00:00.00
vigorbranding
Hey everyone and today I’m joined by my friend tommy andulis he is co-founder of Ops Analytica a system we’re going to get into in a little bit. Ah but Tommy why don’t you say hello and give a little bit of backstory.

00:10.50
Tommy
Sure hi thank you so much for having me Joseph so I’m Tommy you knowless I am one of the co-founders of bobs and lico like ah just said but really I’m a restaurant tour by heart like my grandparents. Both. Immigrants to this country I’m Greek and Puerto rican so I used to have a joke that I was born in a dish pit you know, but the reality is what’s ironic is that um. You know I started in restaurants at 14 in Columbia Maryland my mom would drop me off at the jerry subs and pizza I had a work permit and I learned how to cook steak and cheeses and I kind of never really looked back from that. But um, what’s interesting is that both my grandparents had restaurants but my parents were tech people. So I was kind of bred to get into restaurant technology because I had the restaurant background and the love of restaurants. But then my parents. My dad was a rocket scientist and my mom worked at Lockheed and so I had the tech background yeah in the middle there and so I ended up doing restaurants at the beginning.

01:07.90
vigorbranding
Flex with me.

01:13.13
Tommy
And then I morphed into tech so that’s kind of my story since 14 I’ve been doing either restaurants or tech I suppose.

01:18.48
vigorbranding
I love that so you’re you’re Greek and Puerto rican and I am sicilian in Puerto rican or as I say sicilar rican it’s a lot of easier. Yeah I love it.

01:25.33
Tommy
Nice I’m a greeko rican so there you go wait. So your so that’s what’s amazing about America is that in no other time in the world with sicilian and a Puerto rican get together and have kids but yet. And this one phone call. You have 2 guys that are white that are Puerto rican and some and I’m Greeks that were like fifty feet away from europe layers that’s amazing. Yeah.

01:50.71
vigorbranding
That’s right, that’s right, we’re probably related anyway I make the joke that Sicily was invaded more than any other country in the history of mankind. Ah we our our island just got it from every power that was rising from romans to.

01:57.44
Tommy
And.

02:05.20
vigorbranding
Persians to North Africa list goes on the moors yada yada so truly as my grandma would say a heinz 57 pickle kind of thing.

02:06.84
Tommy
Back.

02:13.12
Tommy
Well absolutely my grandfather was some crete so they had been invaded by the turks and so he left crete after like everyone was so poor and beat down for hundreds of years and he came to the us.

02:22.27
vigorbranding
Yeah, Crete is a beautiful island that I don’t want to talk too much about because I want to keep it safe from tourism. But it’s a beautiful island in general. So let’s get into I mean I wish I could say my my parents were rocket scientists.

02:30.39
Tommy
7

02:41.43
vigorbranding
They they weren’t but they were brilliant hard workers and I love him the death but we’re in this world of data more now than ever and I think where the restaurant industry has been very slow to adopt. It is absolutely supercharged and steamrolled into this world.

02:46.14
Tommy
Um, yeah.

02:58.22
vigorbranding
Almost overnight. Yes, of course because of the great pw word pandemic but obviously all the other things that are coming from it like challenges in labor supply chain list goes on so data right now is on the lips of every restaurant leader but that that word is huge even though it’s 4 letters. It is ja.

03:05.75
Tommy
Chair.

03:17.79
vigorbranding
Ginormous so boilinging it down. What is the most crucial critical data a rest structure or brand leader needs to know I would say on a daily or weekly likely weekly basis. What? what? finger what pausee does the finger need to be on in your opinion.

03:32.60
Tommy
You know honestly I there is no one size fits all answer right? because if you like so for instance I like for a while I managed one of the pf changs I was a floor manager at pfchang’s back in like Tyson’s court of Virginia and so that restaurant we were. Ranking sales out of that place I mean we actually added about $80000 a week in sales. So sales weren’t our problem right? like we knew we had the sales we were on a 90 minute wait on a monday night. So for that restaurant the data that they wouldn’t be. As freaked out about sales. They might be looking more at like their food cost or labor costs. Obviously some of those controlables but like rent things like that those weren’t problems for that pf chang’s because they were just rolling in money right? and so I guess the data that you need to look at is where are you.

04:18.62
vigorbranding
In here.

04:27.12
Tommy
Having issues right? or what are you trying to do and what’s the status of your restaurant because not to say that they shouldn’t be looking at costs and all those other structures. But if you’re a single unit operator who’s out there who’s just getting by right. Then your your kpis are different than the kpis of that pf changes because we were looking at how can we squeeze like we were having record Saturdays how can we get this Saturday to 30000 for dinner, you know what I mean whereas like one of my last restaurant jobs I was.

04:54.44
vigorbranding
E.

05:01.55
vigorbranding
A.

05:01.85
Tommy
Ah, working at Quiznos at the time and my first job at Quizno’s was franchise assistance program manager so I was the franchise assistance program manager for the Quiznos franchisees in 2008 during the downturn and then also during the quiznos implosion so those guys their kpis and the data that they needed to figure out which was am I going to bank my rent can’t how many people can I afford to staff today. How much do I have to work at my other job to keep money at the to just pay for the restaurant are different than the kpis of a big store. So. I gave you no answer at all really because it is different based off of where your business is currently sitting and and also what you’re managing to so like if you’re managing like like once again, not pf changes if we’re just trying to get covers up that that would be the kpi. We’d be staring at how do we do that number. So we get it all translates into more profits down. You know as it closer.

05:59.80
vigorbranding
Yeah I think there needs to be you know? So for instance, there’s the data that comes on the operational side which in my for my view is a whole new world. Not not that it’s operations but operations has been traditionally pretty analog.

06:10.34
Tommy
Um, yeah. Um, yeah, sure.

06:17.50
vigorbranding
In a lot of ways like there’s there’s been data of course but not to the extent that we have now especially when you start roping in ah Hr systems supply chain management and inventory management and you know Pos Data I Mean finally we have pos systems that are absolutely challenging the old guard and that’s not to throw shade at the old guard. It’s just. Look there will be challengers. It’s in every business and and and challengers are good. Keeps us all on our feet. Yay capitalism. So what? But what I see is there’s that and then there’s marketing data that’s coming through and I’m not even talking about all the other data that are out there but just between those 2 systems.

06:36.84
Tommy
Yeah. The.

06:49.71
Tommy
Sure.

06:55.20
vigorbranding
It’s symbiotic in so many ways. But I think with great power comes responsibility but with great power also comes I think irresponsibility so you can get data drunk pretty quick and you can start drawing parallels that lead you down a path that is actually.

07:06.10
Tommy
Um, yeah.

07:14.28
vigorbranding
And’t want to use the word dangerous but it’s at right? Yeah, where it’s like or or you start to solve a problem that actually doesn’t exist and so I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. But I believe it was mitsubishie corporation a gentleman there founded the 5 wise approach to unpacking problems.

07:17.24
Tommy
There’s no correlation.

07:33.75
vigorbranding
Um, let’s be honest, it was probably his wife but he took credit for it. But you know the the idea for those that don’t know is essentially by asking why 5 times you can actually find the root of the problem and so what I see a lot of leaders. Do.

07:35.55
Tommy
Um.

07:51.32
vigorbranding
In every in many industries and hell even in in politics today is see a problem address the problem with a solution that actually doesn’t address the problem but more the symptom and I call it I need to find a better way of saying this but it’s like putting a band-aid on a cancer patient. It’s like well.

08:06.27
Tommy
Yeah.

08:09.87
vigorbranding
Yeah I’m sure they had a cut but that’s actually not why they were feeling the way they were feeling. There’s something worse going on Anyway. I think Data gives us the ability to do that and so how much in your experience. Do you see? ah. The need for leaders to understand true problem solving techniques.

08:27.50
Tommy
I think it’s huge and I do agree with you I think with especially in the restaurant industry. You know it went from basically analog to ah like just beyond like now we have Ai went from and I went from an a track to Ai in about.

08:45.16
vigorbranding
So that’s right.

08:46.13
Tommy
2 years and so you know and what’s interesting if you look at the restaurant industry is that and we’ll we’ll sort of tag onto the operations data here in a second but you know they’ve always had great data on sales right? like that’s always been where the investment’s been is always to get sales data. Um. You get labor data. That’s relatively easy. Once you have a pos or a scheduling program food cost data is relatively easy as well too because you’re just going to invoices inventory gets hard because the the physical task of doing inventory is always just you know it takes a long time and it’s kind of an arduous. Horrible pain in the butt thing. So a lot of restaurant tourists decide not to do it or they do it like you know they just don’t do it? Well even with all the software out there. You know I’ve talked to but the bunch of the inventory software guys and they’ve been like hey man, it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s 2 people counting 1 guy writing it down 1 guy saying.

09:25.70
vigorbranding
M.

09:41.51
Tommy
You know three out of 10 or whatever but then and so and then we had customer satisfaction data and those have been the main sources of data for like the last ten or fifteen years right but which is basically like 1000 years of prehistory like in the last fifteen years but now what happened is. And they’ve had that and then they use that data to back into everything else, right? So they said okay well my profits are good and my sales are good and my customer satisfaction is good that’s a good manager they’re doing a great job but that that doesn’t mean that that restaurant couldn’t be doing twice as much in sales and twice as much in profits you have no way to gauge that. Um, and so like operations data really only became accessible and that’s kind of what we do with the invention of the tablet because now tablets and and smartphones to some extent but at the beginning it was tablets that that gave us an ability to start tracking other types of data. That are actually really important because now with operations like being able to track operations you have to realize sales food cost labor cost all that other stuff is lagging. It’s a lagging indicator of how well you’re operating right? It doesn’t like sales predicts operations operations predict sales if you know. Marketing predicts sales right? It’s kind of the same thing in that all these activity that’s happening is going to either enable sales and hopefully more importantly, enable the second sale after the fact that the return customer so having so now you and I want to just point that out because. It’s important now that we have operations data because that is the missing key that we never have before and that’s what allows us to not have to back in and back into the number and guess at what’s actually happening now we can actually see what’s actually happening and then also compare that. To those lagging indicators and go hey when this is happening poorly sales and profits go down hey when we’re doing a really good job of xyorz sales and profits go up and so operations data I think is is really it’s brand new I mean we’ve only we’ve only been in business for 7 years I think some of our competitors have been in business for 10 but like you know this is a brand new data. But it’s the contextual data that a lot of these leaders need to make better decisions right? So what I would suggest is that if you don’t have access to your operations data then you have to really do a lot more. Um. Thinking crowdsourcing talking to other people really be careful, not just to jump off the cliff right? with oh my gosh sales are down do this pull this lever and all of a sudden you’re pulling the wrong lever. But if you can get a more complete data picture then.

12:22.28
vigorbranding
Presuming. Yeah.

12:33.86
Tommy
It’s easier to make a data- driven decision.

12:36.42
vigorbranding
That’s right and I think data driven decisions are is is the standard that people want to get to um and I think what I what I see though is making sure that it’s the right data which I think you see you started to illustrate quite Well so a scenario for instance. Um.

12:44.90
Tommy
Yeah.

12:49.87
vigorbranding
When you know how much burn you have ah on your inventory. Let’s say at a bar so you know that you have X amount of ah you know, um liquid and you have X amount of burn on that liquid.

12:54.67
Tommy
Yep.

13:00.87
vigorbranding
And maybe you assign let’s say you say to reduce that burn I’m going to give each bartender the ability to give away x amount of drinks as value as to customers and by Friday they’ve given away their bank and then on Saturday they have an angry customer or customer who deserves a little extra. You need to be able to empower those people to say. Yeah, even though you’re out of your allotted. Ah you know your lot allotted budget for giveaways. You can still do that because what happens is like oh I’d love to give you a drink but I’m not allowed to because I’ve been restricted and I think that’s a bad use of data. Um, and I think we have to make sure as leaders.

13:26.65
Tommy
Um, yeah.

13:37.41
vigorbranding
To ensure that hospitality Excellence is not hindered by the knowledge afforded by good data. Um, yeah, go ahead.

13:43.83
Tommy
Well oh absolutely. And yeah, I’ve been thinking about this like and now I was thinking like the a tque the typical a t question a lot because I’ve been thinking about culture a lot just in general and whatnot and it’s like ah. Tactics are to strategy which as systems are to culture. So that example that you kind of just gave there is a cultural thing like hey our culture is we’re gonna take care of our great customers and people are having a good time. We’re gonna you know occasionally offer them a drink and really make them. Had this amazing experience. But if you don’t have a system in place to execute your culture then you just become another entity where you’re trying to tell all your employees hey we’re this culture of greatness. But then every time you try to execute the culture because there’s no system in place to deal with it properly. Then they end up just going. Ah, you’re just the man you’re just another organization that said you’re going to be 1 thing but you do another you you care more about the profits that you know, whatever and it just kind of goes on and you get that disenfranchised employee out of that right? And so what you’re talking about is exactly that. Yeah, you have to have like the data. But if you’re going to have a system in place because then you got to have a system in place and you’ve got to let people utilize it even though sometimes it might throw your number off a little bit right? because yeah, you don’t want to like cut off people at their knees because then they don’t want to do stuff.

15:14.63
vigorbranding
Yeah, that’s right? So let’s let’s let’s kind of turn the table on. Um, how data is affecting strategies for attracting customers. We talked about the sales and traffic numbers and and I think what I’m seeing Maybe you agree or disagree I’d love to hear your opinion. But with this.

15:24.67
Tommy
Um, yeah.

15:31.87
vigorbranding
Rapid Rise in inflation and the pending recession that will come afterwards I mean most most fiscal minded people are predicting that a recession will come right behind this or at best stagflation.

15:42.12
Tommy
No.

15:48.48
vigorbranding
Anyway, with that I see in what has happened historically is people start to look to save money. They look to be a little bit more frugal in their approach to expenditures and that’s usually starts with the industry our our industry the restaurant industry eating out becomes a little bit less frequent the amount of ah per check is reduced.

15:54.90
Tommy
Yep.

16:08.44
vigorbranding
Um, Yada Yada So how how can data help leaders find that sweet spot of quality value and of course profitability.

16:15.90
Tommy
Um, that’s a really good question. You know I already. Well just a side note I can already tell that the restaurants in my area are changing portion sizes and they’re optimizing their food and this happened in 2008 as well because. I don’t remember but like in 2008 if you weren’t paying attention. Portion sizes started to shrink. But what I thought was which I don’t mind as much but what I don’t like is when people start to engineer the food down and when I worked at Quiznos this was always happening. There was some guy that would come in. Turkey guy right? and he’d be like hey we injected more fat but beaks, whatever into this turkey and so we save you like a penny a pound you know, but then you look at like oh 5000 restaurants a penny a pound that actually and starts adding up right? Pretty pretty quickly towards your food cost number.

17:00.32
vigorbranding
Right? right.

17:11.68
Tommy
But I remember there were certain restaurants and I won’t mention their names. Ah but like you know I couldn’t eat their burgers anymore because I was just I will always feel sick afterwards because they were just you know they were just optimizing down down down down down so they could keep their prices the same to keep attracting customers. But then the quality of the food. It wasn’t It’s not the quality. It’s just the amount of fat that’s getting injected into everything gets worse because that’s cheaper. So yeah, exactly so that was a real issue So when you’re talking about Data. Ah, how are these guys going to use data I think.

17:36.22
vigorbranding
Get the the cheap additives. Yep.

17:49.30
Tommy
The key is going to be is it really this comes down to like when we have data like let’s just demystify it What we really want to know is what’s really happening in our businesses. That’s all data is is I sit at corporate and I can’t be in every store every minute of the day. And so I need to figure but I have to make decisions for this entire chain. How I need to understand is what’s really happening in my business. What do my customers Really think about this like that’s all data is and they’re gonna have to use that. And they’re gonna have to focus group these food items and all of these different moves. They’re trying to make so they don’t destroy their brand and they don’t anger customers so that they won’t come back because just like in my example with that burger place I couldn’t eat those burgers So I stopped going So they.

18:37.33
vigorbranding
And.

18:40.40
Tommy
They kept their margins intact and they didn’t raise prices but they lost me as a customer for several years because every time I went there I felt sick and so I just think in general what restaurant leaders are going to have to do is as they start to make these moves I think they just have to be. Researching focus grouping it looking at the data looking at the customer satisfaction doing all those things and they should be testing it like that’s another thing that the restaurant industry does not really when mcdonald’s does it? Well everybody else I’m kind of like they do it amazingly. If you’re gonna do something test it in 20 restaurants collect a ton of data spend some money put some people in those restaurants have someone interviewing people when they leave how did you feel about that sandwich. What did you like about this or that and actually collect a bunch of data and then make an informed decision. Don’t just jump out of the plane.

19:25.57
vigorbranding
Were even.

19:35.65
Tommy
You know and go full bore across 5000 stores because you don’t know what that damage or positivity could be. It’s a very scary thing to do in today’s world and by the way you don’t have to do it. Yeah.

19:44.80
vigorbranding
Yeah, even even on the smaller scale. Yeah, like even on the smaller scale. So like even if you have like 15 restaurants or 10 restaurants I mean what you just said in that order is so very important and just to repeat. It is ah research. You know what? What do people want? How can you tap into I believe it was great creed that established this word. Ah category use occasions. How can you start to own more category use occasions for your restaurant research that focus group it and when you focus group I both love and hate focus groups.

20:02.96
Tommy
Um, yeah.

20:18.54
Tommy
For yeah.

20:21.85
vigorbranding
Because a focus group that is not the right size either too big or too small being asked. The wrong questions is incredibly dangerous. Um, and it could send you down the wrong path.

20:28.82
Tommy
Yeah, and.

20:36.70
vigorbranding
And then once you have a focus group and you get that data and you you reengineer what you need to reengineer and then you go to Market test. You have to market test Beyond What I call the honeymoon period and I’ve been known to say this like too often leaders Benchmark the honeymoon and it’s like dude don’t benchmark the honeymoon.

20:45.57
Tommy
Um, yeah.

20:53.80
Tommy
Yeah.

20:54.93
vigorbranding
Like you’re never gonna win. You know every new product will have that initial bump and then it’ll level out. You need to wait for that level out to find out the real benchmark and to see if it’s actually a viable product without marketing and then bring in the marketing. So I’m saying this. It’s hot button for me is because we’ve worked with a couple of clients 1 in particular. Who will go unnamed decided to launch a variation on their core product that variation was a bowl like you know your protein kind of rice bowl thing in theory it makes sense because you see a lot of brands doing it and I think that’s where a lot of restaurant leaders. Go awry as well. They see what other brands do.

21:20.90
Tommy
Um, yeah.

21:31.82
vigorbranding
Think that it’s a win and then they emulate, but you have to be careful not to emulate a bad move or a bad idea or a strategic move by a competitor or another brand that that launched that product um without the same basis or goals and what I mean by that is. Ah, sometimes leaders will launch a product that is meant to uplift or guide perceptions of the rest of the menu meaning it’s not meant to be Popular. It’s not meant to be Profitable. It’s meant to uplift or or guide perceptions. Well if you emulate that.

22:01.32
Tommy
Sure.

22:08.89
vigorbranding
You end up with a failure of a product because your goals were profitability or popularity and so this is such a huge issue because products like that inevitably fail and so this particular person or group they launched these um it tested quote unquote well the problem is. It was only in market for in like 2 locations for a short amount of time they rolled it out. They put marketing dollars behind it and inevitably that honeymoon dropped down to the plateau marked as a failure and then what we unpacked is like there were a lot of other issues that did not check the boxes of consumer wants and needs because it was never focused.

22:30.11
Tommy
Sure.

22:47.16
vigorbranding
It was just all emulation that is such a dangerous path especially we have so much data that can help us. Um, so let’s talk about that. You know how how can data specifically data on the opse Analytica platform help restaurant leaders with some hot button challenges today like securing better labor and talent. Ah, helping with supply chain issues and then of course the gold standard of profitability.

23:09.18
Tommy
Sure So our our platform really focuses on ah managing and measuring human activity which has always been a black hole because you can’t be in every restaurant every day right? So You don’t know what’s actually happening and so what we focus on is. How do we help at the store level. How do we help these guys control what they can control right? We’re coming into a time like you said inflation people aren’t going to be spending as much. They’re not going to be going as Much. Um, and so when that happens right. Then your daily operations have to be even better. Even though we’re in a tight Labor Market. It doesn’t Matter. You have to be even better because your sales are gonna naturally be yeah I wouldn’t say your sales because you’re gonna raise prices. Your occasions are going to be coming down and that puts all kinds of extra stress on the management team at the store level because now they have to deal with perishability and all these other attributes that are happening around them right? They already have tough labor. So That’s already an issue. They’re dealing with and the and the reality is too is that as customers we’re giant babies now. Like if it’s not perfect. I’m never going Back. You’ve you. It’s been.. You’ve like soiled my good name you spit on my crest you know, just because exactly yeah I’m gonna just destroy you because there weren’t napkins in the napkin holder and like and so what we always focus on is.

24:26.50
vigorbranding
And I’m going to put it all over the internet. Yeah, so.

24:38.60
Tommy
At a high level you got to be controlling what you can control like you can’t you’re not responsible for inflation or gas prices or the labor market or any of these things but you are responsible for is making sure that in your 4 walls that I get the best passable experience I can have every time. Because that’s ah only if you don’t do that. There are 50 other places I can go within a half a mile of my house that does exactly what you do you know? I mean we’re not living in the 1940 s where there was one diner in town and if you pissed off the guy he just wouldn’t serve you like you know I can get eggs anywhere within 5 minutes so that’s the world we live in so you have to ignore all these macro factors and really drill in on how am I going to control what I can control. Best. So that’s the number 1 thing and so that so our platform we helped the managers. Ah control what they can control better by scheduling out their days making sure that they don’t miss the little things and and I want to point out this too so often when somebody has a bad experience in 1 of our locations. No matter what our business is. It’s generally not like a catastrophically bad experience. Not like someone punched you in the face or like wrestle you to the ground and spit in your mouth or you know this horrible thing. It’s generally just little things that you already knew about that. You just miss because you’re busy, you’re tired or stressed you don’t have enough employees that just lowered. Like they had an expectation of what the expense was going to be and it was a hundred percent and they had a 70%. It’s generally not these massive. You know like the guy was yelling at me. It’s just the bathroom was dirty. My didn’t have saw it on the table I had to wait for catch up I never got to refill on my soda. Just all these little things that’s all death by a thousand cuts right? and so and and that’s what’s happening to us so going back to like your initial question because I know I’m sort of rambled on there. It’s using the data. It’s really about making sure.

26:31.44
vigorbranding
Yep.

26:43.65
Tommy
That you’re just controlling what you can control within your 4 walls focusing on your core operations and then using that to extrapolate out. Okay, now that I these are the stores that are doing that and we’re doing okay here these are the stores that aren’t doing that. How do we boost those stores up. To get their management team to start focusing more on these details so that we can so we can have a chance of coming through this you know, probably with reduced profitability. But at least we can come through it and get out alive. You know.

27:17.67
vigorbranding
That’s right, Yeah, it’s it’s difficult, especially when operational models are changing ah drastically in some cases and and quickly of course like you said? Yeah, um, it’s really tough So like the salt on the table. You know I know that’s anecdotal. But.

27:22.14
Tommy
So fast.

27:29.46
Tommy
Um, yeah.

27:34.16
vigorbranding
That can be enough to push someone over the edge not getting my refills Well as we get to more of this self-service model I see a future where casual dining casual full service dining learns from fast casual and goes more of the traditional fast casual model where.

27:39.55
Tommy
Yeah.

27:53.36
vigorbranding
You have someone that you order from or it’s simply just from your phone or a tabletop kiosk. Um, and then you just basically have a team of people that are servicing the client and to me in a lot in a lot of ways is much better where the focus is put on actual hospitality and service and not the menial tasks of taking an order.

28:05.11
Tommy
Um, yeah.

28:12.91
vigorbranding
And delivering food by a singular person because that’s their table of course some things have to change and in some mentalalities have to change and I think while that happens with full service I think it’ll open up the door for that white traditional white glove white tablecloth. Although we don’t see a lot of.

28:30.31
Tommy
Can have.

28:31.20
vigorbranding
Literal white gloves on white table gloss any longer. Um that level of high touch rockstar servers and that experience and I think there’ll be a greater divide between the 2 whereas now. It’s kind of not I mean of course there’s there’s your elevated experiences.

28:45.20
Tommy
Yes.

28:48.80
vigorbranding
But in general, the full service model hasn’t moved in a very long time.

28:51.72
Tommy
Well I totally agree with you so we went to London a couple years ago with the kids and we went to this restaurant. It was huge. It was ah it was a big restaurant for London especially with real estate prices there but it was a big big restaurant the us too and it had like forty fifty tables and it was a pub and you walk up to the bar. And you ordered from the barman and then someone brought you your food and if you wanted another beverage. You walked back up and it it was a full but it was a nice restaurant like it wasn’t fast food you know and then eventually the barman came out and just said hey would you guys like another round of drinks but it wasn’t like our traditional sort of like Applebee’s Chili’s scenario right so cut to last week I had the opportunity to go and watch these serve these robots work in a restaurant and there’s a company here in town and they’ve got serving robots. They’re chinese guys and the guy was telling me their head of marketing who’s. Originally from China but has lived here his whole life 23 years or something he was like in China when you go into a restaurant. There’s someone that greets you they tell you where to sit you scan a bar code on your phone you order right? off your phone and then robots deliver the food and these robots are like they look kind of like r two t did with a bunch of trays in the middle. And the robots are smart enough that you can literally it will pull up to your table and go hi. You had the hamburger. It’s on the top shelf and just grab it and whatever and so that’s where they’ve gone right? and so I think there’s not you’re gonna only get servers like you said at the high end restaurant in the near future. You’ll still have the same building. You’ll still have the chili’s building because they can’t redesign all those buildings but you’re gonna still have the chies or the Apple bees or that midlevel ihop Denny’s building um but you’re going to order on your phone or order from prop. On your phone or a tablet is zosk or something like that and you’re going to have maybe a person come and service you but maybe not, you know what? I mean like because like if you talk about the labor problems in the industry. The hardest thing in the world is to find servers and busers. And food runners and these restaurants where they’re not making enough money. It’s really easy to get people to work at a capital grill or Ruth’s Chris or you know these other nobu because they make 75 to $100000 a year and they’re very happy and even the busers are walking out of there with a. Hundred and fifty in cash every meal you know what I mean but when you’re working at Denny’s and your average check is like you know, probably average. Cover is like twelve bucks ten bucks you might make 4 or six bucks a table and you’re not that busy all the time right? All of a sudden you make 40 or fifty bucks a shift

31:21.86
vigorbranding
E.

31:40.62
Tommy
You can’t keep people for that right? when there’s so many easier ways to make money that don’t require being on your feet running around all over god’s creation. So like I do think you’re going to have fast food which is a driveth through model you’re Goingnna have Qr which is a counter service model. Right? Where there I’ll either go get my food or someone to bring it to me. You have fast casual which will be robots and ordering on your phone but a slightly different meal menu. You know occasion sit a little bit longer and then that will all be basically self-service to some extent. And then you’ll have like the fine dining where you’ll go and have an amazing experience and the people who’d want to be waiters, professional servers and bartenders. They will all move the best ones that truly love that job will all move into all of the fine dining positions and those jobs just won’t exist.

32:18.33
vigorbranding
Yeah.

32:34.26
vigorbranding
Yeah I totally agree and and that’s where they belong. Anyway, they’re going to get more money there. They’re going to get more satisfaction The the quality of guest at that level although pernickety. It’s worth it. Um, you know So I think it’s pretty great.

32:34.87
Tommy
And anything below. Yeah.

32:42.96
Tommy
Um, yeah, oh absolutely.

32:51.26
vigorbranding
Um, all right? So let let’s dive into Ops Analytica I feel like we’ve danced around it a lot and we probably touched on a lot of the benefits but I would love the listenership to hear just a little bit more about this platform. Um, how does ops analytica give people control of their operational data or access to and um.

32:52.41
Tommy
Um, sure. Yeah.

33:00.73
Tommy
Um, true.

33:10.56
vigorbranding
You know what are some wins that you’ve seen for clients like those quick wins that get them really excited about the platform. So.

33:13.16
Tommy
sure sure so there isn’t a multi-location business specifically restaurants in the world that don’t have checklists right? and so they all have checklists. They might be a piece of paper on the wall. They might be the red book from the old day. They might be a clipboard on a piece of paper. But checklists are the most effective way for a team of people who have to do something to not miss things right? like hey did you check the is the light on is the music on is the bathroom clean blah blah all the way through line checks food safety. All that stuff. So what we do with our clients is we take all of their processes and procedures and we enter them into the tablet and by simply just that 1 thing by getting them into the platform and you start having your team doing that stuff on the system versus doing it on paper. The first thing you realize is that your team wasn’t doing it on paper. The second thing you you realize is that now I can actually see how my team is working and number 3 you start controlling what you can control and you start missing the little things that are irritating your customers right. So just by making that move from paper to the tablet. You now have like you’re just going to do naturally if you hold your team accountable to doing what they’re supposed to do. You’re going to see an increase in customer satisfaction that increase in customer satisfaction is the first thing. The second thing you’ll start to see is you’ll start to see ah an increase in profit and generally a reduction in food cost one of our clients told us 1 time I can tell within a week if someone’s not doing their their stuff on the platform because I see comps going up. Right? And that’s because people aren’t checking the food. They’re not tasting the food. They’re not checking the quality and they’re having to throw away a bunch of food that’s getting sent back. They’re having to remake it that type of thing. So customer satisfaction goes up. Food cost generally will come down just a little bit because you’re not comping as much stuff and then ultimately.

35:06.47
vigorbranding
That’s brilliant.

35:15.75
Tommy
Over time your sales will go up if you’re just taking better care of your customers and they’re having better experiences and the things that we really control are like all the setup stuff all that pre-shift stuff. Obviously your servers and your and your help have to do a good job but like what we’re really focusing on are those tasks. That you need to have done so that you can maximize your sales period every single shift and so and so that’s kind of the basis of it. We take all those processes we schedule them out for the day and then you know it kind of goes on fire and forget mode at that point. And one of the things that we can do too especially if like small chains right? like as you were mentioning those guys like they don’t have and a giant team at corporate they got a couple guys at corporate that have to handle everything so a lot of what our teams are doing is they’ll put in stuff. It’s kind of like you set it up once and then it just runs forever. So. You might say hey it’s April right now I need to check my Ac every April to make sure that when the summer hits my Ac is working so you can literally create a checklist that runs from April first to April thirtieth that says hey go get your Ac service tell us if there’s any problems. Whatever it is and you can set that up. For April and October for the heat and then you just literally schedule it 1 time and then now every April and October you’re checking those things and so you can start to get everything kind of operationalized but not like in a binder where no one’s ever going to look at. It’s never been pulled off the shelf since it was stuck there. It’s actually happening live every day. It’s morphing based on hey it’s Friday gotta do hood vents you know mats are on Saturdays you can just keep every little task kind of under control and it’s kind of like having like if you had your best manager ever imagine if your best manager ever was in a tablet. And every one of your locations telling your team what to do like on a given day but then and that’s just the actual day-to-day operations. The data as soon as you get 1 checklist in the system. Now you see the data is flowing in and we’re tracking everything and one of the cool things that we can do that? No one else can do like anywhere. We have a thing called data accuracy scoring where we can actually tell you if the data is good or bad and with 1 button click you can actually look you can filter out all the bad data so we were talking about datad driven decision making earlier because we control the means of input most analytics platforms. They they sit on top of a database that you fill with data but they just have to accept the data you give them because we control the input of the data on our platform I can actually grade the data as it’s coming in and tell you if it was accurate or not accurate. And so if you’re trying to make a decision.

38:00.79
Tommy
About like some movie you need to make you can literally just push an accurate button and boom now I’m only looking at accurate data to make that decision but the not accurate data is just as important to your operations because that’s what your manager should be looking at to go and start coaching on. Why was this not accurate. You know why are you doing it this way you gotta change how your behavior is so that’s another big part of it is just having data now. 1 of the things like you know what’s interesting is is that most of our clients, especially our big clients that use the platform a lot. They don’t like. They started off thinking I’m going to do a couple food safety checklists and a couple you know readiness check here and there and they were like we’ll have four checklists. That’s what we’ll have about four five checklists that we use the platform for they have over hundred they have 2060 checklists that they built themselves. Because what happens is when you’re like a big brand that’s over 50 states you have labor laws to contend with everything that they need to do to manage their chain from a risk from a daily operation. You know, just in in addition to just the daily stuff that’s happening at the stores but just managing their business. Apps analytica becomes the platform that they use to do that because there’s nothing easier to collect data from you know every one of your units on. We can just manage all of that stuff and so it’s amazing. What our clients use the platform for.

39:27.19
vigorbranding
Yeah I imagine I would have to put controls on it like I do with Instagram because I’d be so addicted to it like you wouldn’t be able to peel that thing out of my hands so 2 more questions before we land this plane.

39:40.27
Tommy
Sure.

39:42.87
vigorbranding
Very important questions possibly the most important questions of the entire discussion one. Do you find it hard to use the word data in its plural form because I do the the data are versus the data is so good to know and then finally the the.

39:52.10
Tommy
Yes, yeah, yeah.

40:02.24
Tommy
Um, that.

40:02.85
vigorbranding
Pinnacle of the interview here if you had 1 final meal where would you eat or what would you eat and why.

40:07.62
Tommy
So I’m assuming I’m in prison. You only get a $50 budget for your final meal on prison which is not going to work for me. Yeah, now apparently that’s the deal now. Um I know in that suck. Okay, so um, it’s 100% going to involve king crab.

40:12.80
vigorbranding
I did not know that lots of stream.

40:25.39
Tommy
I would say my final meal. Okay, well first of all I had we went to France last summer I had the best breakfast in my life in this castle. So I’m tempted to say that but I’m gonna move on. It would be a really good french bread with amazing butter room temperature butter. Has to be room temperature I want a I want a wedge salad then oh wait harm what oh creamma crab soup as my appetizer wedge salad is my salad course prime rib from the prime rib restaurant in l a that they cut in that big gold like. Like that awesome that gold thing that they have that brings the prime rib to their table and cuts it king crab legs but I want them I want them. Ah I want it like de shells I don’t cut my hands right? because I’m not you know a lot of dunking butter for that and then for my dessert I’m gonna have to say oh.

41:07.83
vigorbranding
Yep.

41:14.90
vigorbranding
Um, yeah, yeah.

41:23.43
Tommy
Asparagus with that as well obviously need a vegetable and a baked potato with lots of butter as you can tell I’m addicted to butter when I sell this company I’m gonna turn a Tv show. That’s all about the best butter in the water I’m just gonna travel the Earth finding butter that I like but it’ll be a baked potato with butter scallions.

41:24.50
vigorbranding
Yeah.

41:42.42
Tommy
And bacon and then for dessert, it’s going to be pound cake. My mother in law makes a serious good good pound cake with whipped cream.

41:48.39
vigorbranding
Mm. I love it. So I will say for those that don’t understand the majesty of butter. Um, there are notable differences especially when you get outside of our United States grocery stores. Um.

42:06.38
Tommy
Um, oh yeah.

42:09.37
vigorbranding
So one in particular I encourage you you sound like you travel a lot to visit the islands of the azores and they’re just off the coast of actually in between Portugal and in ah and the United States so kind of right dead center in the atlantic they are known for their dairy.

42:26.42
Tommy
Really.

42:27.85
vigorbranding
As Well as their seafood and their butter. There was I thought it was cheese at First. Um and I looked at my wife I’m like is this cheese. She’s like I think it’s butter like oh man and probably could have seen the cow sitting right next to the restaurant kind of thing. So. Amazing. That is quite the feast as your final meal. Um, Tommy How can people connect with you where can they find you on social and the digital universe.

42:45.40
Tommy
Ah.

42:52.60
Tommy
So I’m on Linkedin because I got addicted like yourself to Instagram and I just I had to stop because I just can’t handle it anymore. I’m not like disciplined enough so you can grab me on Linkedin Tommy you know list. You can go to ops analytica Ceo and then please if you go there just ah, you can. But in the contact form or reach out or grab me on Linkedin I love just to talk to people like in general I learned so much from talking to people about like especially clients what they’re dealing with like it gives me ideas on how I can better service. Everybody. So even if you just have a question about. Checklist platforms what you might want to do does it make sense for my business I that stuff we’d love just to chat with you like no pressure man you know.

43:34.98
vigorbranding
Awesome I love it. But we’ll have all the links in the show notes Tommy This has been fantastic. Thanks for hopping on the show with me and we’ll talk to you real soon.

43:39.51
Tommy
Um, thank you? Yes sir. Thank you.