Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: AI is everywhere. Even just over the last six months. It feels like we're surrounded by it, we're seeing, reading it, we're playing around with it. I certainly have made it a more concerted effort to dig in. We even covered this on episode number 455. Today we're going even deeper. I've got two guests who want to take a deeper dive into AI and specifically how independent restaurant owners and operators can begin playing around and using this to make a better, more efficient, more profitable restaurant. All of that on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown. This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. This is the Restaurant Strategy Podcast. In addition to this show, you can find me on YouTube, you can find me on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok. I also run a coaching program. It's called the P3 Mastermind. I work with hundreds of restaurant owners from all over the world to help them increase the profitability of their restaurants. There has never been a harder time to run a profitable business in this industry and that's why we are working with owners and operators and to help them be more successful, more profitable, to make more money, and to spend more time doing the things they love. If you want to have that conversation, if this is something you struggle with, sign up for a free call. 30 minutes, totally free with me or someone from my team. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule it's as simple as that. Find a time that works for you. Let's get to know each other again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, you'll find the link in the show notes.
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All right, so my guests and yes, plural, I've got two guests on the show today from Ink Tank. I got Beck, who is the CEO of Ink Tank, and I've got Chad Horn, COO of Ink Tank. I'm gonna let these guys introduce themselves individually, tell them a little bit about what Ink Tank is, what they do and then we are going to get into a really cool, deep conversation about AI not the crazy weird stuff you can do with it, but we're going to talk about the magic that is trapped on your phone, in your computer, simple things you can do and how to use it better. These guys are thinking really deeply about it, something that's top of mind for me this year and so I'm trying to navigate and seek out more people, more experts who can have this conversation. Beck, kick us off. Who are you? What does Ink Tank do?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, hi Chip1 thanks for having us on the show.
Ink Tank. Well, you know, we're go to market agency that helps tech companies launch into the hospitality space. If you're an emerging startup mid midw, midway in the journey or you're an enterprise, if you're trying to get visible, be understood, be heard, have your product in the right hand so people can start using it and give you feedback. We're here to facilitate that from a side of revenue, operations, partnerships, recruiting services and also social media management as well.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: As love it, Chad, introductions from you and what else do you want to add to this?
[00:04:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I, you know what he said about intake and but I think I'll call out something unique about what we do as part of a go to market agency is partnership development. Right. So your listenership would want all the technology they use to integrate Seamlessly with everything else that they use. And partnerships are a key way that happens. And this industry in particular needs a lot of help navigating that. And so that is something that we do. And you know that one of the realms I oversee, as well as company operations, I love it.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: Beck, give me a little bit of a background so that people understand why they should listen to anything you have to say. You've been kicking around this industry for a while, so talk to me about how you came up and how you came to do what you do now.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Yeah, boy.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: So military veteran, went to culinary school, did the whole cordon bleu thing. Had a catering company for a long time, served a lot of Hollywood's elite, doing stuff for Creative Arts Association.
Went into software about 16, 17 years ago. Personally, I'm a geek. I like to mess with technology. I'm a food person, and I just like the hospitality industry. Grew up in restaurants.
And so for the last 16 years prior to to founding Ink Tank, I've been working with some of the largest restaurant companies and on the planet, doing ERP or inventory management, labor system, labor systems and reporting systems for those organizations, helping them scale, helping them understand their profitability, helping them understand all those problems affects them on a daily basis that keep them from making money.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: I love it. Chad, same thing, same question.
Where did you come from? How did you get to do what you do now?
[00:06:22] Speaker C: So I'm in this industry by accident. I was actually in school and really interested in the data and analytics. It just so happened that the. The local company that was the hotshot in that category that I went to apply for was also a restaurant tech company. I didn't even think of them as that. I thought I thought of them as a data analytics company. But that's where I cut my teeth in the industry. Learning the restaurant world, the restaurant technology ecosystem, and started gaining some experience in the realm of partnership development in our industry. And I just loved it. I loved the puzzle of mixing and matching and figuring out where companies should align with each other to best health operators.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Love it. Beck, as you're looking across the entire industry and obviously the industry's relationship with technology has changed a lot over 10 years. Yeah, I can remember back when I was running restaurants 10 years ago, and the technology, we couldn't even call it a tech stack back then, but the tech stack that we had looked very different than now.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: A Frankenstein.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, now it's a Frankenstein too.
Back then, it was whatever you call a little version of that. I mean, 10 years ago it was like Micros with like Aveiro plugged into it. Like that was our thing. So this had our, you know, our sales data and then Avero plugged in and told us like what we should think about that. But you know, those things didn't also talk with our reservation table management software and they didn't connect to. There wasn't a true CRM. So that whatever tool we were using to communicate with people, which was pretty.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Rare, but we're CDP for that matter.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: For that matter. So talk to me about where we're at currently right now. Year 2025, it is July when we're recording this.
Where, where is the industry? Where are we? Where do you think we'll be a year from now?
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Well, right now it's a little bit nuts. So at the Resident Leadership Con conference just recently this year, Chad and I sat down with Craig Majewski from Crave Worthy Brands and we were talking about this very subject and it came out that, you know, Greg was saying in a restaurant, a modern restaurant, today they're running between 20 and 25 pieces of software concurrently to run the business. Right. So to your point, 10 years ago we're talking three, maybe four, maybe, maybe six different things that were being subscribed. And so we have a lot of different endpoints that cover almost everything you can imagine from your ordering to your reservations to your reporting to your speed of service to your drive through speed of service, to your in house fee of service, to computer vision, IoT. And it goes on and on. Right.
I think in the next 10 year, five years, we will see that shrinking down from all these various endpoints into a more consolidated system. I would say that the thing we're talking about today is going to be very responsible for that, which is AI and the ability to rapidly spin up various parts of your business. That or if I'm a software company, spin up platform services.
People are suffering from a thing called SAS fatigue.
AP, a subscription every month. Let's say it's PC and $1600. Multiply that times 100 or sorry, the 20 pieces of software they're running in the restaurant. Where are you getting roi? If you're spending that much right now on the software, how much are you actually getting back? And so I think the future is consolidation either by acquisition or consolidation by rapid development onto platforms that are, are budding and now are going to grow fruit around them into this one. These things that they can do to support, hey, why would I stand outside my four walls if I can keep you Here.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. Talk to me, Chad. Anything you'd add to that? Do you see any different vision for the future?
[00:10:00] Speaker C: I completely agree on consolidation.
What Beck said around rapid development, I think is still underappreciated. I talked to companies that, you know, one or two guys, right, kind of the mindset of people like, oh, a couple guys in a basement. What those people can do today in the speed at which they can do it is crazy. And I see that being applied to our industry.
And so if I think, you know, forward a few years, this is going to change the game. There will be no more such thing as an expensive software solution because you can develop anything from scratch and have it be on par or better in a fairly short period of time for a fraction of the cost, which not only is the initial build time, but the maintenance of said software as well.
So I think it's going to be a lot of change and painful for the existing players that have built large businesses as they try to navigate keeping that business. But it's going to be great for operators because that's going to be more power in their hands, delivered more efficiently and more cost effectively.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: So, guys, here's how I think about technology. And I've spent a lot of time over the last, I'll say, seven years talking about this, really, over the last four years talking a lot about this. But I always tell people, because I deal with a lot of independent operators, so that's primarily this audience. There are people with single units, maybe a couple of units, maybe a couple different concepts, three concepts, two locations of each one. Maybe they've got as many as 8 to 10.
There may be some listeners who fit outside that box, but I'm guessing not many.
And I get it from a lot of people, hear it from a lot of people. They say, I just. There's so much. There's so much. And I said, okay, just. Just come on back. Let's pretend you've got nothing. Let's pretend you've signed no contracts, right? P.S. you can get out of anything, right? There may be terms that you may have to wait for your contract lapse, but you can get out anything. Here's what you need, right? And I say, let, let's. What's the first thing you need? And they look at me and they said, you need a way to capture revenue, right? You sell things, you need a way to capture. If you're going to trade food for money, you need a way to capture money, let's say. So that's a POS system. You Need a way to capture revenue. Let's say we start there, right? And we think about managing our expenses. I think our two biggest expenses are our cost of goods and our labor. I think you need a really good piece of software that does each or both of those things. You can find one that does everything great, but otherwise you need one where you can really manage your labor on a day to day, minute to minute basis. And I think you need something to manage your ordering, your inventory, your pars, your real time plate costs. Right.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: So let's forecast to tie those two together.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Sure. So that's the, that's, that's the next thing, right. So number one, we need a way to capture sales. Number two, we need a way to manage those things. The next piece that comes in, as you said, forecasting. Forecasting might as well be tattooed across my head right under the word profit. So we, at some point we have to say, well, how much money do I think I'm going to make next month? Because that will dictate how much I schedule, how much I order. So we need a really good tool that does that. Time Forge is a sponsor on this show, Anthony. I think when they acquired lineup AI, I think they made that software so, so powerful, better than anything else I've seen because of its ability to forecast. And I spend a lot of time talking about forecasting. So.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Okay, so the people at Time Forge are brilliant.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: Sorry, they, they are. I mean I've just, as I've gotten to know Anthony over the last two years, it's been incredible. And I think they do what I feel really strongly about, forecasting and our ability to predict the future and our ability.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: I got to bring up one trivia question here, please.
Did you know that there's main, I won't say their names, there's mainstream labor companies that actually go to Time Forge for their labor rules.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: It's wild.
What they have built over there is incredible. And then I always say to my people, right? So now we're walking, as we continue walking down this technology path and I say, how do you make most of your money? Are you quick serve? Do you make more of your money from somebody comes in, orders and leaves or they order online and leave? Well then you really need a, an awesome, powerful, lights out online ordering platform that's not just junkie, that's not just, you know, it came in the box with all the other stuff you need. Top, you know, top in class. And when you go to websites that do that really well, okay. And then the other side is that or are you another restaurant that makes most of your money? When people make a reservation and come in and sit down, either way, then you need one or both of those pieces of software, right? And all of these, everything we've said so far, I can prove roi, right? The number of people that get an inventory management software and say, this thing cost me 300 bucks. I can see it saved me $3,000 because I know what I spent last month, the month before, the month before. And I can, I mean I can see the savings. Would you spend 300 to save 3,000?
Quick math tells me that's 10 to 1 ROI. That's a no brainer, right? Same thing you do with your labor, all of these things.
You know, my wife has been in SaaS sales for forever, it seems like, and she said, and all the time they say, is it a need to have or a nice to have?
So everything we've talked about are need to haves. And then you start getting the things that are nice to haves. Unless you can show me, prove to me that it is a need to have. So all of that, that's my diatribe because I think I'm gonna, the people listening to this will recognize that rant and that's how I feel. I'm gonna kick that to you guys. Chad, have I said, have I missed anything in that conversation? In how you think about bringing something to market and how you think about talking to consumers about the need to have versus the nights to haves?
[00:15:24] Speaker C: No.
You know, on a case by case basis there might be another thing or two. However, what you've, what you've captured is already in that set. These necessary things, and I would agree with you, they're necessary. It's still a lot. And I bet you, you, you find a lot of your, your audience doesn't even have all of those dialed in. So they're surviving, right? Or they may even be thriving because they do other things really, really well.
But the benefit of getting lease that set dialed in is substantial.
We look at, you got to pick the technology and do a lot of things based on the reality of who you are, what's your business, who are your people, what are their capacity and capability around these things? I think if you got an amazing team from a technology perspective, you can do a lot more, but you can only work with what you've got and you can make changes to evolve. I think one of the cool things about AI is that it's going to make all of what you just said easier. You will not need people to use all of those tools in the same way that you've had to in the past.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: I completely agree. It's a perfect segue into what we're going to talk about today. And so we've talked about Time Forge a couple times. There are forecasting tools out there. And then by acquiring. So anybody who doesn't know Lina, Time Forge acquired Lineup AI, which is this incredibly powerful piece of software that now lies under the hood of the entire end, you know, powering the engine that it has there.
And this idea of predictive analysis, of saying, you know, well, based on weather and TV schedules and sporting events and on and on and on, like transit strikes, like all of the things that are under there, which we say, what, what most operators do. Well, what do they make last year? Well, last year there wasn't a Gold cup going on. There wasn't the World Club World Cup. There wasn't, you know, any number of events going on that are going. So if you serve dinner, if you have a sports bar, that's going to impact you positively. If you don't have a sports bar, it's going to impact you negatively. There were things going on last year. We had presidential debates and primaries. That was one thing that we don't have this year. And so if you're not, because you're only human, if you're not taking into all of those things into account, which great AI can just scour the entire Internet and say, well, here's all the things you didn't think to think about.
And this is how I think it's going to impact it. Talk to me about how companies are utilizing AI in smart ways. And then I want to use this to then talk about how operators, I think at a unit level, day to day, can be using AI. Beck, how do you. How are people, how is AI changing what your company is doing and how you guys.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, there's a lot of directions you can go.
We build GPT for ourselves. So so basically, or what we use is chat GPT. We share it as a team version of it. So we can build kind of hive minds that do different things for our business. So we have a wordsmith that helps in various ways marketing messages and it invokes different personalities. You need IT marketing message, that pinpoint message, a sales pitch, all that stuff makes nice frameworks. Then we do we back cleanup. We're also using a lot for creative utility. In fact, this weekend I went down a whole rabbit hole of taking our guy Inky and bring him in the real world. So I used AI to make a 2D rendering, and then I use that same AI to do a 3D rendering. And then I printed this out.
I literally went in six hours with my mascot, this face, turned him into a little guy, and he came out of the machine six hours later.
Right. I did a skeleton version of him, too.
But this is the fun stuff. You can do like this. You know how much this cost me?
20 cents to prototype.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Right. AI. I do my 2D picture.
[00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: I tell that to make it a 3D picture. I said, make it into an STL file. I send it my printer downstairs, and it poops out the other side six hours later.
That's amazing.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it is amazing. I love it.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Like, wild, wild.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: We're just at the forefront. That's funny. Last year, I did a bunch of events. I was at the Florida show, I was in Vegas at bre. I was at a bunch of different shows. And one of the questions I got when I was on stage almost across the board and said, you know, how should I be using AI? And my answer across the board was, unless you've got the basics done that we're talking about, you don't have to worry about AI. And even just six months ago, that felt right, and now that feels less right.
Right. The thing was, they wanted. It felt like everybody wanted to skip ahead to the easy button, to the silver bullet, without focusing on fundamentals. And I think fundamentals are crucial that I built the business. My coaching business exists to help people with the fundamentals.
But now, even just in six months, now we're seeing AI help with those fundamentals. So, Beck, this was something you guys, you're really passionate about. I'm going to let you kick off the conversation.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Oh, I'm excited to show you.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: What are some. The point of this was, number one, I wanted people to get to know you guys. Number two, I wanted to hear your perspective as you're hearing, you know, as you're watching the market sort of change when it has to do with tech stack and technology and partners in SaaS and all that. Really wanted to talk about AI, and I want to spend the rest of the time talking about AI. So talk to me about AI. How should an independent restaurant owner be utilizing AI that may be in ways that they haven't thought of yet.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I'm going to. I'm going to pop. I'm so excited about this. So most people, when they start using, let's just say, chatgpt, because that's what we all found out about, right? And so they go on their, their phone, they type write me a letter to my employee for being late and it's out something and then write me a really lame ass article for LinkedIn that doesn't sound like me at all and has a lot of em dashes and says in a world of. And in conclusion, perfect, right?
And, but that's not the real utility. So what's, what does all, what does everybody have in common that runs a restaurant or runs a business or as a leader, they don't have enough time.
They don't have enough time for anything. And so I think one of the greatest utilities this thing has is actually as a personal assistant. Not one that you type to, you talk to it and you spend time with it. So I'll give you an example real quick.
I'm gonna just go out on the weeds here. Hey, Chad, GPT, Good morning. I'm live here with Chip Close. I'm on a podcast and we're talking about AI. What are some great ways I could use you if I was a business leader?
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Good morning.
[00:21:59] Speaker C: Sounds like an exciting conversation.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: If you're a business leader diving into.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: The world of AI, you can.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: All right, hold on. You're talking too much. I'm busy. I can't do that. You know, I'm a single unit restaurant operator. I'm opening up a new location in Dallas, Texas. I've got about $150,000 to invest. What's a good concept for me to put money in on?
[00:22:16] Speaker A: Got it. If you're opening up a new location.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: In Dallas and you've got that investment ready, think about a concept that sets you apart.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Maybe a fast casual spot with a unique twist.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Something.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Stop.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: We're good. So you can see how fast I talk to it. I didn't have to mince words. I didn't to say anything special. I just could go and I could tell it to shut up when it. When I already had another idea. And I'm adhd. I like to cut people off.
But you can iterate ideas so fast. And you go now send that to me a spreadsheet now give me a PDF now. Now mail that to my partners.
This is what I do in the morning when I'm in the shower. Usually I'm sitting there thinking about whom I'm pissed off that day. I'm not doing anymore. I'm just in the shower talking about the work and stuff I want to bang out. And by the time I sit at my desk, it's waiting for me on a list. Yeah. When I'm walking the dog.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: So talk to me about case studies. How have you. I mean, I love it. It's great. This is, this echoes a lot of the ways that I'm starting to use it in the last, I'll say three or four months.
Case studies, people that you know, people you've worked with, operators that you've seen. Give me some examples of how they've, of how they've used it and implemented some of that stuff.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Well, gosh, I know that I don't have a pure case. This is still new for us. But I'm working with now Sam over at Big Chicken, he wants to train his, his team on how to use this as an agile method to ideate. I mean, like I said, this is all things I've discovered in the last couple of months.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yep. I love it. Chad, what would you add to this?
[00:23:33] Speaker C: Oh, it's so I don't have a good lens. Like we're talking about how to use the AI tools internally.
Not like from like the restaurant tech stack perspective, but like how are you using AI to enhance the way you go and get information. Right. Not using search per se, but now getting an AI, you know, enhanced search result to better focus and speed up your, your inquiry. I don't have a good way, a sense in how operators are using those tools. I look, I have better sense. Like how are they using AI technology in the restaurant? Like reservations you mentioned, like, yes, we know that slang is driving massive ROIs for restaurants doing AI voice, AI reservation, for example. But I think it's really interesting how can a team use all of this internally? Like we are, right. And I like to look at the extreme examples like beck using the AI 3D model. Like that, like that stuff is great because it inspires people to lean in. It's like, darn it, I should, I should check out AI and you just, you. It's a, it's a rising tide, lifting all boats kind of thing. It just elevates people's interest and engagement. And then there's like, okay, if I'm not good at this stuff, what am I going to use? Where, where is like the low hanging fruit?
And I think the just, just practicing talking to AI and you know, getting it to know you is a big one. Using it to answer questions like it should be a habit. Now can AI answer this question? Like how can AI at least point me in the right direction?
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Or I want to do, I want to do my human thinking. I'm going to have AI refine my work and just see if I missed anything.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Or is this email a scam?
It works too. It really does.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: You know, it's really, really, you know, it's really funny. So this came up in one of my mastermind sessions a couple of weeks ago and there was two use cases. There's, there's two things that I'll share here because it's, I think, pertinent to this conversation. Number one, I was reminded. So I always love to share other books, podcast things that I think people should be listening to.
For everybody listening here, if you're not listening to Cody Sanchez, right? Cody Sanchez is a very smart individual and she specifically works with service based businesses, brick and mortars. She is sort of leading this charge on millennials buying booming business boomer businesses.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: Right?
[00:25:48] Speaker A: And that's what restaurants are.
Restaurants were invented. You know, the, all the restaurants that are available now are like 50, 60 years old. And these people all want to get out of there.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: She's, I think that's what Monty Silva's basing his new business.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: It's, it's, she's so smart. One of the things that she says on her show, one of her things is she says there's the three by three rule that her organization goes by. So if anybody here has never heard the three by three rule says if something you do has three steps at or more and you do it at least three times a month, that's something that needs an sop, right? That, that's something that you don't have to do. If it's multiple steps and it happens multiple times in a month, then you need to write down how to do those things, when to do those things, so you can teach it, right? So because if it's repeatable, it's replicable. If it's replicable, it becomes scalable. So her whole idea is how do you build a business and then put it on autopilot so you don't have to do it? And then when you figure out how to make it work, how can we have more and more and more of them? That is a laundromat. That is a vending machine business. That is a flower shop. That is what Taco Bell figured out. That is what Olive Garden figured out. They were like, well, if we just do this, bada bing, bada boom, it works. And now we just look for other locations that fit the criteria. This is, you brought up Greg from Craveworthy. This is what they're doing. They figure out something that works that can be replicated, something you can teach 18 year olds to do.
Working a register, working a line, and you just show them how to do it over and over and over again. Again, Sam and the team at Big Chicken, it's the same thing. So the three by three rule, which is what Cody Sanchez swears by, if it's three or more steps and happens three or more times in a month, it needs an sop. Now we bring it back to something that my. One of my members had said. He's like, right now I've got all of that. He's got five different concepts down in Dallas. And. And he said, now I've got my entire team going by that three by three rule and working with chat GPT. They have two hours of their schedule. So all the managers have two hours of their schedule. They're not on the floor, they're not on the line, they are in an office. Or they can do this at home where they are just automating it, figure out what it is you do. And so sometimes he said, I got sous chefs walking around, holding the phone, speaking into it and basically saying, so this is how I do inventory. I do inventory every Monday, Thursday and Sunday, whatever, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday, I start with this. I go through here. I want to count here. I'm looking for. Just literally narrate what you do and at the end say, can you build me an SOP so that I could teach my replacement to do exactly what I do and as well as I can do, and it's going to spit it all. And so they just got people walking around the restaurant saying, this is how I do. This is how I open up the restaurant in the morning. This is how I check on. This is how the reservationist checks in in the morning, the office manager, the whatever he's got. I've got everybody building SOPs. Anything that fits that three by three rule. And he's like. And in one month, he's like, literally, he's got them doing it now we're recording this in July. Over the month of July, they were doing this. He's like, by August 1st, I'm going to have SOPs for every single inch of my thing. The next thing he's going to do is he's, we already figured out how to do it. We feed it into ChatGPT and say, Build me a linkable table of contents so that I can just say, how do I do this? Rather than searching, what page is that on? Where. Where do I find that in this massive binder. He's like we're going to have basically a catalog, an online library of SOPs that are searchable by voice. Like that right there is incredible. So somebody new comes in and says, where do I find the blum plum?
I don't, don't ask me, ask somebody else because I'm too busy doing my stuff and I can't go show you where dry storage is. So just ask the thing. Oh, dry storage is down the hall.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: And this thing is wired your Google Drive with all this stuff in it.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Exactly. And then basically it's in a sortable, findable and you don't have to figure out, you just talk to it. Just say, hey, how do I, how do I print out the reservation sheet for the night? Okay, great. What you're going to want to do is at 3 o', clock, print this out. You're going to get this approved by this person and this person. You want to highlight the VIPs. Make sure to annotate any special occasions. You're going to run that by the chef and the pastry chef. Once you do that, you're going to do this blah blah, blah at the meeting. This is how you structure when you announce what the reservation book looks like to the people. Now you're ready for the night. Now I can teach anybody. Some 22 year old person coming in off the street, never worked in, let's say a fine dining restaurant, they know how to run the books.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: Same thing with menu creation. Oh, sorry Chad, go ahead.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: I was just going to call out that chip. You, you highlighted a trend that everyone needs to pay attention to, is that the most impactful restaurant technology will increasingly not be specific to restaurants. It'll just be the tools of the trade with AI etc that let you run a business better.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: And these things will get to know you. Right? So if you, if you sell a certain menu, you can feed it that menu. If you have sales for that menu, you can feed it those sales and then you can say, help me engineer my next menu and here are my current food costs and here's what current commodity prices are. Give me one that's going to give me the best bang for my buck on the kind of food that I serve.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. This is something we don't talk about enough. I spend a lot of time talking about this, about the menu matrix, the profitability and popularity of items talked about. You know, my old fashioned tech stack when I was running restaurants 10 years ago was, you know, the POS system, microsor aloha or something, you know, from back Then and then Avero and Aveiro sort of told me what was selling or what was not selling or what was. But they didn't tell me based on my real time play cost. They didn't tell me based on hey this server is really good at selling this thing or this person's really good like now. And so I remember using some of this saying this person's basically really good with large parties. I'm going to put them on large parties because I know they can sell at scale. Right. So I knew that Elaine was good with this kind of guest or was good with these kind of events. But now you can absolutely know. And again you can feed it your menu and say how might I optimize this? How would, what should I do to make this item and this item sell more? What should I get rid of that's dragging down my profitability? It's huge.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Well, how about environmental variables? So you know, we work with the J up in Canada and they were so worried about the tariffs, right? Rightfully so.
You can literally say what is going to be impacted on my menu by the tariffs that are coming right now and what should I, you know, you can redirect to make sure you're not impacted if that's the case, if there's something coming on a global level.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Yep, I totally agree. I think the key to it and I want to be really respectful of your guys time and we'll sort of bring this thing to a close. The biggest thing was find an AI that you can use and just start talking to it, getting to know it. It's meant to be conversational, it's called a chatbot.
You are meant to talk to it like you were, you were back in college in the 90s using you know, Instant messenger and going back and forth. You were meant to sort of spitball ideas and all of that. You were meant to use it for as a really good assistant or partner to spitball ideas and to think outside the box and all of that.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: One last thought on it is one thing I noticed with some people is that when you, when you want to get trained on something there might be embarrassment that I just don't know these facts yet and therefore I don't ask.
This is something you could talk to about anything and not sound stupid and learn what you need to learn so you can have the bigger conversations.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Yep. I think it's really great. I think finding one that you like, start using it, asking it to do. So we brought up the, you know, I brought up the SOP conversation Because it's something that everybody needs. I spent a lot of time talking about how to get restaurant owners out of the operation. So the way you do that is by teaching people to do all of the things that you already do. There's very little that you do that cannot be done by somebody else. So just figure out an easy way to do that. Even if you did that, it was a month long exercise and you got your entire team into it, I promise you, you'll be pretty far down the road. You'll beat out most of your competitors. You guys brought up ChatGPT.
I'm curious to know if you've played around with any others and are there others that you like better or as much as ChatGPT?
[00:33:47] Speaker C: We like ChatGPT the most because of its, frankly, its interface and its ability to collaborate with it as a team.
But from a quality of the models, I've gotten better output on a case by case basis. With Gemini, for example.
Yeah, I don't believe that ChatGPT's models are the best. It's just the overall experience is more useful for us.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Yep. Have you guys played around with Claude? Yes. Do you like that one? Not like that one.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: I like his writing ability. I think each one has its own strength. I think Claude took a lot of time to understand how to write in a organic way without some of the common pitfalls you see GPT using.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yep. Great.
Any final words here before we close the door on this conversation?
[00:34:27] Speaker C: Chad, when it comes to AI, it will happen even if you try to ignore it. And so I would just say lean into it instead of leaning away. Play with it. Practice. Just, just. Even if it's five minutes a day, it's. It's something and you'll be better for it.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Back I would say training and discipline. When we were talking about the first part of the conversation where we said different tools that are out there, it's great to get them, but they're only as good as the user. You can get the best CRM in the world and it doesn't do a damn thing for you eos, you're going to ring up transactions. I'm sure you'll do something. But the more these systems you get, if you don't take the time to learn them, understand how to make them sing, you're wasting money.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I love it. Absolutely. Guys, I appreciate you taking the time to sit and chat with me today. I feel like this is going to be the first of many conversations we're going to have. I look forward to welcoming you back. Beck, real quick, where should we send people who want to learn more about you, what you do? How do they connect with you moving forward?
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, personally, find me haunting LinkedIn all over the place. We have Ink Tank GTM spot on our LinkedIn page. We have a regular newsletter called the Ink Tank Dispatch. And of course, you can find us on inktank gtm.com.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Love it. Chad, any. Anywhere else where people can go connect with you that hasn't already been said?
[00:35:44] Speaker C: Any. Any major industry event, you can meet us in person.
We love to meet people in person. That's the other side of this AI automated world. It's like there's more value in meeting in person than there's ever been.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: I love it. I love it. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you very much for taking the time. I appreciate it very much. We'll see you. We will have you back again, I promise.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Chip, it was our sincere pleasure. Thank you so much.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: Thank you, Chip.
[00:36:08] Speaker A: Again, I want to thank you guys for taking time out of your day to dig in, to dive deeper, to learn more about this subject. Artificial intelligence not going anywhere. And I think over the next six months, we're going to take huge, huge strides forward. And I think it's going to seep into just about every aspect of the software you use, the technology you use, and how you go about your daily task. I know there's a lot of great shows you can listen to. I know there are YouTube channels, there's articles, there's books you can read. I know you tune into this show to level up. And I appreciate you making me part of your weekly routine. Again. My name is Chip Clock Close. I am your host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. Appreciate all of you guys being here, this incredible community.
Thank you very much and I will see you next time.
