June 14, 2024 • 41 mins
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Strategies for restaurants to regain customer loyalty, particularly among Generation Z, amid declining loyalty due to abundant choices and changing consumer behaviors. We explore leveraging technology, offering unique experiences, emphasizing authenticity, personalization, and creating shareable moments to engage Gen Z consumers effectively.
#RestaurantMarketing #GenZLoyalty #DiningExperiences
📈 Learn More ~ https://www.revernetworks.com/restaurant-power-index
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.
Strategies for restaurants to regain customer loyalty, particularly among Generation Z, amid declining loyalty due to abundant choices and changing consumer behaviors. We explore leveraging technology, offering unique experiences, emphasizing authenticity, personalization, and creating shareable moments to engage Gen Z consumers effectively.
#RestaurantMarketing #GenZLoyalty #DiningExperiences
📈 Learn More ~ https://www.revernetworks.com/restaurant-power-index
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.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Turn of the volume and subscribe nowto Rock My Restaurant, the podcast setting
your brand on fire for you,come into you live every week. Branding,
marketing, innovative text, don't getleft behind. The future is now.
(00:21):
Welcome back to another episode of RockMy Restaurant. Today is going to
be an amazing episode. Does We'regoing to be breaking down some of the
things that you guys love to hear, and that is about the loyalty of
your customers, how to keep them, how to maintain them, and how
to attract those news customers. We'vegot a great brand today coming up.
Tammy. It's great to have youback in. How's it going? Oh
(00:42):
my god, things are so awesome, Paul, You guys have a lot
of changes now as we cycle aroundthe hosts that come in and out.
For Devour, we had Paul Molinarion kind of the Stage one of Rock
My Restaurant. You have performed admirablyas in Stage two. Thank you.
And then we have, of coursea new host. I won't air that
(01:03):
just yet, but we have anew co host coming on the show.
In our next episode, we'll betaking a little bit of a break and
then kicking off some very cool stuff. So a lot of new stuff coming
here on the podcast that you guysare going to love. Anything new with
Devour. Oh yeah, the team'sgoing to be at Industry Now this week
in Chicago, and I know there'sa lot of great restaurant brands that'll be
(01:25):
attending. So if you're curious aboutDevoured, look for Shelley, look for
Chrissy. They'll be there representing us. And they just got back from another
big show called Consensus, So thatwas exciting, And I've got some exciting
news to share personally and sort ofexplaining why I'm transitioning out of this mode.
What's going on. Well, youknow, I've been doing work for
(01:48):
multiple accounts working with Devour, andI've also been working with Mike Lukianov's new
company, Signalflare dot Ai. Andwe applied to the Snowflake Startup Challenge contest
for up to an investment of amillion dollars. Wow, that's great.
Of a nine hundred companies, wewere the only restaurant technology company to apply,
(02:09):
and yesterday it's why I'm here inSan Francisco. We won. We
won the contest and we met thewinners from last year and They said that
beyond the investment, that Snowflake putsso much power and resources behind it.
And if you're not familiar with whatSnowflake is, it's a database solution and
many of the big restaurant brands areusing it. And as a decision intelligence
(02:32):
company, Signal Flair is helping thosebig companies with pricing, promotional analytics,
targeted marketing. And so with thatinvestment, he's made me a full time
offer and awesome, I think I'mgoing to take it. So drats,
you got it. You got tobe uh well, the cool thing is
is it stays in the tech space, which obviously, as you know on
(02:53):
our show, we cover technology whenit comes to restaurant branding and marketing.
Today's time topic is going to beloyalty based. It's really about how do
you gain the right kind of connectionto that consumer? What is it that
makes your brand so much? Youdifferent? Different And it's going to be
(03:14):
a good one. I think thekey here when you look at brands today,
the big one is what brands aredoing it right and which brands are
doing it wrong. And I thinkthat's the issue because one of the biggest
scenarios that's playing out right now isthe fact that loyalty is down dramatically in
(03:35):
restaurants. So today's guest is goingto kind of break that down. Joining
us today is of course, missJulie Wade coming to us from guess where
to Zekey's. So, Julie Wade, Net, you've been on our show
before. Let me kind of bringyou up here on screen and get you
in. Welcome back in, Thanksfor coming in today. We appreciate it.
(03:55):
Thanks for having me back. Paul. Yeah, I think the last
time we had you on it wason one of our bigger shows, of
the Restaurant Report, which kind ofis a general you know, a general
show that covers a lot of thenews items. But obviously you're senior director
of marketing over there. Fifteen yearsin franchise and retail, you've been in
(04:16):
the restaurant business, kind of touchingon I think a lot of the big
category areas that we talk about herein terms of technology and combining that with
customers. Give me a rundown quicklyon where Taziki's is today in terms of
size scope, what's the brand likeright now? Sure, to Ziki's has
been around for twenty six years basedhere in Birmingham, Alabama, and we're
(04:42):
now in sixteen states, opening ourninety seventh unit next week. Actually,
thank you, yeah, we'll you'recoming do what one hundred's coming? It
is, it is, It isright around the corner. We will be
at one hundred probably either at theend of the summer or early fall.
Okay, we're opening in Oh We'vegot Texarcana, Detroit, Saint Louis,
(05:12):
So a couple of new states forus. So we are. We're really
on the cusp of some some prettygood, pretty big things, some pretty
big area development agreements in the works. What is the perfect market for you
guys, you know, because alot of people I think may not necessarily
see tazekis in. Are they inmajor markets of any type? Detroit's a
(05:33):
major market. But what would besay, your largest market, Dallas,
Dallas, Dallas, Atlanta, Yeah, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville. What
about your smallest market? What wouldbe the like, what would you guys
look for in a smaller second tierthat you would still pull the trigger on.
(05:54):
We're in Jackson, Tennessee. Okay, all right, it's pretty small.
Two below. We do really wellin college towns. Interesting, we're
in Columbia, South Carolina, Tuscaloosa, Auburn. Auburn would be man,
that would be perfect. Okay,So I could see that from a consumer
(06:15):
and a guest attraction for sure.Well, let's get into some questions today.
I think Tammy's going to lead itoff for us, and I'd love
to kind of get your feedback here. Yeah, so, Mss Julie and
great to see you. It's beenonly since Meg, But can you share
with us in the audience some ofthe tools and strategies that you are using
to gather and act on feedback?Is there a technology and what do you
(06:39):
do once you get some customer feedback? Is there processes or how does the
company use it? Oh? Yeah, we get guest feedback in so many
different ways, so like most everybodyelse does, we obviously respond to all
the Google reviews, the yelps.We use a platform to have all of
those review streamline, so everybody intheir local markets hopefully responding one hundred percent
(07:06):
to all of those reviews. That'sreally important for us, and we really
stress that with our local franchisees,local marketers, everybody in their individual markets
that we want one hundred percent responserate to all of those. I'm curious
when you when I want to kindof hit there when you say response rate.
(07:30):
Every review that comes in your whetherit's good, positive, negative,
doesn't matter. You're responding to everyone. That's what we strive for. Yeah,
okay, yeah, everything to beresponded to. Can you put that
in your franchise agreement? Is thatsomething that you can really you know,
strong arm the franchisees to make surethat that's happening. We don't put it
in the franchise agreement, but wedo put it in our ops manual that
(07:55):
that is that's a standard for us. How what's the feed from the franchise
ease do? I mean, I'massuming they like that. I think that
would be a good thing, right, most of them do, some of
them, you know, from timeto time we hear you know, why
do I need to know what everybody'ssaying? But that's very very rare.
(08:16):
They really do want to know,but it's it's typically been a good thing,
and we make it easy on themto give the feedback or to you
know, respond to the feedback byhaving an aggregator platform that they just log
into one place and right, yeah, that they don't have to log into
(08:37):
Google and Yelp separately and Facebook andall that. It does make it a
little bit easier for them to dothat. So okay, So so you're
you're managing that at least on thereview side, But like, what about
when once you get outside the reviewdo you look at social media at all?
Oh? We do? Yeah?Yeah? Do How engaged are you
(09:01):
like on say a TikTok or anInstagram when you do get feedback on there?
Yes, we do that as well. We have there's a couple of
people on my staff that that's whatthey do. They're definitely engaged with folks
that are tagging us on things.That's also part of that platform that we
have a listening device and we cansee saying what about us, and whether
(09:24):
they're tagging us or not, wecan see who's just mentioning us exactly.
Yeah, so key words because Iknow, like with our data tool that
we use for the Power Index,we ingest all the menu items from brands.
So anytime that menu item is mentioned, it's correlated to the brand that
(09:48):
kind of has that, especially ifit's a custom menu item, it's easier
to track. But does that workfor you guys? So you know,
I know you guys have it.We'll talk about a new menu launch.
Is that how you kind of tracksome of the when customers may not even
mention, you know, the brand, but actually mentioned and you know,
maybe a branded menu item. Itcan be some of our items. We
(10:11):
don't have anything that has such aspecific name that is just unique to us.
But yeah, we've got some thingsthat definitely kind of we can definitely
track. There's there's six or sevendifferent things that we're we're tracking pretty much
all the time, and we cantrack competitors as well and see yeah,
(10:33):
yeah, well I think that youknow, when you get into that personal
connection to a customer and they feellike you're actually paying attention, it's a
different experience, I think for mostcustomers, I know, many of the
ones that we're watching right now.When we look at just sentiment on the
market in the industry right now,it's probably the lowest I think I've seen
(10:58):
it maybe in ten years in termsof consumer sentiment for all brands. I'm
not picking on any one category,but casual dining, fast casual QSR.
It seems as though there's a lotof expectation. Some of this is probably
you know due to price, youknow that has been hit in whether you've
taken price or just the consumers feelthat there's more issues with price. I
(11:24):
think that's maintaining that that personal connectionis really critical. Do you guys,
do anything that you extend that opportunityso I know that you know, to
kind of capture or what do theycall it for, you know, saving
a customer you've got Let's say youhave one of these reviews that didn't turn
(11:46):
out right, something was wrong forthe customer. What is the problem?
What do you do? What's theprocess for you guys? Do you guy?
Do you throw some gift cards atthem? Do you try to listen
to their problem? Is there akind of a process that you go through?
Oh, yeah, there definitely is. Yeah. Each individual market,
they have different tools available to them. They can, you know, the
(12:09):
guest recovery method a little bit differentfranchise e to franchise e on how they
want to handle that. We dohave another program that is much more active
listening to the guest. All ofthose ways that I told you are very
passive. We have to wait forthem to give us feedback. But we
(12:33):
just implemented last year ovation, sowe have Now we're actively soliciting for that
feedback. So on every receipt thatgoes out, whether it's a digital or
physical receipt in the restaurant, weare getting feedback from the customer or at
least asking for the feedback. Andit's just a very quick two question survey
(12:56):
how is your experience today? Andif they give us anything less than a
just perfect score, then it says, well, can you tell us a
little bit more about your Yeah?Interesting, And that has been really really
critical in us from an op standpoint, being able to make those really quick,
(13:16):
on the fly operational pivoting of youknow, whatever is happening in that
moment, whether it is you know, maybe a service issue or uh,
how do you deal with how doyou deal with the angry yelpers? You
(13:37):
know, I call them the angryyelpers? You know, I get I
get to witness this because i'm youknow, I'm a study of consumers inside
the restaurants. Sometimes when I gointo my my wife and my kids hate
it. We'll go it doesn't matterwhat fast casual concept it is. I'm
I'm yeah, I'm having fun withthe food, but I'm watching every customer
at every engagement point. And I'mnow I find more and more often is
(14:03):
that customers some customers, not all, of course, but there's a lot
more occasions where the customer seems toantagonize the brand, like they're trying to
get the brand on it got you, you know, or something. Well,
I think the first thing is youhave to ask questions, and ask
questions of the guest and of thestaff that was on site at the time,
(14:28):
because chances are there's a happy mediumbetween what the story is that the
guest is telling and probably what theemployee's version is at the same time.
So you really have to walk thatfine line right right, well, kipering
what the true story is there,But exactly overall, the guests have been
(14:54):
really patient over the last four years, Like they had to be patient during
the whole cod did everything, andthen they had to be really patient with
us during the supply chain crisis,and then they had to be really patient
during the staff in crisis, andthen they had to be really patient during
all the inflation. And I thinkeverybody's patience has just run out, run
(15:16):
out, and so now the lastfive years of restaurants, Yeah, and
you know, so everybody's just they'rejust fed up and they just want their
food how they ordered it, andthey want it in the time that it
was promised. See that you wouldsee this as a positive, Julie.
(15:37):
So I could see that this islike a great opportunity, you know,
for a restaurant operator to go reallygo out and win customers. Now,
I mean if you kind of overperform. Yeah, something that we had a
panel at a college and I wasa guest speaker, and I got a
chance to work with all these peopleand it was basically on consumer science,
(16:00):
and that was the point that theytalked about so much. Was that just
that little bit of effort right now, especially it's a low bar to be
able to capture the loyalty of aguest in a way that many people don't
realize is going to stick around maybefor years, you know, depending on
just that one interaction that you've donewith them. So I could definitely see
(16:23):
it, I know. Tammy hadanother question on the food. Yeah,
Julie, you've launched some new menuitems. I think it was called the
griddle Finished Baked Falaffel. Can youtell us about the process and I'd love
to understand what griddle finished means evenyeah. Yeah, Well, if you're
familiar with the traditional falafel that's beenMediterranean staple, it's deep fried, yeah,
(16:47):
traditionally. Well, we don't havefires. Okay, so that's kind
of been a conundrum for us fora while because we really wanted to serve
that as an option for our vegetarianguest. But we do it in a
way that is true to the product, but yet and we don't have friars.
(17:11):
So it's taken us quite a whileto come up with this really great
way to do the product that nowwe start out baking it and making sure
that it's it's done enough in thecenter, but then we finish it on
our griddle and give it just enoughof that crispy edge so that it has
(17:32):
that kind of fried exterior, thatcrispiness, but yet it's still nice and
soft in the middle. So likea pancake, Yeah, it's it's kind
of it's not quite as flat asa pancake. It's more like a hockey
puck, but it's kind of kindof that shape if you yeah. Yeah,
(17:59):
But we launched it in April,right at the end of April,
and it is really really sold welland so much so that we are adding
it permanently to the menu from nowon, So when we transition to our
next lto this summer, we aretransitioning it to a permanent menu item.
(18:19):
So it's available as in a euroas a feast, which our feast are
like plates, so you can geta fulla ful with either rice or potatoes,
and then a salad either a Mediterraneanor Greek salad, and then you
can also get it as a proteinon top of a large salad. So
(18:42):
when you bring a new item tomarket, like, what are the ways
that you promote it and get itout there? Like, how do you
let your customers know? Oh,we do a full on media blitz,
definitely a pr campaign to start with. We have a very substanti email list
and uh text message database, sowe blasted out to all of our customers
(19:07):
that way, at least once aweek during the promo period, let everybody
know that we have it. There'stons of in store pop so everybody that's
walking into the restaurants during that promotime gets to see it. We do
social media campaign, We'll put somemoney behind it, some paid ads,
so it's it's a full on youknow, either eight or twelve week campaign
(19:30):
each time we do a new menuitem, and what is the best performing
for you Right now, I'm justkind of curious what email text social Which
one would you say, Hey,this is our top performer. Text we
actually see the most immediate response tooh okay. We can definitely see the
(19:52):
days that we send out a text, we see sales, you know,
correlate exactly through the days that wewe send a text out. But I
think over the long haul, ouremails are very, very effective. We
use Braisee email platform and it isit's just phenomenal, the amount of data
(20:15):
that we get back from that,the capabilities that it has, the segmentation
that we can do through that.It's really it's just amazing what all we
can do the guest feedback front fora new menu item. Are you then
using those surveys to see what guestfeedback is? Like? How do you
get actual guest feedback? Yeah,yeah, we do. Yeah, we
(20:40):
do a lot of different things withthat. We have a secret shopper program
that we use, We use surveys. I'm trying to think what there's a
couple of other ways that we're gettingfeedback from guests as well. But yeah,
we're getting lots and lots of feedbackfrom in every single market that we
(21:00):
have, So yeah, we're goingto take a quick break. We'll be
back here with Julie Wade, sostandby. Devour is making it easy for
QSR and fast casual brands to tapinto gen Z's love of food ordering without
heavy fees or technology investments. It'sall at your fingertips. Expand food ordering
(21:21):
into digital realms like video gaming,streaming and esports entertainment. Learn more at
devour dot io today. All right, we are back here again with Julie
Wade up to Zeke's and we're goingto continue our quest here around customer loyalty,
guest feedback. What is the bestway to do it? Some of
the magical in the middle of retainingguests out there, and I want to
(21:45):
get into this first question kind ofon the back half of the show here,
Julie, and that is when youlook at communities, and because I
hear local store marketing all the time, you know from most brands, but
community building is a big part ofthat, whether it's the local community or
even a community that is external sometimesit's outside the four walls. First of
(22:08):
all, is how are you guysgoing about that to build a true community
around Tazeki's as a brand, well, our brand was really founded on that
community involvement. When Keith Richards,our founder, started to Zeke's twenty six
years ago, that was one ofthe main pillars of how he founded the
(22:30):
brand. He started it being veryactive in the community here in Birmingham,
and every franchise group that we havefound since then, that was one of
the main requirements that we don't wantabsentee owners. We want somebody who is
there, who's in market, who'svery committed to the community, who knows
(22:51):
people, who has a network builtin already, whether it's through schools,
churches, businesses, you know,they have to know people in the area,
they have to be active. It'sjust it's just ingrained in who we
are and how we run our business, and we just want that as part
(23:15):
of just the taz He's DNA.It's just who we are catering is a
huge part of our business model andhaving those people that network already built in.
If you start your restaurant that wayfrom day one, you already have
a built in base of you know, catering contact, so that certainly helps.
(23:40):
Yeah, you have. Do youhave a mix on it, because
in speaking of community, a mixof how your key areas work, whether
it's catering you know, obviously,online ordering or take out. What's kind
of the mix for you guys rightnow in terms of where you where you
(24:00):
serve your food the most as faras like what are our store percentages or
what? Now are you getting intodouble digits on catering, are you still
in double digits on digital ordering?Yes? Yes, I'm both yes,
yes. Look have you guys reducedsize yet? Oh? Yes? Okay,
(24:26):
yeah, Like we've got a newrestaurant opening in Texarcana and it's taking
over an old Steak and Shake,So it's going to be a large footprint,
but that's just because that was thespace that they came to us with
it was available. But any thatwe're designing or building ground up, those
are going to be a much smallerdining room, not sacrifice back of house
(24:48):
space that is still going to belarge because we need the space. And
we're even looking at, you know, how do we service the customer of
the future with increased catering capacity,increased third party delivery capacity, increased in
ordering capacity. How do we howdo we build all of those modes into
(25:14):
the cook line but still reduce thatthe of the dining room in dining which
are running capacity, like our numbersof in store in restaurant dining, they're
continuing to grow still, you know, getting back to those pre twenty twenty
(25:36):
levels. It is coming back still, but I don't think you're ever going
to see it back to how Iwas going to say, Do you think
it'll ever return to its original loreyou know of in in restaurant dining,
Yeah, probably not. I thinkour lunchtime business probably will. But I
think the dinner hour we're we're reallya we're at takeout dinner. Well,
(26:02):
that changes the whole marketing aspect,you know, because you know, an
in store occasion completely different when you'redealing with a mobile occasion, a catering
occasion, a takeout whatever it mightbe, office launch kind of scenario.
So I can see that going there. On that note, then, Paul,
for you, Julie, what aresome digital marketing aspects that you are
(26:25):
tapping into. What are the strategiesthat are most effective for Jazekis? Thank
you? Oh yeah, social advertising, Like, what's really works well for
you guys? Yeah, we do. We do a lot of display ads
right now. We've tapped into acouple of different display ad channels and we've
(26:45):
just started something pretty new for usand we're testing it in a few corporate
markets to see how it works doingsome hyper local display ads really on some
natural trigger So we're testing the slowdown there. Okay, natural triggers?
(27:06):
What what is that? So it'sit's all based on what happens in the
the Let me think about how todescribe this. So things that are happening
in local markets. So if thereis a weather event in a market,
(27:26):
Okay, we we have there.You guys are reacting with whatever is happening
in the local market being you popout a So do do the franchisees have
full capacity to do that? Well, they don't have to do it.
It's all it's all AI driven.Oh okay, nobody has to be pull
(27:48):
Okay, they don't have to pulla trigger. Yeah. Yeah, it's
all already pre programmed, pre stacked. The creative is all in there.
So when a certain event happens,whether it's a weather event or a community
event, with the end of schoolright now, you know, because today
is the last day of school forour kids, and you know, there's
(28:11):
a celebration, you know, Ithink you know, so we are trying
to like plan some some things todo this weekend as you know, kind
of that celebratory. That would bea great opportunity right there, is Hey,
come celebrate you know, the firstday of your kids of summer,
you know, on a Saturday lunchor Saturday brunch or whatever it might be.
That would be a good one.If if AI could figure out those
(28:33):
kind of components key community milestones inthe community, that would be pretty cool,
or even if you could populate themright Like, I'm close to these
schools. What if they have announcementsthat feeds. Are you doing that through
braize? Is like, because don'tthey have an AI component that does that,
So that that triggering is that throughbreeze. It's not through braives.
(28:56):
This is actually through evocalized Okay,we know those guys justin over there at
the marketing guy. Yeah, he'sa friend. So a lot of tech.
I mean, how many tech productsare you guys using right now?
Not enough? I like that answer. I like that more tech you are
(29:17):
more restaurant companies. I mean Icould spend one hundred percent of my budget
on tech platforms and still not haveeverything really that I could I could use.
But I mean it's on your wishlist right now. I'm just kind
of curious, Oh what's on mywish list? We really need a better
(29:41):
data visualization okay, platform we don'tlike of the guests or of the data
on your retail sales b I RCDP. We have a CDP, but
I need a b I to interpretthe CDP. Okay, is it?
Who's I remember? You guys hada great stack. You're a pretty forward
thinking brand from Yeah, well weuse Square for our pos in store,
(30:08):
so we've got my loyalty is actuallythrough Square. Okay. We used to
do our email through Square and weoutgrew that, and so that's when we
flipped over to Braise about a yearago. Almost. Are you guys using
any funnel system? Is that somethingthat Braise does right now? Like you
(30:30):
know funnel how an email user reactsto certain offers to where it branches off
into another you know scenario. Yes, yes, you can build journeys through
Braise through the whole program. SoI get email one I didn't respond to
that. Instead of sending me thesame one, it sends me one that
I might respond to differently. Yes, tracks that habit starts building on that,
(30:55):
and it can also it will triggerbased on do you respond to emails
or do you respond to text ordo you respond to notification, So it
integrates all of the different tags,not just email. Well, Julie,
you're going to have to think aboutthis then, because I'm telling you blockchain
is going to be your nirvana becausethe data and the openness of blockchain.
(31:21):
At some point we're going to seea blockchain tool. You know, Devour
does it now with online ordering andgetting into that. But I think we're
going to see a lot more toolscoming in from the blockchain side. It's
very early right now because there's nota lot of restaurants that have started to
deploy on it. But I knowJeff Alexander is probably the poster child right
now with what he's doing. ButI think there's going to be a thousands
(31:45):
of Jeff's within the next three orfour years. That's how much we're going
to see innovation coming this way.For sure. Well, I think every
vendor at the tech shows noow isdot Ai. You know, I saw
that. But I was talking toRob Grimes, he and I do another
tech show, and he was tellingme that he came back from the NRA
(32:07):
show and he thought that he wouldsee nothing but Ai everywhere. And he
said that in the tech pavilion thatthere was actually very little. Yeah,
the tech pavilions. It was alittle interesting this year there. It didn't
seem like there was a lot morelegacy vendors. There wasn't a lot of
new up and comers. And maybeit's cost prohibitive, but it was.
(32:30):
I thought it was an interesting sortof mix this year. Well, I
wonder tech companies are usually pretty savvyon how to go to market, and
they may be looking at trade showsas kind of like, hey, that's
that's that's old school. We needwe need something that is you know,
where are the emerging brands And maybethey're not even at events, maybe they're
(32:50):
at something else. Because I've seena lot more tech companies do a lot
more marketing integrations, you know now, I mean you look at what theator's
done, and the guys are overyou know, who was it that started
something that was I thought was reallycool toasted one. They continue to kind
of do that, but I thinkthere's some new ways in there. Speaking
(33:12):
of that, in terms of roadmaps, Julie Textac, we're kind of talking
a little bit about what you're buildingand what you'd love to have. If
you look out a year from nowand you think about marketing innovations, they
could be technology driven or guest experienceenhancements. What's on the roadmap for you
guys. Our loyalty program is somethingthat we've wanted to retool right now.
(33:39):
We have what I call a rewardprogram, not a loyalty program through our
app. I really think our emailand upgrading it through Braize is really more
of a loyalty program, even thoughit's not tied to you know, come
in and spend this much, getthis. That is the reward program that
(34:01):
we have through our app, andyou can track your points and all that.
But we need to retool that sideof it so I could do that
today through Square. Yeah, they'vereally upped their game and the amount of
a lot better. I've seen manyof their products now. I talked to
(34:22):
one of their product managers about twomonths ago on them. They came in
as a sponsor there, you know, some of our podcasts and I just
wanted to know, you know,how did the products sell and you know,
what are the things. They hada lot of new features that I
was not aware that was available there. So yeah, and they're competing very
(34:43):
heavily with toasts, so they've gotto up right. Yeah. Yeah,
they They've got what we kind ofcall internally Square two point zero Square for
restaurants, their enterprise solution, whichwe're transitioning most of our stores to over
the next months. We've got aboutprobably half of our corporate stores have already
(35:04):
transitioned to that. So in thatmove, I think they've really you know,
try to up their system and geta lot of more competitive features.
All right, So does Square havesome coupon ing because you could just run
that almost like a mail merge throughBraize and use them as your tree and
(35:29):
lose the points and make it morejust behavioral based. Yeah. Yeah,
they do surprise and delight. Yeah, yeah, we can definitely do some
of those things. So we're we'reworking on how to integrate some of the
upgrades in Square and then integrate someof that into our ui UX in the
(35:52):
app. And that's what's been thehold up for me. We've just done
in fact, this week we justreleased some new grades to our app,
some new features. We haven't hadGoogle pay, Apple pay before now,
so we've just caught up with everybodyon that front. We've done some other
things like saved address and continuous scrollon is you're app then a custom app?
(36:16):
Or are you using like a Koalaor a big colony from plane air
or one of those solutions that sitson top. Neither our app developer is
a sister company. Our parent companyis Fresh Hospitality, a company developed the
(36:37):
apps. Because we're the largest brandunderneath the Fresh Hospitality umbrella has has some
advantages there. So we work veryclosely with the developers at Fresh Technology to
be able to you know, dosome some new things on the app and
(37:00):
have some dedicated development work done.We've seen a lot more brands that are
doing in house tech. I'm findingI'm finding a lot more of that,
you know, all the way upfrom loyalty platforms, you know, to
where they want to build something.I mean, you know, if you
look at Wingstop, they kind ofwhen they took off on their own.
(37:20):
We're seeing a handful of brands thathave that capacity, but also a lot
of homegrown brands that are starting tobuild on some of these you know,
off the shelf platforms that they kindof cobble stuff together that's a little bit
more customized to them specifically. Soit's all right, so the smaller exactly.
Yeah, yeah, if you can. Yeah, Julia's been great having
(37:42):
you on the show. I alwayslove picking your brain and kind of getting
in and understanding more about how Tazeke'sis doing things. So good luck on
everything you guys are doing over there. And thanks so much for stopping in
the podcast today. We appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me.
Yeah, all right, it isalways so fun. I love uh,
I love it when she comes onthe show. I got to spend some
(38:04):
time with her at Meg and NRAand we had a blast. Yeah.
I think the key here right nowwith these brands is they start to select
these technology products because you know,Tam, you've been in the tech side
a long time. I go backwith Noah, you know when Glass was
just getting going. I just sawa post by him by the way yesterday
(38:28):
and he put up twenty years agoday one. Did you see the post?
I did, And it was likeit looked like it was from his
apartment, but he said it wasthe office. I think then, yeah,
yeah, And I was like,wow that if I could go back,
I have, I probably should putup that for our media business,
you know, because when we startedFastcasual dot com. I still have photos
(38:50):
of that original studio that we have. Paul, You've got an incredible history.
I think it would be worth puttingsome of those pictures and moments of
your sort of past career to sortof show how you gone here. It
would be great on your website.We just put up the full documentary of
Fast Casual Nation oh on YouTube,okay, And there was a couple of
(39:14):
it got picked up by who wasit? A business insider picked it up,
and it was so funny because youknow, some random reporter was,
you know, writing on the FastCasual growth and they picked up the documentary
from YouTube as if it was justlaunched. We launched the documentary in twenty
(39:37):
fifteen. Just take the win,Just take the win. And so I
was like, okay, well,all right, whatever, but I'm glad.
Well, I mean, I thinkthe video kind of stood the test
of time. Was the thing thatwas good, but it had you know
that that documentary has all of theall of the stars of the industry in
it ron Shake you know, ModernMarket, the guys over Smash Burger,
(40:00):
Randy Grudy from Shake Check. Imean, it's got all the all the
great people, be interesting to people. Look at where they all are all
now, and do like an updateon that and see who else has joined
the party, because are they now? Yeah, that segment has grown so
much. Yeah, where are theynow? Hey, Tammy, it's always
fun chatting it. Sorry to seeyou go, but at the same time,
(40:22):
happy to see you go because you'vegot something big coming up for you.
So good luck and everything you're doing. And we'll probably have you back
in as a guest one day hereon the show. I'd love to be
a guest. If you ever needsomebody to fill in, just give me
a buzz. We'll do all right. As you guys, of course know,
the best thing to do here onRock My Restaurant is subscribe. You
(40:45):
can do that over at Saber dotFm on our website or if you're here
on YouTube and you're watching this showright now, I asked you you just
take a little bit of time hitthe like and also the subscribe. That
will be the first journey for youto kind of follow this show in more
around technology, branding, and marketingright here on Rock mya restaurant. We'll
(41:06):
catch you next time.
Turn of the volume and subscribe nowto Rock My Restaurant, the podcast setting
your brand on fire for you,come into you live every week. Branding,
marketing, innovative text, don't getleft behind. The future is now.
(00:21):
Welcome back to another episode of RockMy Restaurant. Today is going to
be an amazing episode. Does We'regoing to be breaking down some of the
things that you guys love to hear, and that is about the loyalty of
your customers, how to keep them, how to maintain them, and how
to attract those news customers. We'vegot a great brand today coming up.
Tammy. It's great to have youback in. How's it going? Oh
(00:42):
my god, things are so awesome, Paul, You guys have a lot
of changes now as we cycle aroundthe hosts that come in and out.
For Devour, we had Paul Molinarion kind of the Stage one of Rock
My Restaurant. You have performed admirablyas in Stage two. Thank you.
And then we have, of coursea new host. I won't air that
(01:03):
just yet, but we have anew co host coming on the show.
In our next episode, we'll betaking a little bit of a break and
then kicking off some very cool stuff. So a lot of new stuff coming
here on the podcast that you guysare going to love. Anything new with
Devour. Oh yeah, the team'sgoing to be at Industry Now this week
in Chicago, and I know there'sa lot of great restaurant brands that'll be
(01:25):
attending. So if you're curious aboutDevoured, look for Shelley, look for
Chrissy. They'll be there representing us. And they just got back from another
big show called Consensus, So thatwas exciting, And I've got some exciting
news to share personally and sort ofexplaining why I'm transitioning out of this mode.
What's going on. Well, youknow, I've been doing work for
(01:48):
multiple accounts working with Devour, andI've also been working with Mike Lukianov's new
company, Signalflare dot Ai. Andwe applied to the Snowflake Startup Challenge contest
for up to an investment of amillion dollars. Wow, that's great.
Of a nine hundred companies, wewere the only restaurant technology company to apply,
(02:09):
and yesterday it's why I'm here inSan Francisco. We won. We
won the contest and we met thewinners from last year and They said that
beyond the investment, that Snowflake putsso much power and resources behind it.
And if you're not familiar with whatSnowflake is, it's a database solution and
many of the big restaurant brands areusing it. And as a decision intelligence
(02:32):
company, Signal Flair is helping thosebig companies with pricing, promotional analytics,
targeted marketing. And so with thatinvestment, he's made me a full time
offer and awesome, I think I'mgoing to take it. So drats,
you got it. You got tobe uh well, the cool thing is
is it stays in the tech space, which obviously, as you know on
(02:53):
our show, we cover technology whenit comes to restaurant branding and marketing.
Today's time topic is going to beloyalty based. It's really about how do
you gain the right kind of connectionto that consumer? What is it that
makes your brand so much? Youdifferent? Different And it's going to be
(03:14):
a good one. I think thekey here when you look at brands today,
the big one is what brands aredoing it right and which brands are
doing it wrong. And I thinkthat's the issue because one of the biggest
scenarios that's playing out right now isthe fact that loyalty is down dramatically in
(03:35):
restaurants. So today's guest is goingto kind of break that down. Joining
us today is of course, missJulie Wade coming to us from guess where
to Zekey's. So, Julie Wade, Net, you've been on our show
before. Let me kind of bringyou up here on screen and get you
in. Welcome back in, Thanksfor coming in today. We appreciate it.
(03:55):
Thanks for having me back. Paul. Yeah, I think the last
time we had you on it wason one of our bigger shows, of
the Restaurant Report, which kind ofis a general you know, a general
show that covers a lot of thenews items. But obviously you're senior director
of marketing over there. Fifteen yearsin franchise and retail, you've been in
(04:16):
the restaurant business, kind of touchingon I think a lot of the big
category areas that we talk about herein terms of technology and combining that with
customers. Give me a rundown quicklyon where Taziki's is today in terms of
size scope, what's the brand likeright now? Sure, to Ziki's has
been around for twenty six years basedhere in Birmingham, Alabama, and we're
(04:42):
now in sixteen states, opening ourninety seventh unit next week. Actually,
thank you, yeah, we'll you'recoming do what one hundred's coming? It
is, it is, It isright around the corner. We will be
at one hundred probably either at theend of the summer or early fall.
Okay, we're opening in Oh We'vegot Texarcana, Detroit, Saint Louis,
(05:12):
So a couple of new states forus. So we are. We're really
on the cusp of some some prettygood, pretty big things, some pretty
big area development agreements in the works. What is the perfect market for you
guys, you know, because alot of people I think may not necessarily
see tazekis in. Are they inmajor markets of any type? Detroit's a
(05:33):
major market. But what would besay, your largest market, Dallas,
Dallas, Dallas, Atlanta, Yeah, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville. What
about your smallest market? What wouldbe the like, what would you guys
look for in a smaller second tierthat you would still pull the trigger on.
(05:54):
We're in Jackson, Tennessee. Okay, all right, it's pretty small.
Two below. We do really wellin college towns. Interesting, we're
in Columbia, South Carolina, Tuscaloosa, Auburn. Auburn would be man,
that would be perfect. Okay,So I could see that from a consumer
(06:15):
and a guest attraction for sure.Well, let's get into some questions today.
I think Tammy's going to lead itoff for us, and I'd love
to kind of get your feedback here. Yeah, so, Mss Julie and
great to see you. It's beenonly since Meg, But can you share
with us in the audience some ofthe tools and strategies that you are using
to gather and act on feedback?Is there a technology and what do you
(06:39):
do once you get some customer feedback? Is there processes or how does the
company use it? Oh? Yeah, we get guest feedback in so many
different ways, so like most everybodyelse does, we obviously respond to all
the Google reviews, the yelps.We use a platform to have all of
those review streamline, so everybody intheir local markets hopefully responding one hundred percent
(07:06):
to all of those reviews. That'sreally important for us, and we really
stress that with our local franchisees,local marketers, everybody in their individual markets
that we want one hundred percent responserate to all of those. I'm curious
when you when I want to kindof hit there when you say response rate.
(07:30):
Every review that comes in your whetherit's good, positive, negative,
doesn't matter. You're responding to everyone. That's what we strive for. Yeah,
okay, yeah, everything to beresponded to. Can you put that
in your franchise agreement? Is thatsomething that you can really you know,
strong arm the franchisees to make surethat that's happening. We don't put it
in the franchise agreement, but wedo put it in our ops manual that
(07:55):
that is that's a standard for us. How what's the feed from the franchise
ease do? I mean, I'massuming they like that. I think that
would be a good thing, right, most of them do, some of
them, you know, from timeto time we hear you know, why
do I need to know what everybody'ssaying? But that's very very rare.
(08:16):
They really do want to know,but it's it's typically been a good thing,
and we make it easy on themto give the feedback or to you
know, respond to the feedback byhaving an aggregator platform that they just log
into one place and right, yeah, that they don't have to log into
(08:37):
Google and Yelp separately and Facebook andall that. It does make it a
little bit easier for them to dothat. So okay, So so you're
you're managing that at least on thereview side, But like, what about
when once you get outside the reviewdo you look at social media at all?
Oh? We do? Yeah?Yeah? Do How engaged are you
(09:01):
like on say a TikTok or anInstagram when you do get feedback on there?
Yes, we do that as well. We have there's a couple of
people on my staff that that's whatthey do. They're definitely engaged with folks
that are tagging us on things.That's also part of that platform that we
have a listening device and we cansee saying what about us, and whether
(09:24):
they're tagging us or not, wecan see who's just mentioning us exactly.
Yeah, so key words because Iknow, like with our data tool that
we use for the Power Index,we ingest all the menu items from brands.
So anytime that menu item is mentioned, it's correlated to the brand that
(09:48):
kind of has that, especially ifit's a custom menu item, it's easier
to track. But does that workfor you guys? So you know,
I know you guys have it.We'll talk about a new menu launch.
Is that how you kind of tracksome of the when customers may not even
mention, you know, the brand, but actually mentioned and you know,
maybe a branded menu item. Itcan be some of our items. We
(10:11):
don't have anything that has such aspecific name that is just unique to us.
But yeah, we've got some thingsthat definitely kind of we can definitely
track. There's there's six or sevendifferent things that we're we're tracking pretty much
all the time, and we cantrack competitors as well and see yeah,
(10:33):
yeah, well I think that youknow, when you get into that personal
connection to a customer and they feellike you're actually paying attention, it's a
different experience, I think for mostcustomers, I know, many of the
ones that we're watching right now.When we look at just sentiment on the
market in the industry right now,it's probably the lowest I think I've seen
(10:58):
it maybe in ten years in termsof consumer sentiment for all brands. I'm
not picking on any one category,but casual dining, fast casual QSR.
It seems as though there's a lotof expectation. Some of this is probably
you know due to price, youknow that has been hit in whether you've
taken price or just the consumers feelthat there's more issues with price. I
(11:24):
think that's maintaining that that personal connectionis really critical. Do you guys,
do anything that you extend that opportunityso I know that you know, to
kind of capture or what do theycall it for, you know, saving
a customer you've got Let's say youhave one of these reviews that didn't turn
(11:46):
out right, something was wrong forthe customer. What is the problem?
What do you do? What's theprocess for you guys? Do you guy?
Do you throw some gift cards atthem? Do you try to listen
to their problem? Is there akind of a process that you go through?
Oh, yeah, there definitely is. Yeah. Each individual market,
they have different tools available to them. They can, you know, the
(12:09):
guest recovery method a little bit differentfranchise e to franchise e on how they
want to handle that. We dohave another program that is much more active
listening to the guest. All ofthose ways that I told you are very
passive. We have to wait forthem to give us feedback. But we
(12:33):
just implemented last year ovation, sowe have Now we're actively soliciting for that
feedback. So on every receipt thatgoes out, whether it's a digital or
physical receipt in the restaurant, weare getting feedback from the customer or at
least asking for the feedback. Andit's just a very quick two question survey
(12:56):
how is your experience today? Andif they give us anything less than a
just perfect score, then it says, well, can you tell us a
little bit more about your Yeah?Interesting, And that has been really really
critical in us from an op standpoint, being able to make those really quick,
(13:16):
on the fly operational pivoting of youknow, whatever is happening in that
moment, whether it is you know, maybe a service issue or uh,
how do you deal with how doyou deal with the angry yelpers? You
(13:37):
know, I call them the angryyelpers? You know, I get I
get to witness this because i'm youknow, I'm a study of consumers inside
the restaurants. Sometimes when I gointo my my wife and my kids hate
it. We'll go it doesn't matterwhat fast casual concept it is. I'm
I'm yeah, I'm having fun withthe food, but I'm watching every customer
at every engagement point. And I'mnow I find more and more often is
(14:03):
that customers some customers, not all, of course, but there's a lot
more occasions where the customer seems toantagonize the brand, like they're trying to
get the brand on it got you, you know, or something. Well,
I think the first thing is youhave to ask questions, and ask
questions of the guest and of thestaff that was on site at the time,
(14:28):
because chances are there's a happy mediumbetween what the story is that the
guest is telling and probably what theemployee's version is at the same time.
So you really have to walk thatfine line right right, well, kipering
what the true story is there,But exactly overall, the guests have been
(14:54):
really patient over the last four years, Like they had to be patient during
the whole cod did everything, andthen they had to be really patient with
us during the supply chain crisis,and then they had to be really patient
during the staff in crisis, andthen they had to be really patient during
all the inflation. And I thinkeverybody's patience has just run out, run
(15:16):
out, and so now the lastfive years of restaurants, Yeah, and
you know, so everybody's just they'rejust fed up and they just want their
food how they ordered it, andthey want it in the time that it
was promised. See that you wouldsee this as a positive, Julie.
(15:37):
So I could see that this islike a great opportunity, you know,
for a restaurant operator to go reallygo out and win customers. Now,
I mean if you kind of overperform. Yeah, something that we had a
panel at a college and I wasa guest speaker, and I got a
chance to work with all these peopleand it was basically on consumer science,
(16:00):
and that was the point that theytalked about so much. Was that just
that little bit of effort right now, especially it's a low bar to be
able to capture the loyalty of aguest in a way that many people don't
realize is going to stick around maybefor years, you know, depending on
just that one interaction that you've donewith them. So I could definitely see
(16:23):
it, I know. Tammy hadanother question on the food. Yeah,
Julie, you've launched some new menuitems. I think it was called the
griddle Finished Baked Falaffel. Can youtell us about the process and I'd love
to understand what griddle finished means evenyeah. Yeah, Well, if you're
familiar with the traditional falafel that's beenMediterranean staple, it's deep fried, yeah,
(16:47):
traditionally. Well, we don't havefires. Okay, so that's kind
of been a conundrum for us fora while because we really wanted to serve
that as an option for our vegetarianguest. But we do it in a
way that is true to the product, but yet and we don't have friars.
(17:11):
So it's taken us quite a whileto come up with this really great
way to do the product that nowwe start out baking it and making sure
that it's it's done enough in thecenter, but then we finish it on
our griddle and give it just enoughof that crispy edge so that it has
(17:32):
that kind of fried exterior, thatcrispiness, but yet it's still nice and
soft in the middle. So likea pancake, Yeah, it's it's kind
of it's not quite as flat asa pancake. It's more like a hockey
puck, but it's kind of kindof that shape if you yeah. Yeah,
(17:59):
But we launched it in April,right at the end of April,
and it is really really sold welland so much so that we are adding
it permanently to the menu from nowon, So when we transition to our
next lto this summer, we aretransitioning it to a permanent menu item.
(18:19):
So it's available as in a euroas a feast, which our feast are
like plates, so you can geta fulla ful with either rice or potatoes,
and then a salad either a Mediterraneanor Greek salad, and then you
can also get it as a proteinon top of a large salad. So
(18:42):
when you bring a new item tomarket, like, what are the ways
that you promote it and get itout there? Like, how do you
let your customers know? Oh,we do a full on media blitz,
definitely a pr campaign to start with. We have a very substanti email list
and uh text message database, sowe blasted out to all of our customers
(19:07):
that way, at least once aweek during the promo period, let everybody
know that we have it. There'stons of in store pop so everybody that's
walking into the restaurants during that promotime gets to see it. We do
social media campaign, We'll put somemoney behind it, some paid ads,
so it's it's a full on youknow, either eight or twelve week campaign
(19:30):
each time we do a new menuitem, and what is the best performing
for you Right now, I'm justkind of curious what email text social Which
one would you say, Hey,this is our top performer. Text we
actually see the most immediate response tooh okay. We can definitely see the
(19:52):
days that we send out a text, we see sales, you know,
correlate exactly through the days that wewe send a text out. But I
think over the long haul, ouremails are very, very effective. We
use Braisee email platform and it isit's just phenomenal, the amount of data
(20:15):
that we get back from that,the capabilities that it has, the segmentation
that we can do through that.It's really it's just amazing what all we
can do the guest feedback front fora new menu item. Are you then
using those surveys to see what guestfeedback is? Like? How do you
get actual guest feedback? Yeah,yeah, we do. Yeah, we
(20:40):
do a lot of different things withthat. We have a secret shopper program
that we use, We use surveys. I'm trying to think what there's a
couple of other ways that we're gettingfeedback from guests as well. But yeah,
we're getting lots and lots of feedbackfrom in every single market that we
(21:00):
have, So yeah, we're goingto take a quick break. We'll be
back here with Julie Wade, sostandby. Devour is making it easy for
QSR and fast casual brands to tapinto gen Z's love of food ordering without
heavy fees or technology investments. It'sall at your fingertips. Expand food ordering
(21:21):
into digital realms like video gaming,streaming and esports entertainment. Learn more at
devour dot io today. All right, we are back here again with Julie
Wade up to Zeke's and we're goingto continue our quest here around customer loyalty,
guest feedback. What is the bestway to do it? Some of
the magical in the middle of retainingguests out there, and I want to
(21:45):
get into this first question kind ofon the back half of the show here,
Julie, and that is when youlook at communities, and because I
hear local store marketing all the time, you know from most brands, but
community building is a big part ofthat, whether it's the local community or
even a community that is external sometimesit's outside the four walls. First of
(22:08):
all, is how are you guysgoing about that to build a true community
around Tazeki's as a brand, well, our brand was really founded on that
community involvement. When Keith Richards,our founder, started to Zeke's twenty six
years ago, that was one ofthe main pillars of how he founded the
(22:30):
brand. He started it being veryactive in the community here in Birmingham,
and every franchise group that we havefound since then, that was one of
the main requirements that we don't wantabsentee owners. We want somebody who is
there, who's in market, who'svery committed to the community, who knows
(22:51):
people, who has a network builtin already, whether it's through schools,
churches, businesses, you know,they have to know people in the area,
they have to be active. It'sjust it's just ingrained in who we
are and how we run our business, and we just want that as part
(23:15):
of just the taz He's DNA.It's just who we are catering is a
huge part of our business model andhaving those people that network already built in.
If you start your restaurant that wayfrom day one, you already have
a built in base of you know, catering contact, so that certainly helps.
(23:40):
Yeah, you have. Do youhave a mix on it, because
in speaking of community, a mixof how your key areas work, whether
it's catering you know, obviously,online ordering or take out. What's kind
of the mix for you guys rightnow in terms of where you where you
(24:00):
serve your food the most as faras like what are our store percentages or
what? Now are you getting intodouble digits on catering, are you still
in double digits on digital ordering?Yes? Yes, I'm both yes,
yes. Look have you guys reducedsize yet? Oh? Yes? Okay,
(24:26):
yeah, Like we've got a newrestaurant opening in Texarcana and it's taking
over an old Steak and Shake,So it's going to be a large footprint,
but that's just because that was thespace that they came to us with
it was available. But any thatwe're designing or building ground up, those
are going to be a much smallerdining room, not sacrifice back of house
(24:48):
space that is still going to belarge because we need the space. And
we're even looking at, you know, how do we service the customer of
the future with increased catering capacity,increased third party delivery capacity, increased in
ordering capacity. How do we howdo we build all of those modes into
(25:14):
the cook line but still reduce thatthe of the dining room in dining which
are running capacity, like our numbersof in store in restaurant dining, they're
continuing to grow still, you know, getting back to those pre twenty twenty
(25:36):
levels. It is coming back still, but I don't think you're ever going
to see it back to how Iwas going to say, Do you think
it'll ever return to its original loreyou know of in in restaurant dining,
Yeah, probably not. I thinkour lunchtime business probably will. But I
think the dinner hour we're we're reallya we're at takeout dinner. Well,
(26:02):
that changes the whole marketing aspect,you know, because you know, an
in store occasion completely different when you'redealing with a mobile occasion, a catering
occasion, a takeout whatever it mightbe, office launch kind of scenario.
So I can see that going there. On that note, then, Paul,
for you, Julie, what aresome digital marketing aspects that you are
(26:25):
tapping into. What are the strategiesthat are most effective for Jazekis? Thank
you? Oh yeah, social advertising, Like, what's really works well for
you guys? Yeah, we do. We do a lot of display ads
right now. We've tapped into acouple of different display ad channels and we've
(26:45):
just started something pretty new for usand we're testing it in a few corporate
markets to see how it works doingsome hyper local display ads really on some
natural trigger So we're testing the slowdown there. Okay, natural triggers?
(27:06):
What what is that? So it'sit's all based on what happens in the
the Let me think about how todescribe this. So things that are happening
in local markets. So if thereis a weather event in a market,
(27:26):
Okay, we we have there.You guys are reacting with whatever is happening
in the local market being you popout a So do do the franchisees have
full capacity to do that? Well, they don't have to do it.
It's all it's all AI driven.Oh okay, nobody has to be pull
(27:48):
Okay, they don't have to pulla trigger. Yeah. Yeah, it's
all already pre programmed, pre stacked. The creative is all in there.
So when a certain event happens,whether it's a weather event or a community
event, with the end of schoolright now, you know, because today
is the last day of school forour kids, and you know, there's
(28:11):
a celebration, you know, Ithink you know, so we are trying
to like plan some some things todo this weekend as you know, kind
of that celebratory. That would bea great opportunity right there, is Hey,
come celebrate you know, the firstday of your kids of summer,
you know, on a Saturday lunchor Saturday brunch or whatever it might be.
That would be a good one.If if AI could figure out those
(28:33):
kind of components key community milestones inthe community, that would be pretty cool,
or even if you could populate themright Like, I'm close to these
schools. What if they have announcementsthat feeds. Are you doing that through
braize? Is like, because don'tthey have an AI component that does that,
So that that triggering is that throughbreeze. It's not through braives.
(28:56):
This is actually through evocalized Okay,we know those guys justin over there at
the marketing guy. Yeah, he'sa friend. So a lot of tech.
I mean, how many tech productsare you guys using right now?
Not enough? I like that answer. I like that more tech you are
(29:17):
more restaurant companies. I mean Icould spend one hundred percent of my budget
on tech platforms and still not haveeverything really that I could I could use.
But I mean it's on your wishlist right now. I'm just kind
of curious, Oh what's on mywish list? We really need a better
(29:41):
data visualization okay, platform we don'tlike of the guests or of the data
on your retail sales b I RCDP. We have a CDP, but
I need a b I to interpretthe CDP. Okay, is it?
Who's I remember? You guys hada great stack. You're a pretty forward
thinking brand from Yeah, well weuse Square for our pos in store,
(30:08):
so we've got my loyalty is actuallythrough Square. Okay. We used to
do our email through Square and weoutgrew that, and so that's when we
flipped over to Braise about a yearago. Almost. Are you guys using
any funnel system? Is that somethingthat Braise does right now? Like you
(30:30):
know funnel how an email user reactsto certain offers to where it branches off
into another you know scenario. Yes, yes, you can build journeys through
Braise through the whole program. SoI get email one I didn't respond to
that. Instead of sending me thesame one, it sends me one that
I might respond to differently. Yes, tracks that habit starts building on that,
(30:55):
and it can also it will triggerbased on do you respond to emails
or do you respond to text ordo you respond to notification, So it
integrates all of the different tags,not just email. Well, Julie,
you're going to have to think aboutthis then, because I'm telling you blockchain
is going to be your nirvana becausethe data and the openness of blockchain.
(31:21):
At some point we're going to seea blockchain tool. You know, Devour
does it now with online ordering andgetting into that. But I think we're
going to see a lot more toolscoming in from the blockchain side. It's
very early right now because there's nota lot of restaurants that have started to
deploy on it. But I knowJeff Alexander is probably the poster child right
now with what he's doing. ButI think there's going to be a thousands
(31:45):
of Jeff's within the next three orfour years. That's how much we're going
to see innovation coming this way.For sure. Well, I think every
vendor at the tech shows noow isdot Ai. You know, I saw
that. But I was talking toRob Grimes, he and I do another
tech show, and he was tellingme that he came back from the NRA
(32:07):
show and he thought that he wouldsee nothing but Ai everywhere. And he
said that in the tech pavilion thatthere was actually very little. Yeah,
the tech pavilions. It was alittle interesting this year there. It didn't
seem like there was a lot morelegacy vendors. There wasn't a lot of
new up and comers. And maybeit's cost prohibitive, but it was.
(32:30):
I thought it was an interesting sortof mix this year. Well, I
wonder tech companies are usually pretty savvyon how to go to market, and
they may be looking at trade showsas kind of like, hey, that's
that's that's old school. We needwe need something that is you know,
where are the emerging brands And maybethey're not even at events, maybe they're
(32:50):
at something else. Because I've seena lot more tech companies do a lot
more marketing integrations, you know now, I mean you look at what theator's
done, and the guys are overyou know, who was it that started
something that was I thought was reallycool toasted one. They continue to kind
of do that, but I thinkthere's some new ways in there. Speaking
(33:12):
of that, in terms of roadmaps, Julie Textac, we're kind of talking
a little bit about what you're buildingand what you'd love to have. If
you look out a year from nowand you think about marketing innovations, they
could be technology driven or guest experienceenhancements. What's on the roadmap for you
guys. Our loyalty program is somethingthat we've wanted to retool right now.
(33:39):
We have what I call a rewardprogram, not a loyalty program through our
app. I really think our emailand upgrading it through Braize is really more
of a loyalty program, even thoughit's not tied to you know, come
in and spend this much, getthis. That is the reward program that
(34:01):
we have through our app, andyou can track your points and all that.
But we need to retool that sideof it so I could do that
today through Square. Yeah, they'vereally upped their game and the amount of
a lot better. I've seen manyof their products now. I talked to
(34:22):
one of their product managers about twomonths ago on them. They came in
as a sponsor there, you know, some of our podcasts and I just
wanted to know, you know,how did the products sell and you know,
what are the things. They hada lot of new features that I
was not aware that was available there. So yeah, and they're competing very
(34:43):
heavily with toasts, so they've gotto up right. Yeah. Yeah,
they They've got what we kind ofcall internally Square two point zero Square for
restaurants, their enterprise solution, whichwe're transitioning most of our stores to over
the next months. We've got aboutprobably half of our corporate stores have already
(35:04):
transitioned to that. So in thatmove, I think they've really you know,
try to up their system and geta lot of more competitive features.
All right, So does Square havesome coupon ing because you could just run
that almost like a mail merge throughBraize and use them as your tree and
(35:29):
lose the points and make it morejust behavioral based. Yeah. Yeah,
they do surprise and delight. Yeah, yeah, we can definitely do some
of those things. So we're we'reworking on how to integrate some of the
upgrades in Square and then integrate someof that into our ui UX in the
(35:52):
app. And that's what's been thehold up for me. We've just done
in fact, this week we justreleased some new grades to our app,
some new features. We haven't hadGoogle pay, Apple pay before now,
so we've just caught up with everybodyon that front. We've done some other
things like saved address and continuous scrollon is you're app then a custom app?
(36:16):
Or are you using like a Koalaor a big colony from plane air
or one of those solutions that sitson top. Neither our app developer is
a sister company. Our parent companyis Fresh Hospitality, a company developed the
(36:37):
apps. Because we're the largest brandunderneath the Fresh Hospitality umbrella has has some
advantages there. So we work veryclosely with the developers at Fresh Technology to
be able to you know, dosome some new things on the app and
(37:00):
have some dedicated development work done.We've seen a lot more brands that are
doing in house tech. I'm findingI'm finding a lot more of that,
you know, all the way upfrom loyalty platforms, you know, to
where they want to build something.I mean, you know, if you
look at Wingstop, they kind ofwhen they took off on their own.
(37:20):
We're seeing a handful of brands thathave that capacity, but also a lot
of homegrown brands that are starting tobuild on some of these you know,
off the shelf platforms that they kindof cobble stuff together that's a little bit
more customized to them specifically. Soit's all right, so the smaller exactly.
Yeah, yeah, if you can. Yeah, Julia's been great having
(37:42):
you on the show. I alwayslove picking your brain and kind of getting
in and understanding more about how Tazeke'sis doing things. So good luck on
everything you guys are doing over there. And thanks so much for stopping in
the podcast today. We appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me.
Yeah, all right, it isalways so fun. I love uh,
I love it when she comes onthe show. I got to spend some
(38:04):
time with her at Meg and NRAand we had a blast. Yeah.
I think the key here right nowwith these brands is they start to select
these technology products because you know,Tam, you've been in the tech side
a long time. I go backwith Noah, you know when Glass was
just getting going. I just sawa post by him by the way yesterday
(38:28):
and he put up twenty years agoday one. Did you see the post?
I did, And it was likeit looked like it was from his
apartment, but he said it wasthe office. I think then, yeah,
yeah, And I was like,wow that if I could go back,
I have, I probably should putup that for our media business,
you know, because when we startedFastcasual dot com. I still have photos
(38:50):
of that original studio that we have. Paul, You've got an incredible history.
I think it would be worth puttingsome of those pictures and moments of
your sort of past career to sortof show how you gone here. It
would be great on your website.We just put up the full documentary of
Fast Casual Nation oh on YouTube,okay, And there was a couple of
(39:14):
it got picked up by who wasit? A business insider picked it up,
and it was so funny because youknow, some random reporter was,
you know, writing on the FastCasual growth and they picked up the documentary
from YouTube as if it was justlaunched. We launched the documentary in twenty
(39:37):
fifteen. Just take the win,Just take the win. And so I
was like, okay, well,all right, whatever, but I'm glad.
Well, I mean, I thinkthe video kind of stood the test
of time. Was the thing thatwas good, but it had you know
that that documentary has all of theall of the stars of the industry in
it ron Shake you know, ModernMarket, the guys over Smash Burger,
(40:00):
Randy Grudy from Shake Check. Imean, it's got all the all the
great people, be interesting to people. Look at where they all are all
now, and do like an updateon that and see who else has joined
the party, because are they now? Yeah, that segment has grown so
much. Yeah, where are theynow? Hey, Tammy, it's always
fun chatting it. Sorry to seeyou go, but at the same time,
(40:22):
happy to see you go because you'vegot something big coming up for you.
So good luck and everything you're doing. And we'll probably have you back
in as a guest one day hereon the show. I'd love to be
a guest. If you ever needsomebody to fill in, just give me
a buzz. We'll do all right. As you guys, of course know,
the best thing to do here onRock My Restaurant is subscribe. You
(40:45):
can do that over at Saber dotFm on our website or if you're here
on YouTube and you're watching this showright now, I asked you you just
take a little bit of time hitthe like and also the subscribe. That
will be the first journey for youto kind of follow this show in more
around technology, branding, and marketingright here on Rock mya restaurant. We'll
(41:06):
catch you next time.
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