Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What is a restaurant tech stack? Is consolidation actually worth it? Is consolidation actually something you should be targeting? What is the future of technology? How should we be using AI? All of these are questions I ask my guest on today's show. It's Jeremy Julian. He is the host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. He's a lifelong restaurant guy. Insightful, thoughtful. We get into so much on today's episode. You don't want to miss it, but don't go anywhere.
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 and I am your host host of the Restaurant Strategy podcast. Every week we've got two new episodes, all meant to help you increase the profitability of your restaurants. I love this show and I love the community that we've built over the last six plus years. Did you know I also have another community? I run a group coaching program. It's called the P3 mastermind. To date, we put hundreds of people through the program.
If you struggle with profitability in your restaurant, then we should have a conversation. Absolutely. No pressure. 30 minutes, totally free. You grab time on the calendar by visiting restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule. You will grab time on the calendar. You'll chat with me or someone from my team. We get to ask each other a whole bunch of questions so we can see if we're a good fit again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com schedule as always, that link is in the show notes.
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So my guest on today's show is gentleman named Jeremy Julian. I'm sure you guys know him. He is the CRO at CBS North Star, so Chief Revenue Officer. He is also the host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. So a fellow podcaster very much dedicated to helping the individuals, the owners, the operators in this industry make more money. Have a better experience here. There's so much want to get to first we got to welcome to the show. Jeremy. Good to have you.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: I appreciate you having me on Chip. Great to great to hang out.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: We had a great conversation on your show. Now I'm excited to have the counterpoint to it here on this show.
Talk to me about what you do and how you got to do what you do and why a podcast anyway?
[00:04:08] Speaker B: I mean I get the privilege literally. I mean I'm in a very similar space to you. I love helping restaurants. It's been in my blood have worked for the family business, I mean quite frankly even since I was really little but full time since I was 19. So 96 is when I got into the business. But even before that I was waiting tables in college and assistant managing and those kind of things. So hospitality has been in my blood since kind of almost the day I was born. And so that's how I got into the space and I didn't get the silver spoon to go straight to the top. I've worked every position fixing gross nasty printers that came out of the kitchen to taking help desk calls at 2 o' clock in the morning from bartenders that maybe have been overserved and trying to figure out why their stuff doesn't balance to everywhere in between finance, sales, implementation and the like. And so I'm super passionate about restaurants. I love to see them succeed. I see too many of them fail for preventable reasons that they could and especially around tech. And so I decided about five years ago to get into the podcast game really just to I Guess give back. I've gotten the privilege to meet some really great people to do some amazing things in the space and why not give back to help fellow restaurateurs to be successful or even more successful than they are today.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: So let's talk about technology. That's we're gonna spend most of our time over the course of this conversation.
We've had technology for 40 years, maybe more archaic technology than we have now.
But talk to me about where technology was, talk to me about where technology has been over the last little while and then what you're seeing happen now. And I think I've got a perspective on this, but I think you probably have a very unique perspective on this.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Well, I mean I think and I try and remind some of our team members it's always interesting because I've been around since it was truly cash registers and then it went from cash registers to electronic cash registers where you could program the buttons. It wasn't just taking a paper receipt and typing in the number.
Vacation, summer vacations. I'd be cutting out key caps and highlighting them back in the day. And then it went to screens that were on there with you know, you'd have screens and then I remember the first time we got to see something print in the kitchen from a remote station. I wasn't hanging a ticket and I was like so excited. And it went from there to really now. There's not a piece of restaurants that technology doesn't touch. From the walk ins to the front of the house to the kitchen to everywhere that you are, even site selection technology is touching it. And so where is it at today? I think it, I think it's part of done well, it's part of the hospitality experience. Depending upon where you're at, it's going to be either hidden and some places it's way out front because they want it to be way out front. And so I think technology is a differentiator. I think it's one of those things that as brands consider who they are and who they want to be, they need to encompass what technology can do to deliver the service and the value that they're looking for. If I'm a fine dining three Michelin star, technology might need to not be seen. If I'm one of those super innovative sweet green that's trying to do a completely autonomous restaurant where it's all app driven and I'm trying to create an experience that's that way and it's all about convenience and speed, then that can be part of your brand. Promise. And so hopefully that answers, I guess the first two questions.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: So when I was. So I go to trade shows and conferences and conventions every single year, numerous throughout the year. And I give talks, I'm on stage and speak to rooms filled with restaurant owners. And last year I was invited down to the Florida restaurant show down in Orlando and I gave. In addition to giving a talk on the floor, I was also invited to do a four hour workshop on marketing in, you know, in one of the side rooms. People paid extra for that and it was a four, four hour like boot camp on restaurant marketing. And one of the first things we said, it was me and another colleague of mine that were co hosting the event, this little boot camp. And we said, you know, there has to be a room where you go into where you can ask the stupid questions because we all have them. And I know all of you guys, right, we said this to the room, you know, are expected to have all the answers. And we all know that you don't know all the answers. And I know why. You have to promote strength and you know that that brings confidence to your team and you have have an answer all the time. But there has to be a room you go into where you don't have all the answers. That is this room. So don't be afraid to ask the stupid question. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, we're just going to teach it to you. And we were going, we're going, we're about 20 minutes in and somebody raised their hand. I said, I'm so sorry, can I just ask you one of these stupid questions? You said we can ask. And I said, sure. He said, I'm sorry, you said it a couple times. But what's a tech stack? I hear everybody talking about it all the time and I just, I just don't know what it is. So I'm just going to ask. Because you said we can ask stupid questions here and then somebody else like. And we watched like three or four people, there's like 40 restaurant owners in that room and we watched three or four people sort of nodding their head like, yeah, I was even too embarrassed to ask it. I'm going to ask you, I think I know what it is. I think most listeners have a sense of what this is. But when somebody says to you, when they raise their hand and say, what's a tech stack? How do you answer that question for them?
[00:09:18] Speaker B: It really comes down to what are you using technologically to deliver the product that you're putting out to the field at the most basic level, that might be a point of sale, even a cash register in the super old school days, all the way through to completely autonomous robots building your salads and all of that. That's your tech stack. And you had asked the question earlier, kind of, where is it going, where it was. And I was with a large client a couple weeks ago, we were talking a little bit about when we rolled out their solution. Twenty years ago, they only had two or three interfaces into their core system, their core point of sale. Now on average we're 12 to 14 integration touch points to the point of sale. Because whether it's cdp, it's marketing automation, it's kds, you know, kitchen screens, it's text to order, it's third party delivery, there's so many different pieces of tech that do hit the center of that. And so it's all of those core components that allow you to deliver the product that you're delivering. For food service, it might be a handheld, it might be an app, it might be your website. All of those things are part of your brand's tech stack. And again, some brands go way overboard and have more tech than they probably need, whereas others, I think maybe could, could listen, listen to my show a little bit and learn some things and maybe do some investments. Investments to make things better.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Okay, so Lynn, I want to pull on that thread that you just started here. Some restaurants have too much. Talk to me about how a restaurant owner should be thinking about the technology and the tech stack, how they stack different things. How do they know where to start? How do they know when they've gotten enough? And how do you know when you've tipped over and you've got too much?
[00:10:59] Speaker B: So I think it always, I mean, for me it always goes back. We're in the hospitality industry. It goes back to what guest experience are you looking to deliver? Again, McDonald's delivers a fantastic product all over the world, but their experience is very different than 11 Madison Park. Right. So what is McDonald's trying to do? They're looking for convenience, they're looking for affordable, they're looking for that. And so for them, how is it that you're looking to do that? And so as an owner, you have to start with the end in mind. You know, Stephen Covey, start with the end in mind. What are you trying to deliver? And then I always encourage people to build a one page kind of kind of project plan that says, who are you? I happen to use Dan Sullivan's Impact filter. There's lots of them out there. That you can use that just says chip. What are we trying to get accomplished with this tech? Because without a clear end in mind, you're never going to accomplish what it is that you're looking for. Or you may meander to there, but it's going to take you twice as long and cost you twice the amount of money. And so where I look to encourage people is to evaluate who it is that you want to be. Don't just go add third party delivery because your neighbor next door is adding third party delivery. Don't go just add an online website or an app because your buddy that you were having cocktails with last week says, I got an app dude, and it just killed it. But he's running a smoothie factory, a smoothie shop. And you know what, they've got a high frequency, they're in a high density place, and you live in the suburbs and, and your restaurants in the suburbs and your family dining concept. You probably don't need an app. So be careful to understand where you're going and ultimately that will help dictate where you want to start.
All of that said, the other piece everybody needs to be thinking about is technology continues to innovate so fast. So having a platform that is open to innovation and open to integrations without walled gardens and is a huge component to allow your brand to do what it is that you need to do. Your technology provider should be partners to your business to help you make more money, to help you save time or whatever that it is that you're looking for. And without it being open to, without it being open architecture that you can integrate, it makes it really tough. And you get stuck having to use the only solution that they offer or potentially having no solution at all.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: The way that I think about this, and when I talk to my clients about it, I say, you know, everybody knows this. All the listeners of the show know this. All my clients know this. The word that is that will be tattooed on my forehead. The first word on my tombstone will be profit. Profit is literally the only thing that matters, right? How do we make as much money as possible from this restaurant? And what we do with that, I don't care. You want to give that all back, you want to spread that, you know, do profit sharing with all your team, you want to reinvest that, to expand, whatever. But the point of any business is to make profit. So for me, I always say there are things that we need to do in order to be profitable. We need to generate revenue, we need to be able to capture Revenue. So that's a POS system. Right. So without even flinching, I know that we need some way to collect orders and to collect payments for those orders. So we all need a POS system. And then I think our two biggest expenses that we have in our business are our cost of goods and our labor. So for me, the next thing that gets stacked on top of that is a tool that can help you effectively manage your inventory and your ordering so that you can be very, very efficient in how you spend that money when it comes to cost of goods sold. And then I think you need a labor management tool because people are the most expensive piece of our business, at least in the year 2025. So we need a POS. I think we need an inventory cogs management system and I think we need a labor management system. Right. And then we take a deep breath and we say, okay, if you take reservations, I think you need a reservation software. If you don't. Right. If you, if you are full service, you know, and you don't take reservations, then I believe you need a wait list management tool. Because we have to be able to digitize that. A girl at the front with a clipboard is no longer good enough. We have to be able to.
If we're going to go to the bar and buy somebody a drink, we're hopefully going to have a little bit of conversation, maybe get a phone number out of it. It's the same thing here. If we're going to show people a great time, you know, they come in for brunch, come in for dinner and they have a great time, well, let's get their information for the chance that we might be able to have a great time with them again in the future. So if you're full service, I think you either need a table, some sort of table management software, an open table, a resi, seven rooms or whatever you want to use, or wait list management platform. And there are tons of.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Meanwhile, if you are quick service, fast casual, I think online ordering is going to be your bread and butter and you want an easy way to be able to capture those orders. So when somebody gets the idea to come join you right then and there, when they get the idea and they find you online, they can place the order and just come pick it up. It's for me, like that's where we start. Those are sort of the non negotiables based on what your thing looks like. And then there's lots of other things that we can sort of hang on top of that. But like if people want a way to start, that's usually what I tell them. I sort of walk them through that framework. Would you agree with that or what would you add to that?
[00:15:59] Speaker B: The one I would add to it and it's right on the top of my website, though. Restaurant technology guys, top five solutions. Every restaurant needs to be considered. Definitely labor management system. Definitely a food cost system. Definitely a POS where I think that we have opportunities to extend the hospitality experiences with a kitchen management system that can automate what's going on in the kitchen. To make sure that hot food gets put out hot, cold food gets put out cold. It gets packaged with more and more people, especially in the fast casual space. On the quick serve space, being off prem, making sure that your timing is right in the kitchen because you only have one chance to get that food right. When they're in the dining room, you can go make it right. If the food was cooked improperly, if you added mustard to the burger and they didn't want mustard, you, you can go fix that. You can't fix that when it's gone. I mean, it's very, very hard when it goes out via third party and guest retention and guest attrition when things go wrong. And so having a accurate kitchen management system that can tell you who's doing well, who's not doing well, how many remakes we have and all of those kind of things is a really big piece that I think people underestimate the power that it can have. In addition to all of the solutions.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: That you talked about, I love that. I think that's a really great 2 cents there. I appreciate it. I want to talk a second about consolidation.
This is the word that I think everybody is on the tips of everybody's tongue. And restaurant owners, I know of a lot of hats to wear. There's a lot of pots boiling. Whatever analogy you want to use, I think they've got a lot to think about at this moment, though, in the life cycle of the restaurant industry, I think consolidation is the wrong word. I think we want it because it will be easier.
But I have never seen a single restaurant technology company have best in class across the board. So if you are POS and table management and labor management and kitchen management and cogs management and email, you know, marketing suite. And if we know that we need all of these things, I've just never seen a single company have best in class across the way. And so I think diversification, as long as there are APIs where we can, you know, they can talk to each other.
I think diversification is actually beneficial to where we are right now. And I would dare say 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now, diversification will help because when they all, when there's too much consolidation happens, then you get a monopoly. And when a given company has, all right, has, has acquired all of these best in class solutions and they're all under the hood of one company, well then they charge whatever they want to charge and you got to pay whatever they say you got to pay. So I think having variety of tools out there and a diverse, you know, diversity when it comes to these partners, actually, actually I think is what we want. And I would really warn restaurant owners about that because I think it's a little bit of like careful what you wish for, you got it all under one roof and then I think you're going to pay out the 15 years from now or whenever that massive consolidation happens. And I really hope it doesn't happen for that reason.
That's my point of view on it. I want to hear more importantly your point of view and how you think about consolidation.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: So a couple things that I would say to your statement. I'm wholeheartedly in your camp that says we need to offer restaurants freedom to choose the solutions that work best for their business.
You rattled off four or five different wait list management systems. OpenTable is great, so is Resi, so is 7Rooms. They're all great in their own vein based on who it is that you need. But if you only had a choice of one, now you get stuck one, paying what they want you to pay and two, you don't get the optionality and a lot of the innovation and creativity gets squashed. The other thing is there's this fallacy that restaurant owners believe when they're going through the present, that XYZ Brand bought, you know, ABC brand and all of it's an integrated suite that everything works together.
Nine times out of 10, it takes many, many years for those two things to come together. I was just talking to a customer recently that, you know, a bunch of the brands have bought up companies and again, no reason to mention names other than to say the PowerPoint deck shows this unified front. The website shows this unified front. But then when you actually dig underneath the covers, it is absolutely not that case. It is still operated in a silo. Again, we're doing an integration with somebody that bought a loyalty package many years ago. They still have the old brand names, email address and all of their documentation is everything not based on the new branding and marketing messages. But based on the tech and truly how it was created. And so I don't believe, I think that there's a reason why things get consolidated and I think the perception that it's going to be easier for the brand is there. I would tell people to challenge that, both contractually and show me that it actually is a one unified login when you come to a cogs management system, a labor management system and a point of sale back office or whatever else. Because most often those things happen three, five, seven years from now, well beyond when you're making that purchase decision and sitting in the boardroom looking at the PowerPoint or looking at the presentation. So philosophically, we believe in the freedom of choice. Philosophically, we believe that guests and restaurants need to have the ability to integrate based on what's best for their business.
Technology continues to get easier and easier to integrate. Is the other piece. 20 years ago, the APIs, as you said, didn't exist. So they were cobbled together and they weren't very robust. Nowadays, again, we talked about kitchen management. We've got best in class kitchen management solutions out there, integrated to our point of sale. We've got three different ones. You never have to touch the kitchen management system once you have it set up. All of the configuration gets done in our point of sale.
That's how integration gets done properly. So it's a seamless to the end user. The last piece, philosophically, I tell our team all the time, is they're looking to us as the experts to help them run their business better.
We don't ask them, you know, they ask us to help them. We're not trying to tell them how to make a hamburger better. They shouldn't be telling us that. So teach them. They're coming to us to do that. That's our job is to help make their business run better by implementing these things and engineering these things and designing these things properly.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: So let's talk a little bit about switching costs, because I think this is one of the big fears, right, is that we go from one to the. I don't want to switch POS because everybody knows this one. Everything's programmed and all of that.
And the cost of switching is going to, you know, it's going to be a herculean task. And that's true with, you know, table management going from open table to resi back to open table, right? Going, doing your labor management, whatever it is, right? This is.
It ends up being a consideration. And I think it's one of the things that keeps people from Making the switch they actually need to make because they feel like it's going to be, it's going to be clunky and cumbersome.
Clunky and cumbersome because they've seen it go wrong so many times. Talk to me a little bit about, you know, really what I want to talk about is the failure of this and this is something we talked about offline before we hit record.
Talk to me about, about why, but why technology fails in restaurants. And really what I want to talk about is how best to avoid it really. But like how do you make those determinations? How do you make the decisions? How do you set a game plan to do it? What often derails that? I know you have opinions on this, so fire away.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I think first and foremost, and I alluded to it earlier, chip with the impact filter. I think every technology project needs to have an impact filter or a one page synopsis of what you're trying to get accomplished so that you can articulate that to the staff that's going to be doing it. That is the biggest thing that I find is they have these perceptions in their mind. They go out and do five or six different presentations, they amalgamate all five presentations into one, thinking that every solution does everything that everybody else does. So being very clear on what you're trying to get accomplished, whether that's, hey, we're changing from OpenTable to Resi. Why are we doing that? We're doing it because the cost. We're doing it because their reach. We're doing it because the customers they're bringing in, we're doing it because they've got a new text based outbound outreach to people. They've automated AI. I'll throw out just different things. They've automated AI into doing that. So now you've articulated that to the staff that says this is why we're doing it. And you've got a very clear picture. All too often people say, well, we're just doing this and nobody has an idea about where they're going.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: The second thing is they don't resource it appropriately. They add to somebody's plate that already has an existing job. They're already the mater d. They're already the front of the house manager, they're already the kitchen manager. And they don't give them the resources they need, whether that's financial resources or that's human capital resources, in order to give them the space and time to, to dedicate and focus on on the project that's at hand. And so no different than, than construction or anything else. You're building out new restaurants. If you don't give it the focus, you don't give it the manpower, you don't give it the, the time and money, then you're going to not get the results that you're looking for.
The third thing is they try and bite off too much at the same time. And I think they, they take on too many things. They try and eat the elephant all in one sitting and they're like, oh, no, we're going to do food cost management, we're going to do front desk, we're going to do labor management, we're going to do point of sale all in one fell swoop. Well, guess what?
The staff does not have the capacity to take that on effectively in an existing restaurant that's already busy and everybody already has existing jobs. And so, I don't know, I guess those are my three keys to success that I would say everybody needs to consider when they're implementing any kind of change. Quite frankly, it doesn't just have to be about tech, but I would say tech because it's where I live. I see that most often.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: All right, so you mentioned Covey a few minutes ago. I'm a firm believer in the philosophy, right? Begin with the end in mind. Peter Drucker talked about it in all kinds of different ways. I talk a lot about systems and goals. Point A to point B. Point A is where we're at. So understanding the problem that we're looking to solve. This is where we're at. This is the problem that exists. This is what we're trying to solve. Point B looks like this, right? We will no longer have this problem, this problem. This problem. Talk to me about how you assess the success of a, of a, of a given effort, a given project. One of the things that I see the most successful business owners out there, and I've had the opportunity to be in some very important rooms and work with some people who are very, very good at what they do at a very high level. One of the things that they all have in common to a T, every single one, is this idea of sunk costs. They do not make future decisions based on sunk costs. It doesn't matter how big the investment was. I thought this was going to be great. I invested all these millions of dollars. If it's not working, if it's failing, they will not throw good money after bad. They will shut the project down. They will change an entire concept, you know, like that. I mean, they will literally snap Their fingers. It'll be a new concept three months later. And I've been in those meetings and thought, you're crazy. And now I watched enough times where I go, oh, nope. They were really smart because they understand that the power of being small. And as long as you're not a Fortune 500 company, you are small.
The biggest asset we have available to us is being nimble, is that we can change directions very quick. We are a speedboat. We are not a massive ocean liner. We can make hard right turns really quickly. We can make a U turn.
Talk to me about how you assess. So you say you're going to go from one table management to another table management. You give it a certain amount of time. How do you make that determination when it's time to. Well, this doesn't, this didn't solve the problem we were looking to solve. It's time to switch again or time to switch back, which I'm seeing now with a lot of different technology over the last little while, at least with my clients.
So talk to me about how should they be?
What's the filter they should be putting on? What's the lens they should be viewing this through?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: So are you familiar with the impact filter from Dan Sullivan?
[00:28:05] Speaker A: No. So walk us through it.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Okay, so it's a, it's a one page kind of project charter and I just pulled it up. It's like, what is, what do you want to accomplish? That's the purpose statement. What is the importance? What's the big difference that this will make once it gets done? What's the ideal outcome? What does the ideal project completion look like? And you articulate that. And then what are the success criteria? What has to be true when this project is finished and you've got eight bullet points?
[00:28:29] Speaker A: So it's a success when these things.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: When these eight things are accomplished. And then there's a best results, if you take action, what's going to happen? And worse results if you don't take action, what's going to happen? All on one page. I hand you that. You know exactly where we're at, where we're going. It's a one page. You can download it for free for free online.
StrategicCoach.com, dan Sullivan's coach, more entrepreneurs in the, in the world than anybody else. Fantastic tool. I use it all the time. And it's a one page thinking tool that allows you to articulate those things so that you can say, what does success look like? And to your question, if I didn't hit these, why Didn't I hit them? And then doing the evaluation of why did I not hit them is very, very huge. Also, as somebody that needs to delegate in our businesses. And I think all too often restaurant owners don't do a great job of delegating. They don't set a clear vision. It's like, hey, you know, Chip, I gave you this project. These four things got done, but these four did not. Did I misinterpret why? You know, like, I clearly articulated what you were looking. What I was looking for. Right. Yeah. Why did it not get done? Well, you know, excuse train coming down the tracks. No. Hey, let's go fix these four things. What can I do to serve you to help you get to those four things that were part of the success criteria when we set out to do this so that I was successful. From open table to resi or resi to open table, as we've used that analogy a couple of times.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's top of mind because I've. It's a been a conversation numerous weeks in a row in my mastermind sessions with. With my clients. That one. That one in particular. So there's plenty of other examples I could choose. But I love that I will include the link in the show notes for that.
Talk to me.
I want to be really aware of your time and I want to be respectful of that. What's something you believe about our industry, about this space, about technology? What's something you believe that other people may not believe? Something that you believe really strongly and other people think is crazy? I get a whole bunch of these, and I answer this in a bunch of different ways. But what's something you believe that you think other people just don't understand what you're seeing?
[00:30:34] Speaker B: I think that there's a wave of technology coming that is going to replace humans in the roles that humans do not want to do or do not like doing.
It's going to get automated in such a fashion that they can do things that are human to human interactions and human to human contact.
Somebody that's a mutual friend in the space. I think Michael Beck did an interview with me on the show floor in Chicago. He's like, hey, what are the things? Nobody loves dropping fries. They really don't.
I mean, maybe there's somebody out there that really loves dropping fries, but there's certain jobs that are really hard and a lot of people struggle to do it. We struggle to staff it. They do it because it has to get done. But I think that there's coming a time where we will give back time and space to our employees to serve guests, not just do these mundane tasks that can be done automatically. And so I think across the board, the robots are coming, but not to take jobs, but to give us the space to be humans again and not let us be human robots inside of these establishments. So people struggle with that. But I am wholeheartedly believing that a day is coming where your burger is gonna get cooked by a robot, but it's gonna get served to you by a real human, and he's gonna talk to you or she's gonna talk to you about where the beef came from or where the, you know, where the bun was made or whatever is going on there.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: I could not agree more. Four years ago, I was invited to give a talk on this very subject at Bar and Restaurant Expo out in Las Vegas. And I did it, and people just, like, sort of sat there with, like, their mouths open.
And, I mean, I talked about, you know, all the way up and down, all the roles, I think, that were going to get replaced. I think.
I think we're five years away from waiters being replaced in most restaurants.
I firmly believe that every time I have a bad experience. Last night, I was out to dinner with my family, had a very bad experience with a server.
It's so solvable. We now have tech in our hands that can solve that.
I don't need to deal with some sassy guy who doesn't know the menu. I got a computer, and as long as we program the computer to give me all the information I need, I was handed a menu, and they were out of six items. Guy never told me so the first, you know, my son orders, oh, we're out of that. My wife orders, oh, we're out of that. I said, this is what I was going to order, but. But tell me, am I not going to order that? And he's like, oh, no, we're out of that. And I was like, okay. So, like.
Like, we're like, we're batting a thousand on, you know, on first approach. Basically, every time I have a bad waiter, I just go, man, this is so. This is so solvable.
I firmly. I firmly believe that. So I think there's the roles that nobody wants to do, and I think there are roles that we can't even quite imagine getting rid of. And I think we will get rid of them.
[00:33:22] Speaker B: Well, and I. But I. But I. I would say that they. That staff member that, you know, again, that establishment had to hire somebody to serve you if they had, you know, and 20% of his job is doing side work and 20% of his job is doing other things within the space. If we can automate some of that, it creates an opportunity for them to hire somebody that truly wants to serve people. Not this guy. And now you're going to have somebody that, that is their passion is to create an experience for you and your family on a Sunday night dinner.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: If the average restaurant has 10 servers on staff, and I'll keep using the servers because it's an easy one. If the average restaurant has 10 servers on staff, you got three rock stars, three total duds. Those duds are totally a revolving door. Right. There's tons of churn at the bottom. So you get those three and three, right. And then you got a, you know, four in the, four in the middle that are just like, okay.
And I think we have to, you know, we talked about what are we optimizing for. What is this role? The role of a server is not to just write down what people want and then go to. That's how we use them. But the role of a server is really a sales role.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: The role of a server is to make sure that the create an experience. People have such a great experience there, even at a casual, low level thing, but to make sure they have a great experience, they're taken care of and to try to drive more revenue. So what we make from each customer who walks in is more than we otherwise would have. And this is again, you use McDonald's a while ago, right. McDonald's learned this. What McDonald's was about was being the most convenient restaurant in the world. Meaning there is one closer than just about any other burger restaurant. You can get to a McDonald's quicker than you can get to any other one. And you could get in and out easier than ever before. The drive thru was trying to make it more seamless. What happened is that over the course of, I'll say the last 10 years, integrating the kiosks and going, integrating the app or rolling out the app and really having drive thru just be, you know, picking up the orders that you've already pre ordered, they've now become closer to their vision than anyone could have imagined 15 years ago because we didn't have the tools to do it. So like when people decry the kiosks and say nobody likes doing it and all this and that McDonald's rolled out kiosks into 13,000 locations over a nine month period. They didn't do that because it didn't work. They did it because it did, did work. NPS scores went up, check average went up.
You know, the number of guests served, the sort of spillage, number of people who came in, saw a long line and left that went down. They were to capture more revenue, increase the revenue generated per order and make a better experience because it wasn't this transactional thing of like, what do you know, get the order, get the payment, move on, get the order, get the payment, move on. They couldn't have, they sort of came upon that by accident. They used, they went on a hunch and then they figured out a lot by accident with the drive throughs and the apps over the course of the pandemic. But now they are closer to their promise than they've ever been. This idea of being the most convenient, forget the fact of whether it's good food, whether we like the food, whether it's healthy for us and anything. McDonald's exists to be the most convenient place, you know, the most convenient restaurant in the world. And now they're realizing that vision more.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Than any before wholeheartedly agree. And I think, you know, people decry it, but at the end of the day, the results don't lie. Back to your profit is such a critical piece, you know, guests are doing it and you know what, there's been a little bit of blowback in the most recent quarters, but at the same time they are making more money, they're achieving their vision, which goes way back to the beginning. Who do you want to be when you grow up? And setting that in your impact filter that says this is who I want to be. And then how can technology accelerate? That is really what my vision is all the time. Because you know what, handheld tablets at a table is great for certain brands. It probably doesn't work at the French Laundry. Right. You know, it's just not what you're trying to experience.
Tablets, you know, or tablets or you know, drive through line busting. You know, the guys at Dutch Bros, they couldn't do it at scale. They used to keep memory of your car pulling up and they knew that you were coming and this is what you're going to order. They couldn't do it at scale, so they had to figure out, okay, now we're going to go start looking at how do we know when your car is pulling into the driveway? And this is what I'm going to get. So I think across the board technology can enhance what it is that you're trying to do and enable your staff members to be human again and not be the robot that's just taking the order and taking the payment and moving on and have zero personality. And they can only do it as fast as possible to get you through the drive through or get you through the front of the line.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: I totally agree. I think the further we go in this industry, the more we are pulling to the polls. Number one, I think we're going out to eat. When we talk about food service, food prepared outside the home, I think it's either for convenience and on the other side it's experience. And I think if you are not firmly into one of those two, I think it is sort of like the death in the middle. And I think technology can help us be better at creating better experiences. The eleven Madison park and Will Godara's book, you certainly talked about how they were able to use technology to accomplish that, to create better experiences than they otherwise could have.
And then on the other side, I think we've given enough examples to talk about how restaurants can get better faster, you know, get orders right, you know, make it, make it more seamless for people. I love it.
Jeremy, I have loved this conversation. Final words of wisdom. Anything else you want to add to this conversation that I wasn't smart enough to ask you? No.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: I appreciate you having me on. And I guess to those owners and operators out there, technology is coming.
If you are not considering it being a factor in your growth and your profitability, you need to find somebody on your team. If it's not you, you're one of those people that's tech phobic. Find somebody on your staff that can help with that. There are so many pieces of technology that can help make your business better. Not all of them are bad. Most of it's just bad implementation. It's not bad tech. And so I would encourage you to continue to look at those things, continue to listen to your show, my show, other shows out there so you can continue to educate yourself about where the businesses are going so that you can, you can compete in 20, 25 and beyond.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. In case people don't know the podcast, we're going to include the link in the show notes. You guys should definitely check it out. He Jeremy has really great conversations with incredible sort of luminaries in our industry and they're really good, smart conversations. I will include the link there, the Dan Sullivan link you talked about to that impact, that impact planner, that one pager. I'll make sure that's in there. What other links should we include? Where else can people go to learn more about you or to connect with you.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Very active on LinkedIn every day I'm commenting and posting so at Jeremy Julian you go find me there. Restaurant Technology Guys.com and CBS North Star.com is the business where we help solve technology problems primarily in the area of POS and kds. But we've got lots and lots of different solutions that we can help and we're always open to a conversation trying to help people be better.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Love it. I appreciate you taking the time to sit and chat with me. Thank you very much. We'll have you back here. I'm sure of it.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Awesome. Well have have a great have a great rest of your and I appreciate you having me on.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Thank you.
Once again I want to thank Jeremy for taking time out of his day to sit and chat with me. I was a guest on his show and I'm thrilled to be able to return the favor. It's really just an extension of the conversation we had over there. I will definitely have Jeremy back at some point. Hope you got a lot out of this show. If you get any questions for me about this episode or anything else, write to me. It's chip@chip close.com c h I p k l o s e.com you can just, I don't know, shoot me your thoughts. I answer each and every one of every each and every piece of email I ever receive. Also, if you want to chat more about the group coaching program that I run, I would love to chat. You go to restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule, grab some time in the calendar and we will chat again. Thank you guys for making this show part of your week. I hope you get a ton out of it. I hope you are crushing it in 2025. I look forward to seeing you next week. Time.
