Abhinav Kapur

00:00Sharpies Bakery is a locally owned and family operated wholesale bakery, providing bread to Nashville's best eateries. They've been operating in Nashville since 1986, providing high quality fresh bread daily for restaurants, catering companies, hospitals, and universities. Their bread is free from preservatives and artificial additives. Learn more at sharpies.com. That's C-H-A-R-P-I-E-R-S.com. Or you can give Erin Mosso a call directly. Her number is 615-319-6453. That's Sharpies Bakery. Y'all today we are talking as always about SuperSource. And you know, one cool thing about SuperSource is did you know that they develop most of their cleaning products and chemicals in their in-house facility? They're environmentally conscious and only use dyes that are safe for the employees and the environment. They carry a number of products for keeping your dishes, flatware, surfaces, floors, restrooms, laundry, basically your entire facility clean, bright, and smelling and feeling new.

01:10This is just one of the many reasons SuperSource is taking over this city for dish machine and chemicals. You need to call Jason Ellis. His number is 770-337-1143. And he would love it if you would give him a call and let him come down and just check out your operation, meet him, say hi, see if there's any way he can help. He is here to help you succeed. That's Jason Ellis with SuperSource, 770-337-1143. You're listening to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the podcast that's not about food, it's about food people. Now here's your hosts, Brandon Styll and Crystal DeLuna-Bogan. This is Brandon. And this is Crystal. Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. All right.

02:10Yes. How was your week? Oh my gosh. Wasn't it nice out? It was so beautiful. Yes, I finally put the doors back on my car because, I don't know, I feel like it's gonna rain sometime and I had stuff I had to have in my car and I was like, I'm gonna be able to steal it. How was your son's birthday? Amazing. We had so much fun. We went to the Adventure Park in Bellevue at the JCC. There is an Adventure Park, it's like a tree top kind of a thing like with a ropes course. Yeah. Amazing. I see you didn't break anything. No. You're not bandaged up at all. It's kind of hard to do that. It's just physically taxing. Yeah. You get up there and it's like Ninja Warrior at 25 feet in the air. Yeah, I know. And then you zip line down and it was a lot of fun. That sounds awesome. Yeah, the kids loved it. I feel like that's where my future is heading, you know? I'm not there yet, age appropriate, but that sounds like I need to start working out now to get to the point where I can do those courses.

03:15You know, it's really cool and I'll give them a little plug here, the Adventure Park in Bellevue and because they have it set up like a ski slopes, right, have you ever been skiing? Yeah. They have the blue, green, and then black, black diamond, double black diamond. They have similar courses. So you go, oh, I want to do the yellow course. It's a, this is an easier course. And then you get to the blue and the blue is an intermediate course and the black diamond is like, that's advanced and there's double black diamond. And there's like, are you insane? What did you guys do? All of them. I didn't do the double black diamond because the kids, you have to be tall, like they had you and the kids weren't tall enough to do it. It's so physically hard. Like you start going down, like you're like walking down two by fours, you know, or like this, it's just like a rope, like a tight rope and you walk down and you almost fall off. But the top ones are like rotating. Oh no. So it's like these cylindrical, you can see now like cylindrical wood panels and they spin.

04:17So you're trying to hold on and the thing spins. So like, it gets very hard. Yeah. Like, it's not like, oh, this is fun. Like, this is really difficult, the very top ones. By the way, we are live on YouTube. You can see us on YouTube today, if you wanted to ever watch this podcast. And today our guest is going to be Abhinav Kapoor, who is the CEO and co-founder of Biki. He's in New York. I think so. I think he's in New York. His mother-in-law lives in New York. I know that much. Okay. Well, I've done a little bit of research and she was kind of the inspiration behind Biki. We won't get into a lot of that during the show, but this is a tech platform that really helps you identify your and generate customer data. So if you go back to the episode with Daniel Fraser, where I said one of my favorite things that Biki does for us is I know my first-time guests, I know my first-time guests order, and I know how fast they come back. So at the Green Hills Grill, I know that if you're a first-time guest and you order the best burger in Green Hills, that's the number one item that makes that guest come back the fastest.

05:23Wow, and you know that by just them repeating that order? Yeah, well, you can see what first time, you can look up, you can search all first-time guests and then you can search what they all order and then you can search frequency of when that first-time guest returned. Let's see if they order it again. And so you can look at, you can generate anything through Biki. It's really amazing. But intentionally, if you know that, then you can execute on that and kind of where this thing came from and how he created it is really, I'm really interested to talk about it today. Yeah, I don't know anything about it, but that's for a QSR like mine, it seems like we should be doing that. You know, I just listened to a podcast with them this morning and they really focus on restaurants that have like 10 or more locations. Oh, interesting. Cause you can generate so much data with 10 locations. Yeah, so maybe not so much for the one location. Well, the only problem with the one location is that you have to have somebody to disseminate the data. Right, so who's the person that would sit and pour over all this data and put an action plan together around how that data is gonna work.

06:24So they don't do action plans, they just give you the data. It's a platform to give you the data. So if you have a director of operations that wants to look over to our director of marketing, they can pour through all this stuff, find the data, put it to somebody like me, where then I can create an action plan around what we're gonna do with it. For a QSR or like a smaller restaurant, it's difficult because who's gonna do that? The owner, the chef, the social media person? Inconsistently. Yeah, maybe once or twice, but not really. To do this every week, but when you have 10 locations and you're doing millions and millions and millions of dollars in business, you can start seeing trends and that's how you act on them. That's awesome. Well, that's a cool goal-oriented thing to know about. Yeah, and I don't think it's not made for smaller restaurants. Their business model is focusing on restaurants with 10 or more because they have the manpower really to- Well, you guys obviously use it too and there's- We were kind of grandfathered in it. I think we got into it early. We've had it for over a year and we use Christine Miles as our marketing consultant and Christine really goes through, she's the one who found all this data for us and gives us the data and then we have to then put action into it.

07:34Yeah. But it's a lot of work to do that. I mean, if you're a smaller restaurant, I still think you just focus on making really consistent food and you focus on learning every guest, walking by, shaking their hands, saying hello and executing high level of service and great food. Which is also very time consuming in itself, yeah. But that's the number one way I think that's how you make every guest repeat guest. You hear me say that all the time, make every guest repeat guest. That's what we do and it's really kind of cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think we do that manually through our just sales reports, but I can see if you have more than two or three locations, how that starts combing through it all, starts getting extensively exhausting. So this probably just help, this platform helps. If you're somebody who loves to pour over data, you spend all your time on open table, like trying to, how do I capture this third party guest into being a first party guest?

08:35Like, what do I need to do? If you like doing that and you spend hours at nighttime pouring through all that stuff and how do I market, picky could be for you. I mean, this could be something that could really change your world. Some people don't like doing that. Some people like showing up and serving the guest and going home. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But if you're wanting to scale. You have to do this. It's pretty vital. And he'll probably tell a story of his mother-in-law and how she owns an Indian restaurant in New York. And I'll let him tell the story when he gets to it's really unique story just about how he'd be over there talking to her, like, what are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? And she would, I'm trying to capture this. I'm trying to, and she was just writing down all the. She was writing it all down, wow. Yeah, like she was writing down a name from somebody on an Uber Eats order and like, well, I want to, I noticed this guy's order three times and I really want to make sure that I can call him and say, thanks for writing down the phone number. So she's calling the person and hey, how was your delivery? And the main thing that we, I love picky for is the drip campaigns that work with MailChimp.

09:37So when you, we create a, do you know what a drip campaign is? So a drip campaign is like where you send out a email, like a one, so I'll tell you what ours does. If you come into Maribor for the first time, if you come to the Green Hills Grill for the first time, we recognize you're a first time guest. Through your credit card and toast data, I can send you an email that says, and we, if we capture your email, there's ways to do this. I can send you an email that says, hey, thank you for joining us at the Green Hills Grill. We just want to say thank you. Loved having you, would love to see you again. Or we, at Maribor, we send the history of the home, right? This is the history of, this is, if you're wondering if you didn't get this information, here's the history of the home. And then the next week, it automatically sends me another email. Hey, we've got some specials this week. This is really cool. And then I think I've like, and it's just a slow. Oh, drip, I got it. Drip of, and then the, like, if they don't come back in the first five weeks, then we do a call to action and it's a, hey, we'd love to have you back. Here's 10% off your next to go order, or 20% off your next visit or whatever it is.

10:37So, but this will identify your first time guests and we can automatically generate drip campaigns through MailChimp that Bickey manages all of that. Okay. And so I don't have to physically go in and do anything. So there's no other way to do that without Bickey, really? I don't know. Like, I mean, I'm sure there's other platforms that like will identify first time guests and like OpenTable doesn't do that. Well, this is where they, this is where Bickey gets the data. Through OpenTable. It comes through OpenTable, okay. That's a toasted OpenTable is where they get the data. It's connected through there, okay. Cause that OpenTable data we have, we own that. Yeah. Like when they make the, we get that data. So they take that data and they know, that's how you know first time guests, how many lifespan of a guest, lifetime value, all that stuff is where you get that. And then, okay, I'm getting it. But this is good. Cause I'm obviously not well versed on it. So I feel like if somebody's being like, oh, is this something that I should be using or, you know, is this something we should implement?

11:37It's like, well, this is good information. Cause it's like, well, if I'm already doing this through OpenTable, but we're manually doing it, maybe this is a way to kind of help systemize it. Cause that's a lot of work too, you know. Well, this is where I've, you know, I've kind of wanted to be the director of operations for the city of Nashville restaurant, you know, because I get to go to FSTAC, which is Food Service Technology Conference. It's usually in Dallas. I get to go to the RLC, the Restaurant Leadership Conference, and the NRA and all these different shows where people in these big cities are doing so much. And I feel like Nashville just, we don't have big conferences right now. Today I'm leaving here. I'm going to the Restaurant 365 Conference, which is at the Marriott. That's happening today. Oh my gosh. And I'm going to that afterwards with GoTab and all these, you know, GoTab is another really great POS platform. That isn't, I guess it's technically a POS platform. They do so much. There's so much restaurant technology that's available that we here in Nashville have no idea. Because if US Foods or GFS or Cisco isn't pushing this technology they've partnered with, we really don't hear about it.

12:41Because we are so damn busy inside of our four walls that we don't get this stuff. So I love going to these places and bringing in companies like Maintain IQ and GoTab and Bickey and like, I don't even know what language you're speaking, Brandon. Like, what are these things? No, it's amazing. These are all technologies that we use in our restaurants all the time because it's like saves an entire job and it gives us the information and how to market strategically and intentionally. Yeah. The US strategic hospitality has a lot of these, these bigger companies where they- Yeah, restaurant, these restaurant groups, yeah. Restaurant groups, they have the ability to go to these things. In the last time at the RLC, I sat at Craig Barber's table, who's the CEO of O'Charlie's. He'd been on the show and I knew him, but like, those are the type of people. The thing that they said at the RLC that blew my mind is he said the pandemic was the best thing to happen to restaurants since, like the best thing ever. And I was like, eh? That's a statement. Yeah. That the pandemic has killed off all the undergrowth in the forest.

13:46Yeah. All the people that didn't know really what they're doing, the little mom pops to know what they're doing. The pandemic killed them all off and now it's our time to grow. Our time being the chain, these big, because now a lot of these little disruptors and these little restaurants are gone. Yeah. Now we can really thrive. And that broke my heart. Yeah. Because- You're just sitting there thinking like- And all these CEOs and people, and they did a thing, a TikTok there. Like, what do you do about TikTok? And they're talking to IHOP and they said, well, we hired four of the biggest influencers on TikTok to come by and run our TikTok and now we have 1.7 million followers. Who has the money to do that? Well, sure. That's what IHOP does. And they generate all this data. Like locally owned and operated restaurants are the brush on the ground of the forest to these chains. And it's like, in that moment I went, what can I do to elevate every restaurant in Nashville? Cause I saw one other restaurant tour in Nashville, other than Craig Barber. Like one other restaurant tour that I knew at the RLC. And I'm like, nobody else is here.

14:47Nobody's seeing all this stuff. What can I bring back? Who has time to go to these things? You know, like that's time and then implementation. And the money, you got to fly to Dallas and just get a Airbnb for three days. It costs X amount to go to the event. I mean, this restaurant 365 thing, it's like $700 a person to go. Wow, yeah. I mean, I was invited as somebody to come go, but I'm like, I wouldn't, I don't think I could spend $700 to go to a conference. Not if you have one or two restaurants, you have no business there. Like, I mean, imagine sitting there and hearing that and you're like, oh, I'm just somebody who they need to like brush off, you know. Yeah, so I thought, hey, look, what can I bring through this podcast that's free to everybody? That's what I was thinking the whole time. I'm like, what can we share with our listeners? Yeah, like I want to get these. So getting like an Abanav Kapoor today, this guy goes to every one of those and is leading a lot of those. And he's a leader in this industry. And gosh, to get him to come in and just explain what they do and what else is out there. What's going on? What is he seeing? What are the trends? Because, you know, we here at Nashville, I think we know a lot and we know a lot about service and hospitality and execution and design and menu design.

15:56We have to stay up with the times. We have to stay up, right? Or else we're just gonna get- Capturing guest data and how to market to them. If you're Applebee's, right? They have all this technology. Applebee's knows every guest that comes in there and they remarket to them. They can tell you stuff like, hey, every Tuesday, Crystal orders food and she has two adult meals and a kid's meal and a bottle of wine or whatever. And she orders us to go every Tuesday at three o'clock. Well, they know that. And they know that it's Thursday. They want to add a day. So they go back and they say, hey, Crystal, we know it's Thursday, not Tuesday, but have you tried this? You should click this button and reorder, be ready in 20 minutes. And you're like, oh, and they catch you at the right time. You get the email like, oh, that's so easy. I'm gonna click that button. I'll go pick up food in 20 minutes. I don't have to think about dinner. They know what you like and what your tendencies are. They know exactly how to market to you. They know exactly what time to send the email and how to make it easy. And it's not fair to compete with that because these big companies are using that data and intentionally marketing to people.

17:01And they have the resources to do it. And we're over here busting our ass trying to figure out how to, why Janie wouldn't come into work today, you know? And are you really sick or you just, you know, what's going on here? Like we're battling like the daily life of a restaurant. These guys are so far and above just smoking everybody. They don't even know the employees manager's names in these restaurants most of the time. And they're, yeah. That's who we're competing against as an industry. And like we- And wouldn't you say like 10 years ago, you wouldn't say we were competing against these companies, but now I feel like this is what I mean. I'm like, we're in the mix with everybody else. Like we're not fair. This isn't fair, you know? Well, yeah. I mean, and literally there are, there's cheat codes that they have and there's psychology and people make buying decisions on weird things. Whether it's a special or a loyalty program or what time of day it is or what kind of food they like, when they like it and when they get the notification.

18:07I tell every sales rep, good things happen when you go visit the customer because you never know when you're gonna walk into that account the day that that other delivery showed up completely wrong. And you walk in the door and they're like, hey, I sell widgets and like my widget maker just completely screwed me this morning. You got the business. I'm like, that doesn't work for a phone call. You gotta walk in the door and you never know timing is a big part of it. A lot of stuff. How's your family? What are your problems? Like they get to know you so intently. And I know that this is part of what they're supposed to do but I genuinely feel like they end up caring about you and they're like, let me help you with this problem because I know that I can, I have a product that maybe can shave time off or whatever, you know? And I feel like that's a relationship that we can't, you know, like obviously it's intentional but and right now opening a restaurant, oh, everybody is like my best friend. You know what I mean? So like, you know, they know that I'm trying to solve problems and need new vendors and there's all these new things. So there's, it's a lot of, you know, I'm getting a lot of honey right now.

19:09So it's nice, but I also remind myself, I'm like, okay, this is their job. You know? This is their job. This is their job. It's a nice time when everybody is really excited to see you. Oh, can I bring you lunch? Bye. We, you know, yeah. I mean, this isn't my first time. I know what they're doing, but I'm like, it's your job to do it and I enjoy it. And I also have known you for so long. So yeah. Bring it on by. Yeah. No, I am, I'm excited. I feel really ill prepared for like all of these things you're talking about. I feel like you know so much about this stuff. I feel like as a chef, this is a lot of front of house information that like our front and, you know, management goes through. We have to know this stuff too. I mean, like I'm a business owner. Like we have to know how we can take a little bit of that. And like, what, what can I utilize in my, my restaurant, my food truck? Like, I mean, there's just so much, like you said, like I'm worried about Susie coming into work on time. Like I'm, I'm not analyzing data for.

20:10So let's go into this interview and don't, don't worry. I don't know. Like I have no idea so much of this stuff. I'm a genuine curiosity, even for somebody who has this technology. I've had it for over a year. I don't know much about it because our Christine does all of that. And she takes this information. As much as I say, I'm a luxury position. I'm in the, like, you know, I was the general manager at Mayor Bowl last week. You know, like I'm in the buildings doing a lot of stuff. Yeah, you're not that far removed. I'm not that, like I'm doing a lot of, I wish I could spend more time, you know. I'm at Chago's making all this stuff happen. It's a really busy thing for me. And so just go into this curiously and ask questions and it's okay. You don't have to be an absolute genius at this. I'm not gonna pretend like I know things. So we're gonna bring Abhinav in live right now. We are, we are in the show. We are doing this thing live. We've brought in Abhinav Kapoor. How are you doing, man? Hi. I'm good, how are you? Thanks so much for having me.

21:11It is our pleasure. We're glad to have you. You are, you're joining us mid conversation. I am, I am. I wish I had the calendar invite for 9.30 instead of 10. I would have popped in at the start, but. Oh no, we wanted to start. We needed to start. We're air dropping in. Yeah, we needed to pre-show a little bit. That's good, that's good. No, I, again, I appreciate you having me here. It's really an honor, so thank you. This is a lot of fun. We were just talking about technology and we were, so we both operate small businesses here in Nashville. And it's a, she's about to open a new location and I've used Bickey. I have three locations here and I use Bickey in my locations. They're, it's fantastic. And I was really excited to talk to you. I was kind of telling her a little bit about it. I said, I don't know as much as I should because I have a marketing team and they kind of take all of this data and they bring it to us and then we make decisions on how we want to execute and what we want to do. And this is, there's so many facets to this.

22:14So we're going to come into this as complete laymans, asking you questions on how independent restaurants, just in general, I know Bickey is geared towards 10 restaurants and more, right? Typically, yeah. Yeah, 10 and up, but yeah, unless you have, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head where I think the sweet spot that we found is if you are like sub 10 locations and you have a team that can basically own it and get value from the data, I think that's always the hardest thing. With data, having it is fine, but you really need to figure out how to use it. And we try to do our best with the product itself to make it easy to use or at least lower the bar to what it takes to make it actionable. But if you have a team, which could just be one person internally, actually it was like, I'm using the product, I'm getting value from the product. That tends to be really the most important thing rather than just the location count. We're going to be right back with Abhinav Kapoor right after these words from our sponsors. We are so excited to introduce a new sponsor to Nashville Restaurant Radio, All Star Fire Protection.

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26:43Please enjoy responsibly. Yes, so I was listening to a podcast with you on it because doing a little bit of research beforehand. The birth of Bicky, will you tell us kind of the problem that you solved a love story with your mother-in-law? Will you kind of talk about how Bicky happened? Yeah, happy to. Yeah, so I don't have a restaurant background. I used to work on Wall Street for about eight, eight and a half years. But my mother-in-law was a restaurant operator for 20 years here in New York City. And being a good son-in-law, I would just walk in and get my free lunch every now and then with her. And her restaurant was right around the corner from our office. So I walked in one day and I noticed her in the back of the restaurant and she's staring at a delivery tablet and she's got a pen in one hand, notebook in the other. I'm like, what are you doing? And she's like, oh, well, I recognize this person's name on the delivery tablet. So I'm writing down their phone number. I'm like, why are you doing that? And she's like, well, they're obviously a loyal guest but I have no connection with them. I have no idea who they are, if they had a good experience, if they'd come back, if there's something we could do better.

27:45I was like, wow, that's baller. Like no one has ever called me after a delivery order. That's amazing. And I kind of just filed it away until literally a few days later, we're at her house over the weekend. And she's like, can you help me with something on the computer? And she flips the screen and she has her open table open. And I was like, what are you trying to do? And she's like, well, I have all these email addresses of people who made reservations in the past week. I just want to reach out to them. I want to see if they had a good experience, if they'd come back, if there's something we could do better. And I think that for me is when the light bulb went off. Yeah, I mean, she was, she's one of a kind, you know, she never had a, she doesn't have background in the restaurant industry either. She owned a travel agency, did some import, export stuff, started her restaurant. The first, one of the first, aside from Danny Meyers Dublin, one of the first fine dining Indian restaurants in New York City ever and turned it into a two-star New York Times rated restaurant. And, you know, like she did that by, of course, the quality of the food, but touching tables, knowing her guest names, their faces, what they eat, what they drink. And, you know, what I realized was like, she is literally just in the restaurant 12 hours a day, six days a week.

28:48And she has all this data that she could be using to better understand these people, right? Like she actually doesn't know who they are unless she's physically in the restaurant. And so we started thinking about ways, you know, how do we unlock the value of all this data? You know, 20 years of open table data, 20 years of phone numbers in her POS, 10 years of online ordering data. How do we help her use all this to just really understand why guests come back? How often do they come back? When they do come back, what are they buying? Are they, you know, if she's launching a restaurant week menu and she's doing something prefixed, is she actually bringing new people in the door or is she just, you know, giving a discount or a better deal to her loyal, to her loyal guests? So all sorts of these, you know, really using the data to answer a lot of these questions beyond just, hey, like are my sales up or are my sales down and trying to figure out why. And so you saw all of this and you said, I'm gonna create something that's going to do all of this automatically for you.

29:48Well, we tried. I mean, again, the hardest part, you know, from in the beginning, I think, you know, I started the business in 2017. And candidly, I think it was a little bit too early. You know, I think most folks in the restaurant industry weren't thinking about data then. Even my mother-in-law wasn't thinking about data then. And so the hardest thing has always been with our business of how do you make the data actionable? Again, like restaurant operators, even at the largest brands are drowning in information. There's so many things to do because it's such a operationally intense, people-focused business. And, you know, you live or die based on the quality of every experience that you provide to a guest on a given day. And so the hardest thing to do has been making it easy and actionable and seamless for them to use the data in a way that they can A, understand, and then B, take action on. So that actually drives change in their business. And so I think we struggled with that for the first few years of just, we tried different things, nothing really worked. And, you know, we got to the point where the pandemic was what really accelerated, I think, our trajectory where folks were like, hey, you've been talking about data for three years.

30:59And like, I never see my guests anymore because of shelter-in-place orders. And the only way I can understand who's actually coming and what they're ordering is if I have data on those customers. And, you know, you had businesses go from 5% to 100% digital overnight as a result. And, you know, I think that was sort of like with many things in the pandemic. Like that was sort of the thing that really started to open up people's, you know, minds to the idea of like, maybe we should be thinking more strategically about how we access data and how we use data. And we've gotten to the point now where, you know, we can enable anything from helping you send the right message to the right person at the right time, right? Based on the reservation or the online order, all the way to, hey, I just launched a new special. Seems like it's 3% of sales. But again, like, is that, are these new guests that are coming in for this special? And if they order it, are they coming back? Are they coming back as frequently as my loyal guests? Are my loyal guests switching to the special? Is it cannibalizing something else on the menu?

31:59There's ways to give sort of answers to all these more important questions about the success of such a critical decision like launching a new menu item that I think just goes beyond what, you know, what restaurants typically have access to, which is it was 3% or 4% of sales. Is that good? Is that bad? We don't know, should we do it again? There's a lot of gut assumptions and, you know, we try to bring it, not that the gut assumptions are wrong because you're in the business. You're working in the business. You know your business is way better than we do. But if the data can either validate that assumption or help guide you in a different direction to make better decisions about how to grow the business, then, you know, that's where we wanna be. I love that. And I feel like everything you just described really works for small independent restaurants. I mean, this is the thing I think that really helps small independent restaurants. In my fear, as I go to FS Tech and the RLC and NRA and all these different things, I see a lot of change, you know, and I was just telling Crystal previously, I said in Nashville, a restaurant scene is amazing.

33:01Like we have some of the best chefs, best restaurants and people that genuinely care. The problem is there's nobody, like we're busy inside the four walls. Like everything you just described is like, fuck yeah, I want that. I want all of that. I'm like, I'm in, I'm in. Like, yes, let's do it. You're like, okay, now hire somebody for 80 grand to take this information and create an action plan around it. And this is where I was just telling her, I said, if you're Applebee's or Charlie's or you know, there's big chains, you have people who sit in an office that can look at 40 restaurants. And so when you talk about an LTO, if it's, hey, we're gonna do a chef special tonight or we're gonna promote this special thing that we have, I wanna know how many first-time guests this brings in. And if they came in for that, did they come back? And when did they come back? We had a guy on the show recently and I said, my favorite number is we have a restaurant called the Green Hills Grill. And I can tell you that of first-time guests, what they order, the burger is the thing that brings them back the fastest.

34:06And I can now say, if somebody says, hey, I'm a first-time guest, I intentionally will say, you should try the burger. Because I know that that's the thing that's gonna bring them back the quickest, but I have that ability. And I kind of feel like if these larger chains are doing this every single day, it's not fair. It's almost like a cheat code because if I'm a local independent operator and I don't have the ability to disseminate this information to understand it or even how to put an action plan around it, these chains are using this information and they're using the guest data and psychology and data to bring people back. It's almost like you're playing checkers and chess. Does that make sense? Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think I would say there's a few things that jump out at me with that. One is you're not wrong, right? The bigger brands do have just more resources. But at the same time, here's the thing that's interesting about restaurants. And this is unique to all the restaurants that we work with when you look across.

35:10We have 400 million guest records in our system right now. And when you look at that data and you kind of average it out, 80% of guests typically never come back after the first visit. And it doesn't matter if you are a big chain with 100 units, 200 units, 1,000 units, or if you are a small independent on the platform. That's the average. 80% of guests never come back after the first visit. The 20% that do come back can determine, can be up to 50 to 90% of your revenue. And so the flip side of that is someone's guest today and Applebee's guest today could be your guest tomorrow because of the amount of selection that we have, because of how picky we are as humans in terms of wanting to eat food, because of the relationship that we can have with our neighborhood restaurants, especially in an environment like today where people want to get out of the house for a special occasion. And most of the time, like food ordering in general is going to these two, these two different occasions where it's like, you either want to sit on the couch and have it delivered for you.

36:17And that's why third-party delivery continues to be popular, or you want to go out and you want to have a really great experience with maybe a real hospitable person who is taking your order and serving your meal. And so I think, as you think about the split of where restaurant orders or restaurant occasions are going, that's what makes it possible for local restaurants to still thrive in this environment because again, people will naturally want to go and select different options at different points in their consumer journey. And so while I think that the larger brands can use the data to maybe get one incremental order, that one incremental order might come at the expense of another chain that they would have visited. Similarly, if the smaller brands can use the data to get one incremental order, that probably will come at the expense of another chain that's in your local market. And so I think there's, just given the averages of dining and the way people think about dining in today's environment, I would say it's actually a relatively equal playing field if you have access to the data and can use the data.

37:27I think the rub there is like, if you can actually use the data. And there's so much technology out there. I don't think people even really understand because Nashville isn't that large of a market yet. We're not getting these big things, which is why I'm excited to have you here. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also, something I'd add too is for the smaller, one of the silver linings of the pandemic, there were very few, but one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that it did bring a lot of interest from entrepreneurs, from software engineers, and from investors to actually finally invest in real technology that solves problems for the space. And I think that's one of the things that, if you look at some of the companies that are geared towards smaller independent restaurants that maybe do have all-in-one solutions. I'm thinking of someone like Toast as an example, where they are your point of sale.

38:30They are stepping, they're investing more R&D than probably most of the startups. They're investing more in R&D than probably most of the startups who are serving the ecosystem combined right now. And I think that is something that is a net positive for the industry where you have a large player who is focused on making the lives of operators better through technology and enhancing the guest experience through technology. And so I think that's one just very good net positive that's come out from the pandemic is just greater focus, greater talent, greater investment in tools that really help operators run their businesses better. So let's talk about Bickey itself, what the functionality of Bickey does, because I could talk to you about just general restaurant stuff all day long and concepts and ideas, but if you are a local restaurant, and we have people from all over the world that listen to this show, it's pretty fun to do. So it's not just the Nashville local restaurant scene that's listening, what are the main, if you were to say the top three to five functions that Bickey does that people could immediately use, what would they be?

39:43Yeah, it's a great question. I think the most accessible one is again, that ability to build segments on your guests and send the right message to the right guests at the right time. To give an example, when we, most restaurants typically only have access to 10 to 20% of their customer data, and those are the folks who order directly or opt into a loyalty program. And because we can pull in the in-store credit card data, the reservation data, plus online ordering, plus loyalty, we can typically give folks coverage up to 90% of guests in their behavior. And so what that enables you to do is, we can actually predict when a guest is going to be late. We bucket everybody and we say, here's how many guests come weekly, monthly, daily, quarterly. We can actually predict when someone's gonna miss that frequency. And so you can build a segment and you can push it to your email marketing platform and you can launch a campaign that says, hey, you're a monthly guest, it's been 40 days, we miss you, come back and try the burger, come back and try the special.

40:44And so that ability to just really target and speak to your guests on a one-to-one basis based on their behavior, to go from spray and pray to really target engagement, I would say is one of the main, one of the main and easiest ways to get started with the platform. And you partner with MailChimp to do these things? Yeah, we have a few, MailChimp, Attentive, and we have a few of these integrations, yeah, where we can enable that. And then of course, because we get all the data from these marketing platforms and because we get all of your customer data as well, we can say, okay, you sent this email on June 1st, here's how many people came back within one, two, three, four, five, six days after receiving the email. So you're gonna get a sense of, what was the revenue associated with that campaign as well? So that's a really, just really clear, easy, simple way to get ROI from the platform. The other big thing I would say is the menu item analytics, again, to what you call that, where it's like, what are items that are top sellers that don't bring people back? Because that's either, that's potentially a culinary issue, where it's like something that first-time guests love, but for whatever reason, it's lower in terms of just being able to bring someone back for a second visit, which really is the thing that really matters in this business.

41:58Because 80% of guests don't come back after the first visit, if you can sort of make a dent in that metric, you can unlock a lot of long-term frequency and revenue from your guests. So I'm gonna add up to again, so if you describe a dish, right, I've got this pork chop that's marinated in local honey and fresh peaches and all this stuff, and you're like, you read it on the menu and you're like, damn, that sounds amazing. I'm gonna order that, and then they order it, and they go, that was just okay. And the manager comes by the table, how was everything? Eh, it's fine, right? And then they never come back because they ordered this thing, and you're sitting here going, God, that pork chop's a damn star, we sold 900 last week, but 879 of those people are like, eh, it was man, and they're not coming back. It's the quiet quitting, you know? It's the quiet quitting, honestly. That's what it is. Yeah, I mean, cause like, go ahead, go ahead. Well, you can think that something is a star because you sell a bunch of it, but the actual data behind does it bring people back is the question.

43:01You can phrase something on your menu and make it sound amazing, but if it doesn't, follow through with that. And sometimes something that sells a little bit is delicious and everybody loves it, and they have it for the first time, and that's what brings them back. So it's an interesting, sorry about that. Yeah, no, no, that's great. No, it's a great call out, you know? And I think there's always some surprises there where there'd be one menu item that sells double what everything else sells, and it's kinda okay on retention. And then there's something that's in fourth place, and it leaps and bounds better than everything else in terms of bringing guests back. And then what people say is, oh my God, this should be the thing that I promote, right? This is the thing that I put up on if I'm running a Facebook ad. This is the picture, right? If someone comes in store and they tell me they're a first time guest, this is the thing that I suggest to them. Similarly, what are the things that your loyal customers always keep coming back to? Because these are your high frequency customers. They've probably tried a few different things on the menu.

44:01What is the thing that they consistently come back to and love? That might be something that you necessarily don't expect, or maybe not something you actually have visibility into today. And so that becomes a menu item that, again, your servers can push internally when a guest comes in store and say, look, this is the thing that all of our regulars love. It's not about sales. I think sales is a great top line metric, but it's a catch all. There's so many things that influence sales, whether school holidays, who's working on what shift. There's so many, it's such a noisy metric. And so what we say is like, let's get to the customer level data. Let's get to how people are voting with their actual, with their feet and their dollars. And if we can give that information to you, then you can start to make some of these better decisions in the business, whether it's training your staff, whether it's sending more targeted marketing emails, there's all sorts of ways to use the data from there. Are you feeling dumb yet? No, I'm just like, I'm trying to be a sponge right now. I'm like, what's on my menu right now?

45:03Because we change our menu twice a year. We're a, I own a grilled cheese. We started as a grilled cheese food truck 14 years ago called The Grilled Cheesery. And now we have a brick and mortar and we're opening up a cafe of a sister concept. So we're pretty good about, we're very focused in on what we do. Like we do one thing really well, focus on comfort food. But, and we keep things on the menu, like vegan cheese and gluten-free bread, because we want something for everybody. Now these are not big number sellers for us, but they are the most frequent, like we're on like top vegan lists, because we offer this thing for somebody. So we know that we can't take it off because it's, because just knowing it, being in business for 14 years, that this is just something we're known for. Now these are metrics that we've done manually. So, I mean, how does the restaurant tour that is opening up their first location use that information? I have 14 years of data that we're like, we know that this pimento mac and cheese is our best seller.

46:08You know, we know we can never take it off the menu. And we know people come back and they can't not get it because we're touching customers and they're like, you know, telling us, how do we get that information? And this is how, you know, like I'm opening a new restaurant. I don't know what my top seller is gonna be yet. We have a completely new menu, but we have to start getting the data, right? Like there's no way Bickey can help us without the data. Correct? Yeah, correct. And then I think beyond that too, like some of the things that we think about when someone opens a new concept or opens a new location, it's, if it's a different concept too, the frequency is probably gonna be different, right? Like I'm assuming, I'm making assumptions, but like is the average check, is the, are the prices around the same? Are you expecting average check to be around the same? How do you think about that for this new concept? So this is a more of a cat, like an elevated cafe because it's inside of a museum. So we're definitely at a higher price point and we're gonna be adding alcohol sales. So it's just gonna be an elevated concept.

47:09We're like calling it fromage focused. So it's more of a charcuterie, thank you. Charcuterie, like cheese plate, we're elevating cheese on all different levels. Like we have literally cheese every kind of way. So the idea there is it's a suitable concept for the museum. So we're then working with their marketing team to kind of take their data from their customers and all of the information they have. But like most restaurateurs don't get to open with a space that they know their average customer on certain days. And I feel very lucky to know, okay, on Mondays, it's a homeschool day and there's gonna be parents and kids that are homeschooling coming in on Mondays. And they have very specific target marketing for very specific types of people that come in because they have volunteers and they have schools, they have metro systems that they're connected with. So how does somebody, say I'm opening a restaurant that has no data, I'm just a chef- Brand new. Brand new.

48:13Like what's a good way to start? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think this gets back to a little bit what, honestly, what the problem was when we initially built the platform and I showed it to my mother-in-law. She's like, this is great, I don't really have time to look at all this. You know, and I think my perspective too on that has changed where when you're opening a new, this is why I say like, you know, five, 10 locations starts to be the point where we as a business, where we, our platform actually becomes valuable to you as a business owner. Because, you know, if you're small, if you're smaller, what I used to say to my mother-in-law when she would ask me, what else can I do? What else can I optimize is I could probably help you figure out how to make like one decision a quarter, right? To really change the business and improve the business. But what really matters when you are smaller is consistently executing on the food, on the experience, on the hospitality day in and day out.

49:13Because that at the end of the day is gonna go, like if you don't have that right, the data itself is not gonna help you fix that, you know? And if you are a small, if you're, you know, an independent operator and you're opening your first location, you're basically gonna be living inside those four walls anyway at the beginning, where you're gonna know. Like the data's not gonna tell you anything new. If it's not working, you're gonna know it's not working. If something is working really well, you're gonna know it's working really well. And so, you know, what we tell folks is like, when you're just starting out or if you're a couple units or you're just opening your third unit, just press your gut, press your intuition about the business. You know how to make the food. You know what a good experience looks like. You know how you want your guests to feel after they have your food or leave, you know, leave your establishment. So focus on that and focus on nailing that because that is gonna be way more impactful to your business than anything that our platform can tell you perfectly candidly. But if you wanna take it, you know, a step further and you wanna say, now I wanna market to these people in an ongoing repeatable way, that's where we can start to help out, right?

50:19It's like once you have the basics sort of really nailed as a business and then you say, I wanna put a megaphone on this. I really wanna target people. I wanna get people back in the door who haven't come back and they ordered our gluten-free sandwich and we just made it onto this list. Like that's where, again, that's where we really start to help out and I think where we can help folks move the needle. One last break so we can hear a word from our sponsors. Hello, this is Jen Heidinger Kendrick, founder of Giving Kitchen. Let me tell you a little more. Giving Kitchen is a James Beard award-winning nonprofit that provides emergency assistance to food service workers nationally. Headquartered in Atlanta since 2013, Giving Kitchen has served over 19,000 food service workers and awarded over $12 million to food service workers in crisis. Giving Kitchen helps food service workers that get hurt or sick lose a family member or suffer a housing disaster like a flood or a fire by offering financial assistance to cover rent and utilities.

51:20If you know someone that works in a bar or restaurant that is in crisis, tell them ask for help from Giving Kitchen by visiting givingkitchen.org slash help. Wanna get involved and support Giving Kitchen? Dining with Gratitude in October, GK's month-long campaign where the food service community pledges to raise critical funds and spread the word about their mission. Learn more by clicking the link in this episode's notes, givingkitchen.org slash DWG. We are supported by Robins Insurance, offering protection you can trust. Robins Insurance is an independent insurance agency known across the Southeast for their customized insurance policies, sound guidance and attentive service. They're also known here at Nashville Restaurant Radio for protecting some of Music City's best restaurants. Look, when it comes to insuring your restaurant or bar, you don't wanna leave the job to some strip mall insurance agency with no background in hospitality and expertise in the local market. You need someone who knows the industry, who understands your business, who will create a policy that protects your physical space and protects you and your staff too.

52:31Y'all, Matthew Clements is that guy. He's the agent at Robins Insurance for the hospitality industry. With extensive industry experience himself, Matthew has the knowledge to create a policy that'll protect you and your business no matter what comes your way. Visit Robins website at robinsins.com. That's R-O-B-I-N-S-I-N-S.com to get in touch with him or reach out to Matthew directly at 863-409-9372. Protection you can trust. That's Robins. At What Chefs Want, they deliver the seven most needed product lines to meet the unique needs of chefs and restaurateurs. From local to global, and from staple items to gourmet rarities, they have the variety of products to cover all of your needs. Produce, seafood, meats, gourmet, staples, to-go, and dairy. At What Chefs Want, they're transforming food service by eliminating minimum orders, offering split cases, and providing daily deliveries with 24-7 customer support.

53:36This means chefs have the flexibility to order what they need when they need it. Experiment with new ingredients and keep their kitchens consistently stocked with fresh supplies. It's all about empowering culinary creativity while streamlining operations. Check them out at whatchefswant.com or give them a call at 800-600-8510. And that's what I was thinking, how I could utilize that, knowing that somebody is vegan-focused or has kids. There are certain times to market to certain people, or we have these milkshakes and maybe there's a national milkshake. But if you are vegan, maybe we want a target market to let you know that we make our own vegan ice cream so you can come in for a vegan milkshake. But we do this on Instagram. I mean, it's just not specific enough. And I feel like we're so filtered out at this point. It's like he said earlier, it's like a sniper specifically shooting at a target versus shooting a shotgun into a crowd and hoping that you hit the one person that is the vegan of the 80 people.

54:44Like you can specifically market the one person that's bought the vegan stuff or the 10 people that bought the vegan stuff. And I don't know, I just think this is so fascinating. And I said, you feel dumb because we are so entrenched in the everyday stuff. We're in the day-to-day. You're working in the business. It's hard to work on the business when you're working in the business. I get that. I totally get that. I mean, that's sort of like the same challenge my mother-in-law had day-to-day. That's why, even when she had, I remember it was one weekend and she gets a call and she's like, you need to come with me to the restaurant. It was Saturday, our first child was just born. He was six months old and we were just hanging out together. And she's like, you need to come to the restaurant with me. I was like, why? She's like, the delivery guy just called out sick and the chef called out sick. So I need to make the food and you need to help with deliveries, right? And it's like, in my mind, I was like, I can't believe she has to, her first grandchild, I can't believe she has to sacrifice her Saturday where she was looking forward to spending with him to come in and basically go back to what she was doing when she opened the restaurant.

55:53And at the end of the day, it's like, you could sit there and be like, oh, that sucks. But on the other hand, she knew that she had to step up because she loved it so much and it was her business more than anything, right? It was her brand, her reputation, her guests that she knew she wanted to consistently deliver a great experience for. And if she had to, she'd pull her son-in-law in on a Saturday too to make sure that the deliveries got made. And I think like to your point, it's really hard to pull yourselves up when you're just, again, you're doing hand-to-hand combat on core tactical operations to just deliver on the guest's basic expectations. So I hear you, I know it's like, I think that's why I have so much respect and admiration for folks who dedicate their lives to this craft because of what it asks of you in the long run. Like there are easier ways probably to make a living, but they're probably not as enjoyable in the long run. Yeah, I mean, I would say after 14 years, just on Saturday, I was running a food truck and I've been off the truck for several years.

56:55Like we have a great management team and food truck managers and team. Like I don't have to work the food truck anymore. I'm definitely somebody who is in the kitchen more and in my management role. I was hoisting water, cases of water on that truck. Like I had like six cases of water that I was like hoisting onto the back of that food truck with the line that's like wrapped around the corner. And I'm still doing, that's like, you can never, my daughter's in the car, I'm double parked, in the car seat. I'm like, we're having the security guard. I'm like, hey, can you just watch her really quick? I'm gonna just throw these water cases of water in the back of this food truck. I mean, after 14 years, like I'm telling you, you're still the one. The owner is still the one carrying in the backup, whatever. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. So tech adjacent things, you're probably right there in with everything else that is happening besides Bickey.

57:58What are some, is there any other really cool tech that's coming out for restaurants that you're aware of that you could tell us about? You know, I think it still surprises me. It shouldn't, but it still surprises me that phone orders are still such a large part of the business. I think when you're in tech, you are perhaps too close to this idea of like, everything's going digital and people are gonna be ordering online and delivery is the next big thing. I think we forget that we have some clients who phone orders are still 10, 15% of their business because they're in markets where that's how people prefer to order. And so I look at things like phone automation, like where you just have AI answering the phone, taking the order, it syncs to the POS, it prints the ticket and that frees up a person's time. Instead of being on the phone taking orders, they are in the front of house serving the guests that are in-house, right?

59:00And not giving the in-house guest a bad experience because as we said, more and more people, they either wanna anchor towards convenience or they wanna anchor towards experience. And as people anchor increasingly towards experience, they wanna be taken care of, they wanna make sure, or they wanna feel like they have the person's full attention inside the four walls. And so something like phone automation, it just saves people like time from answering phones, taking orders and it can handle the entire process for you. And I think that is one thing that we've seen whether you're five units or 50 units, or increasingly with the larger brands that have drive-through, like that is a real area of savings to increase throughput, increase order accuracy, have a better guest experience and free up a person's time to serve the guests in store better. And I think that's one really exciting area. Like it's one of the few applications of AI. AI is such a buzzword now in tech in every industry, but it's one of the few applications of AI where I can see a real clear use case that actually makes an operator's life better.

01:00:05And so that's one that I'm really excited about. That's awesome. That's really great because I can say, I mean, the phone, it runs out of battery, like the cordless phone, and it's like no one knows where the phone is, it's ringing, there's so many things like that. And then we're a QSR, so when you walk up, we always tell our counter service, they're entering in the Uber Eats and the DoorDash and they're pulled away from the human connection of the person that parked their car, got out of their car, paid for parking probably, walked in. They should never not be greeted. Like put that down, that's secondary. But it's so hard when they have all these tablets like beep, beep, beep, buzzing so loud, and it causes a sense of anxiety in them, I can tell. So anytime, I feel like, God, if that could just shoot right into the kitchen, like, and they don't have to, I know that that technology is coming out, but we've seen issues with it. So I think maybe we're just maybe at the beginning of that, like where it goes straight into our KDS, you know?

01:01:13KDS, yeah. We have about 12 minutes left, 13 minutes, I know. Like, oh, what else does he know that I don't know? Oh my God, let me. Well, let me answer you. I'm gonna ask you to finish this sentence for me. Ready? Sure. You need Bickey if. Oh, that's a good one. You don't know who your guests are. Oh. You need Bickey if you don't know who your guests are. And I will add a second sentence when you say if you don't know who your guests are, that means how many come for the first time, how many are repeat, how often they come, what they order, and what keeps them coming back. And just as importantly, what causes the loyal ones to stop coming back. All right. You need. That's multiple sentences, but. You need to know who your guests are because. Without it, you're making a lot of assumptions and you don't actually know what's working and what's not and why.

01:02:22So I think that's a, those two things right there are things that get missed every single day in the daily operations of a restaurant. You don't know who your guests are and you miss so much when you don't, you don't know who your guests are. You miss so much when you don't, you don't know what people actually like and you can go to the table and say, did you like it? But again, I think that we fail in that most of the time. I talked about this the other day. I said, when people do guest visits, when a server comes back to the table and I instruct my team that when you walk up to a table, don't say, how is everything? Is everything cooked the way you want to? How many times when a manager or server walks to a table and says, how is everything? What do you say? It's good. It's fine. Great. Thanks. But if somebody walks up and says, here's the thing too, how's your shrimp scampi? If you ask a specific individual question, I think you get much better responses. Go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry, Abhinav. No, I was saying, so I was actually, I was reading a book recently about people's memories and how our memories are just not, are not truthful a lot of the time.

01:03:32Like if you have a week of distance from something, you won't actually accurately remember what happened. You won't accurately remember every little detail of what happened. It's there inside your brain. You just can't recall it if you think about it in terms of a vague generality. And so the trick that this person was talking about was set the stage and set the context with a lot of incidental details that don't matter to actually jog someone's memory and help them put the thing you care about in context with the smaller details. So in the context of that shrimp scampi, you walk up to somebody and be like, even if the sauce is new, you can say, how is that sauce? Like we tried a different kind of tomato. I've never had a shrimp scampi. So I'm vegetarian, so I'm probably way off base here. I'm way off base here, but how was this, my new detail, which is totally incidental to the meal, and it'll jog their actual memory of what they felt when they were eating it, and it'll get you actually higher quality feedback about that specific menu item in terms of the experience that they had.

01:04:37And I think that is one way in the store where you can probably get better feedback, where it's just like, yeah, how's the chair? It's a new cushion that we just started using, and that'll start to give them more context and details about the rest of the experience and the things about the experience that you actually care about. So I would say that's one thing where I've started doing that in my conversations with folks, where it's just like, how'd you feel about this? And like, who are you with? And like, what color was the wall? Just totally incidental details that jog someone's memory because our memories are just historically bad. I would say that's number one. Number two, the interesting thing too, and this is probably more directly to the point that you were talking about, when I'm in the store, I'll say everything was fine. But then a couple of days later, my wife and I will talk and be like, what'd you think about that? And I'm like, it was good, but I wouldn't go back. Because in the moment, I was hungry. And in the moment, the food was probably good. But two days later, I've had time to think about the full experience, the meal, the menu, the cost, the taste of the food.

01:05:42And then I can actually make a better decision about whether or not I would come back. And so I think people just, A, they lie, B, they forget in the moment when they're on the spot being asked for how their experience was. And then they make up their mind really a day or two later when they've had time to digest, and they've had time to make up their own narrative in their heads about how the experience was. So I think these are things that really get missed, unfortunately, just based on the psychology of diners and how we interact with restaurants. I'd say I think that's where ovation is a great job. It was a bit of a ramble, but I hope that made sense. No, that's also true. And as somebody who does cooking classes with kids, I would say that I use that method a lot with children, because you're painting a picture of, you're trying to give them descriptors, because there's so much, you have two seconds of their attention before they're doing something else. And I feel like I do that a lot in my kids' cooking classes when we're talking about, oh, what flavor do you taste?

01:06:43What does that remind you of? And then these are moments, these kids do not forget this, because I think you're drumming up all this emotion, because I think we eat with our emotions. I often go to restaurants of places where I have a fondness for the owner. And I refer to that restaurant as a pronoun. I'm like, oh, her tacos, she's not back there making them. But I have this fondness, and yeah, the food's good and great. It's probably good, and it satiates, whatever. But I would say it's probably not the best, and I probably could try something else, but I have this fondness for this experience that I have, and I think that's what we're always longing for, is the experience and creating that experience. And that's why our team training is so important, because we're trying to give this emotion, this why did I start this business, this everything to them, and then they'll get it maybe 1% or 2%, so that's why it has to be so over the top.

01:07:49And so it's like, we wanna, how do we get that? Yeah, you're right, 80% of people aren't coming back. How do we capture them and have that story to tell, and so they have this fondness and are excited to come back when they come back to visit Nashville? I mean, that's like everything, and I think that's why it's so hard when you have multiple locations, because you can't be everywhere. And that was my experience, because I went from three back to one because of the pandemic, and I think it just, I lost connection with my customer with the pandemic, because everything went to go, you know? Well, I think conversations like these for our listeners to understand you don't know what you don't know, and I think understanding that learning who your guests are and what they're ordering and their motivation behind ordering and what they're willing to spend and what they're going to do is so vital, and just bringing this up and having this conversation is really important, and I wanna thank you for joining us to do that, not to mention everything around Vicky.

01:08:53Yeah. It's such a cool technology. It's honestly, thank you. Like I said, it's my pleasure. I wasn't sure what to expect when I entered the studio, and I was like, oh man, they've been going for 15 minutes already. Sorry, we chat. I was like, no, no, I was like, am I late? But honestly, it's been such a enjoyable conversation, and I think most interestingly, you've asked me questions that I haven't been asked before, which I love, because it puts me on the spot, it puts me on the spot, and the answers probably aren't as crisp as I would have hoped them to be in some occasions, but I think that's a good thing. I think I got you at the beginning, where I said it's kind of unfair for the larger chains who have this information to compete against these smaller restaurants, because you were like, oh shit, I think you, yeah, like that. That is unfair. There was a moment that you were like. Wait, you're right. The restaurants do a great job, but I mean, there's a reality to that. I mean, it isn't fair. I take a responsibility in my position to share this.

01:09:55I mean, hopefully there are restaurateurs out there who hear this and go, I don't know who my guest is. I don't know what I'm doing. And maybe they look into Bickey. Maybe they actually start intentionally identifying what this is, and they're creating strategies around it. I hope that that is the, that's the vision of what I'm here to do. So thank you for joining. This is amazing. We do one final thing. It is the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. So you get to say the last thing today. Take us out, whatever you want to say, and then we're gonna do another two minutes after this to kind of wrap, and then we'll have this out everywhere. So Gordon Food Service Final Thought is on you. Go. Yeah, wow. Okay, so I've been watching a show on Netflix called One Day, and the biggest lesson that that show has taught me, I highly recommend it. Only 12 episodes or 14 episodes, about 40 minutes each. The biggest lesson I've learned in the last week that I've really been reflecting on is how precious every moment is, how precious every minute is.

01:11:01That's who you spend your time with. That's what you choose to work on. That's when you choose to sleep and, you know, show empathy for yourself to wake up in the morning so that you can renew your efforts with your relationships, with your business, with your work. So every moment is precious. I am thankful that I get to spend every second of my day with people I love and also working on a company and a mission that I love. And I think no more, in no other industry is that more clear than when I meet restaurant operators and in the restaurant industry. So love every minute, enjoy every minute, live your life to the fullest and just take it one day at a time and you'll end up building a good life that way. I love it. What a great final thought. That was perfect. That was fantastic. Abhinav, thank you for joining us today and thank you for creating this amazing technology for restaurants to really succeed. It's really amazing. I look forward to seeing you next time you're in Nashville. Look us up.

01:12:02We'd love to have you. Please. Yes, it would be our honor. 100%, we'll do. All right, man, take care. Thank you both, appreciate it. All right, bye-bye. Be well. That was so cool. Wow. Like I just, every time I talk to somebody like that, I feel, I'm like, oh, I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough. I feel this shame. Like, welcome over. I'm like, oh, I could do so much more than I'm doing. Oh, yeah. I mean, but isn't that a good feeling? I never want to know. I never want to feel, content is the death of growth. 100%. No, I'm, and with what I'm looking to do in January. Yeah. Well, yeah, you're like a sponge right now. 100% everything I want to be doing. And we're going to talk about that at another time, but like, this would be something that, this whole conversation around what Nashville has and doesn't have as far as information. All that information together. And somebody to go and call all of that and bring the technology to help you learn your guest data and then what to do with it.

01:13:06Getting a better price maybe because it's grouped in. We need to be able to, as a collective here in Nashville, we need to be able to compete with the chains. These companies have more money than they know what to do with. And they're coming into Nashville and they're the ones driving up the rents and they can negotiate really big deals because they've got a hundred restaurants and I get this on pennies on the dollar and I'm an independent restaurant who gets, who has a tiny walk-in cooler because I need that extra space for this extra seat and I can't buy big full case of everything and I'm just struggling. And they're able to pay their employees more and management more because it's a corporate system and they offer better stock options and benefits. Oh, it's amazing. We can't compete with that. We have to be able to compete with that. I think that if anything, the thing that came out to me in this episode is how ill-equipped independently-owned and operated restaurants are to compete in the big boy world. Like in the big boy, big girl world, everyone will look at it.

01:14:07But like, Nashville's a huge city and there's a lot going on here and there's big companies coming here that will swallow all of us whole. Can you talk about some of the closures? You know, with Cinema announcing that they're closing. Cinema just announced, yeah. That was, I mean, and who else? There was another one that just announced Portland Brew is also closing in 12 South because they're not renewing their, you know, their lease and- 12 South and Josephine, same sort of situation. It's just so expensive. Josephine, same situation. Same situation. And if I'm a small company trying to stay competitive and be able to pay that kind of rent, I can't continue to pay what I'm paying for all of my goods and services because these, like I said, this technology is available. He was funny because he was kind of thrown off there when I said, isn't it unfair? If you focus on five to 10 restaurant groups use Vicky the best. And everything he described on the intro was like things that small restaurants would just love on little LTO stuff.

01:15:09And this is why he started it for his mother-in-law. And for one company, but then they realized that, hey, if I got a guy sitting in an office who could really go pour through this data, I could do some- But then she didn't have the time. You know what I mean? Like he was the one giving her the information and how to do it. And I think that's the point. Like she still needed to go in and be the cook that day after so many years and didn't have the time, you know? And so that I think as we evolve, if we make our voice heard and what we need, I think there will be maybe some kind of, you know, AI generated summary of how we can utilize this without having to pour over so much data, but it summarizes for us what we can do. You know, maybe it just like we have to ingest it better. Like it can't be this huge thing where we like take days to like process. I think that's a baby step that is after we recognize what we need first. Oh, absolutely.

01:16:10It's like, yeah, get Becky, do these things, have the technology. It's relatively, as I was playing in Becky earlier today, like you just set some things and it will show you. It's not that hard to do. It's not hard to use. It's not hard to use. To understand the full scope of what you can do with Becky, you'd need like a eight hour training session. Yeah, see? It would be like a full day of training that you would need to get that. And then you have, then it'll go back and pull data from the past too. It's not like it, oh, I started today. Like it'll pull the last two years worth of data. So you can immediately go back and look and see what you're doing. I thought the menu item, like of the top sellers versus what brings people back was really interesting. It's really interesting data. All right. You made a good point though with the like description on the menu. Cause you know, that's somebody else's job. Oh, the pork chop with the local honey. But then it comes out and it like falls flat and no one ever orders it again. But it's a top seller. We can't take that off the menu. Like, whoa. But execution is inconsistent and maybe the product doesn't get, you know, like there's so many factors to that.

01:17:13And where it is on the menu, the people read menus from the, actually the bottom left up down and they look at the middle of the menu last, that top left corner, like where their eyes go and they have stars and dogs and all these different, you know, you may have like, I love. There's so much to it that people don't realize. When I was at Amerigo, my favorite dish on the menu was the veal salt and bokeh. Right? Amazing dish. The veal salt and bokeh at Amerigo was one of the best things I've ever had. You know what the number one seller was? Spaghetti and meatballs or the chicken margarita, which was angel hair grilled chicken mozzarella and you pick your sauce. You know, it was like a, which is the most vanilla safe thing in the world. The best thing was the veal salt and bokeh. That brought people back. You had that and you're like, oh, I gotta come back and have this. You can't get this anywhere else. But nobody would have, nobody, you can, but like people, not the way that they did it. Not the way they did it. No, it was really good. But that's one of those items that you don't sell a ton of, but does that bring, that's the thing you should recommend. You can look at that data.

01:18:13You get that data from Vicky. I have to go because I have a meeting in nine minutes that I cannot be late for. On the other side, just not far. Not very far, but this was so much fun. Thank you for bringing him on. I would have never, like, I love it. I love it. Stay tuned, Nashville and Atlanta. I'm gonna put this out in Atlanta. Awesome. Hi, Atlanta. We're working on something that is going to cover a lot of this. I know, I'm excited. I appreciate it. Yes, you know about it. I know, I know about it, but I, and I appreciate all the work you're putting into this. But yes, we're on that later. It's gonna be great. I'm excited. All right, we will talk to you all later. Thank you for tuning in today. We hope that you guys are being safe. Stay cheesy, Nashville. Love you guys. Bye, we can wave today. Bye, find us on YouTube.