save that's
(32:07):
my favorites. What I've always thought is let's toggle that
on to public view, right, similar to vision, and so
that all of a sudden you have social menus and
then where AI comes in as is helping you with
your tastes. Not just be like, well that restaurant over
there is pretty good, but be like here, the here,
(32:30):
the menu items the best match what you're looking for
right now and years how you get it and it's
not necessarily constrained to you know, let's go over to
you know, mos over here, pew Dooba there. But it's
really a social menu and you get cred when people
like your pepper plexity burrito. They can like it or
(32:52):
they can save it themselves, and then that starts to
build customer engagement at a different level, similar to all
the social networks that we see. And so the menu
is actually the way to start to build a different
kind of loyalty, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Well, yeah, and I think you're dead on there, because
that's the thing, you know, when you look at customer
interaction and what that might look like in the future. Today,
it's not, you know, it's not How can I say
this without a sound of weird. I don't know that
the customer is armed with enough information about a restaurant
other than the reviews they get, which are basic, but
(33:35):
they don't really understand maybe completely, what that restaurant is about,
whether it's a sourcing model, how they treat their employees,
there's just sustainability function, all those different little elements that
would play into that. That's what I'm anticipating that we're
going to see this kind of stuff right here, I'll
show it to you on screen so you can see it.
(33:56):
This is the company, it's called x Reel, and these
are the glasses that they're talking about, and I imagine
these are going to get even thinner and thinner, you know,
in comparison. And essentially they've got the interface to all
of these different kinds of tool sets that we're out there,
including PC, iPhone, Android, et cetera. But that's that's the
(34:18):
kind of potential that maybe a customer is going to
have access to in a very short period of time,
which could benefit you, Shelley, if gaming really starts to
take off here yep, are you seeing are you seeing
any demand from you know, from some of the brands
that you're talking with now where they're starting to consider
(34:40):
ar vr.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
No. Now, there's some of the bigger brands, of course
that have done some of the things we've talked about,
you know, Pizza Hut and the point phone at the
box and it turns into a pac Man game and
different things like like that. But I don't think you've
seen that trickling down yet. There there's still I think
again that's where things are moving fast for restaurant operators
(35:03):
when it comes to whether it's it's blockchain, the metaverse, AI,
ar V ruh what you know. And And while it
felt like after the pandemic we moved very fast on
anything that was new, we've almost now kind of gotten
a lot of them are like, oh wait, wait a minute,
I'll I don't want to be the tip of the spear.
(35:26):
I'll wait for that to come along, you know, medium
or or laggered on that that crossing the chasm, So
I don't hear a lot of talking about it. Now
you have your Jeff Alexander's of the world, and there's
no doubt he's he's talking about whatever is going to
be in the future. But uh, but not.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Did you see his recent little fun Yes, yeah, yeah,
the taped taped a bow. That's funny inside joke for
those of you guys, Go check out Justin Son and
the Banana and that'll tell you enough for there. Okay, John,
I want to get into my last two questions here.
First is before we get in, and we're going to
(36:07):
share some ideas into twenty twenty five of if you're
an operator, what you should be really focused on. We'll
ask you on that question. So I'm gonna give him
a chance to think about them for a second. But
first up is third party delivery. So we're seeing real
potential here now for autonomous delivery within grasp now. So
(36:30):
there's talks of Tesla buying Lift, there's talks of Uber
trying to do more robotic and full self driving tool sets.
We're already starting to see that now roll out within Waymo,
along with many other platforms outside of Tesla. Do you
think that third party delivery is at any risk right
(36:53):
now in terms of future technology could get outpaced by
another tech company or possibly someone that just acquires you know,
the fleet, or or and just says, let's say, just
for instance, if Tesla took over lift and then gave
every lift driver a Tesla and that would be somewhat
(37:15):
full self driving, and that at some point down the
road maybe there's no driver and that operator becomes a
fleet runner for food delivery. Do you feel that that
is within reach right now for third party delivery? Something
like that or at least a phase shift phase shift
for sure.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I don't know. I don't see that exact scenario at
the moment. I love I love the idea of you know,
taking putting more resources behind a company like Lyft to
do what you just said. I love the idea of
those drivers getting a bunch of Teslas. No, I think
(37:53):
there's I don't think their third party is in jeopardy
right now. I mean, just staying close to people, you know,
higher upsite door Dash, not an uber, but door Dash,
I feel like they feel like their journey is just beginning.
Oh really, Okay, Yeah, Yeah, there's this. They're not there's
no endpoint right now, interesting opportunity unconstrained.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
As they also like to say at toast, So would
they would they look at third party delivery numbers because
they've been sliding. You know, in the last eighteen months,
we've seen less delivery, less lift on the average check
of delivery. I think that's been mostly consumer driven. I
just wonder is there maybe a psychological shift that's occurring
(38:41):
with the American consumer today saying Okay, I'm gonna pick
up my food instead of get it delivered.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
I mean sometimes, but honestly, we are such creatures of
convenience and this you know, the group that we were
just talking about, these gen zs and jen alpha's, they
are more they how you convenience more than I am
happy about, to be honest right, it's uh. They'll do
anything not to go pick up the food. And we're
(39:09):
not seeing this. We're like, you know, you and I
are seeing we are basing our judgment off of usually
Gen xers, sometimes millennials, you know, the Baby boomers. To
go back to your generation thing, we used to talk
about eighteen to thirty four as our target. The boomers
were in that group always.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Thinks, yeah, exactly, you think about that.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
I don't think door Dash or Uber Eats or any
of these guys. I think they're just beginning. I think
it will warp obviously into different something format. Yeah, and
I think autonomous driving is a no brainer.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
It's just going to be an add on. I think
these companies will adjunct this to a service to help
you know, whether it's reducing costs or figuring out new
models and service models drone, whether it's whether it's actually
autonomy vehicles or drone delivery or you know, other styles
of that. I just don't know if it's going to
happen very soon. That's the real question is how quickly.
(40:03):
But then again, I don't know. Man, that's full self
driving is getting wickedly good, it really is.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
I have you know a Tesla why and it's got
the full full service. It's I mean, we play it might,
We play with it often just to see how good
is it? Well? Yeah, two or three years obviously, and
it's night and day difference today than it was other
than if you even dare look at anything, whoever's looking.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
At Yeah it's beeping yet, Well it'sactly love camera yeah, constantly,
but really it's really you're you're attending it more than anything.
Uh hey, John, Last question to you. I don't know
if Shelley lost your camera or not, but last if
you're if you're still on Shelley, let me know and
we'll bring you back in. Last question to you is
when you look at twenty twenty five and you think
(40:51):
about the near term, okay, for an operator, a brand maybe,
I mean, you've had a chance to build a brand
from scratch, invest in a lot of restaurant brands. You
understand the tech side as well, Where would you say
for an operator and I'm going to give you a
fixed one, an operator under ten units okay, which is
(41:11):
a lot of people. Includes that would include in independence
and young startups, where would you say they should focus
their technology? You know, Bullseye for twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
I mean I hesitate to say it because I you know,
I'm wrong more often than I'm right, But I you know,
and I've made decisions in terms of how I spend
my time based on this small SMBs as they call it,
you know, the small medium sized independent restaurants. They don't
have time or resources to be constantly trying to figure
(41:50):
out how to evaluate best in breed solutions. Yeah, exactly,
as they get bigger, that becomes not just an opportunity,
but like a mandate to begin to say, I got
to leave, I got to leave my all in one
at least as things have stood. But right now, technology
and as you mentioned this, you know with respective Burger
(42:11):
Fi and many others, technology can actually really harm restaurants
if it's not integrated properly, it can cause really significant distractions.
As an early adopter, I've experienced this, you know, where
we've made changes, made switch has made big pronouncements and
lost half of our customers. As I think I told
(42:33):
you earlier today.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yes, that was amazing to me when you talk.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
Back to the day level up right was celebrating our
thirty five thousand people on the on the new app
back when we launched with them, and we had come
down from eighty thousand on our prior chatform.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
Well that was.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
A that was a significant switching cost. It didn't matter
how much free software we got it. That was pretty
detrimental to our business at that time. So I just think,
you know, try to keep it simple, don't be you know,
be thoughtful, when you switch talk to others. I find
(43:09):
a lot of restaurants people don't don't converse with other
restaurant people when they make us switch. You've got one
who's switching the one and the other one is doing
the exact opposite, and they don't even know why. So
I really and I do think making it easier for
your employees to like the job. However, you've got to
(43:32):
do that, whether it's training through technology. There are some
really good training apps. You know, we use elpis that
help managers be able to do more with less. Managers
don't always have time to train like they'd want to,
but you've got these add ons in technology that help
get team members up to speed, not just on skill sets,
but right, how is this business and business in the
(43:54):
first place? You know, what do we really stand for?
Am I a good fit? Is this for me? Those
types of things come out in well done training apps
through technology?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, for sure. Well I know and I know that.
You know when you look at some brands that listen,
some of them just make mistakes and that's understandable. But
unfortunately technology if you make the if you make a
mistake in certain tech like to your point, it literally
can be detrimental to the brand life, you know, so,
and then if you miss something that could be detrimental
(44:29):
because your competitor could get it, and then you've lost
through competitive disadvantage, you know. So, it is a very
razor thin scenario. We're going to continue to kind of
cover this topic in future episodes because this, of course
market branding and tech is really the focus of our show,
So we'll continue to go on that. What about you, Shelly,
(44:53):
When you look at because you get a chance to
talk to a lot of these brand leaders, you see
the early adopters right now, we also see the slowness
of adoption in certain technology. Is there anything you're watching
that you think in twenty twenty five would be this
is what you've found brands are focusing on more, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I think one obviously you know AI and what they
continue to do with that. I think loyalty and engagement
continues to be that, you know, a top thing do
do do brands both from SMB to to enterprise and
(45:34):
repeatable gamification in that of engagement. I was thinking as
as John was sharing a number of things back in
the day when I started with with Toast, you'd go
into to an SMB restaurant. It was like toast, are
you selling? Are you selling bread?
Speaker 3 (45:50):
You know what? What?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And then now you can't go in, you know, to
a trendy restaurant without it. Often that you're going to
see toast being used, the awesome handheld and things like that,
and so just that that that transition of how much
technology has changed over the last seven years. Where we're
going now and what's there It always kind of still
(46:12):
cycles cycles back. What are they using to engage and
make the customers feel important and loyal to them as
a brand, and customers now have so much noise, so
much going on, and what's that going to look like?
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, I think you hit it on the head for
both of you guys, So always good to kind of
break this down. John, it's been great having you on
the show. Thanks for coming in today. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
Happy to have stayed in my office.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
So well, that's the beauty about podcasts is that you
get to do these things virtual nowadays with all this
new tech that you know, we've got to run this.
But it's been great seeing you. We'll definitely catch up
at a conference or something soon. So yeah, have a
great holiday. Okay, sounds good. All right, we'll see you soon.
(47:04):
All right, that was a good one. I love. I
love to bring guys in like Pepper because he has
you know, he's seen the good, the bad, and the
ugly of the industry, you know, so he's got all
those stories and he has this uh, pragmatic approach that
I I don't know that a lot of people when
they meet him understand his personality. It's a good personality,
(47:25):
but it's very no nonsense. It's like, no, this is
kind of what you need to do.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
I think we need more and more of that in
the the industry. I love the you know, some of
the background on how long YouTube have known each other
and and yeah, I think that you know, that's a
that's something that's that's needed in the industry.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Hey, so we're gonna we're gonna cover another big topic
on our next episode. So you guys, of course, stay
tuned here on the podcast, make sure and subscribe to
the show. If you're over on YouTube, you can catch
us there and it's very simple. Just go over to Actually,
when you're on YouTube, hit Savor dot fm. I'll bring
up our show page for you guys to see By
(48:05):
the way, we just hit one hundred thousand subs on
the channel. Yeah, so, and hey, we got your feature
right there with the Forbes there. The yeah many was
Oh my god, that was such a great episode. So
we're showing this right now. If you missed that Forbes episode, everyone,
we've got it on the homepage of the YouTube channel
right now. Go listen to that one because it was fantastic.
(48:29):
So it was a good thing to meet.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
With her again on Tuesday. I'm gonna let her know
that I saw the view numbers on there on letters
and how it's still flying.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Well yeah, I mean Forbes is a big that's a
big brand, so people kind of get that. But hey, listen,
it has been great having you on the episode again, Shelley,
have a great holiday if I don't talk to you
before then, and we'll catch you guys next time. Right here,
Unrock my restaurant, Fat
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