Dan Burkard

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host, Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Here we go again. We've taken about a 10 day break from the last time that we spoke, the last time we had an episode. Today we're talking with Dan Burkhardt who is, him and his wife Michelle run Wicked Tasty. So Wicked Tasty is a handle on Instagram at Wicked Tasty and they have a podcast and they've got a really cool kind of a blog on Instagram. And they also run a company called Menu, which is a pretty cool QR code menu that you can use in your restaurant.

01:06So we get into all of that and I'm excited to talk to Dan. The first I do during the interview with Dan, we talk about Brandon's Book Club. So this is brand new and you know, as the director of operations for the Greenhouse Grill and Maribol, one of the things I do is I read books. I read books all the time and I read books with other people. So both general managers at both places, I have different books going with them. I read different books with the owner. We're always going through these things and I wanted to set up an opportunity to really work with the service staff, the kitchen staff and everybody else and get them involved with reading all of these books and kind of as a leadership development plan. So I started Brandon's Book Club. It's going to start today, March 1st, 2021 and we're going to start with John Miller's QBQ, the question behind the question. It's a super easy book. It's about an hour and a half read. It's an hour audio book at 1.5 and it's just a great little book to start with and what we're going to do is at the end of the month, we're going to do a Zoom call.

02:15We can all get on the Zoom. I'm hoping I can get the author to come on and talk with us as well, but we're going to get on the Zoom. We're going to talk about the book, what you thought about it, what were some of your favorite parts. Then we'll put that out as a podcast. We're going to have some fun with it, so keep your eye out for that. I also made an Instagram handle for it at Brandon underscore NRR underscore book club. I also have my Brandon NRR Instagram handle, so please go and follow both of those. If you want to join the book club, it's free. No, it doesn't cost anything. I'm not charging a penny for it. Just jump in. I'm hoping to bring some really good books to people that can follow along and read and talk about it. It's going to be leadership based, growth based, as well as restaurants. We may read some chef memoirs and some fun things. This will be ongoing. There's the Facebook group that we have, which was formerly the Nashville Restaurant Radio Insiders is now Brandon's book club.

03:19You can go in there and we can post different things, talk about it. It's going to be a lot of fun. So if you're a manager and you want to get your staff involved, you want to get other people involved, it doesn't cost a thing. You just got to buy the book or you guys can all jump in together and form your own little book club with it. But hopefully this will be a guideline to help develop people as we go along on this exciting journey that is life. Speaking of the exciting journey that is life, I've had an interesting past 10 days. I've been to California, spent a few days in California with my family, got to spend some time with my grandfather, my grandpa Bill, and he passed away this past Thursday. And I was there with him on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. And the first time in my life that I've actually had to sit with somebody and hold their hand and tell them goodbye was a very, very emotional week for me this week.

04:30And that's why you really haven't seen a show because I've been out and I've got a bunch of shows coming up and I don't even know why I mention it. It's just been so heavy on my heart and it's just been such a tough thing. I just I've got a bunch of stuff coming up, but this man was so incredibly special to me. You know, I have an older brother who's an amazing guy, but he's two and a half years older. He's always bigger, faster, stronger. You know, and I had other grandparents that would always tell me that, you know, hey, your your brother's bigger, faster, stronger than you. Which if you're, you know, a kid can definitely give you a complex. And my grandpa Bill was always the one who every single night would tell me like, hey, you're enough, you're good, like you you're OK. And he would hold me and he would tell me that everything's going to be all right. And, you know, through many years of therapy, I realized just how much that meant, just how much it meant for somebody to tell you that you're OK.

05:38You know, there's so much doubt that we feel and there's so much bullshit right now that we see on social media and like sometimes it's it's just so validating for somebody just to tell you like, hey, you're OK. And this gentle, most amazing, godly man we lost this week was that guy for me my entire life. And it's been tough. It's been incredibly sad. But there's anything I can learn from this. I don't think I have to learn something, but it's that I'm OK. You know, sometimes I'm too hard on myself and I don't I got to get a show out or I got to do this or I got to do that. I've got three jobs and all these different things that I'm doing. And sometimes it's OK just to take a step back and realize that, hey, you're enough. I don't know who's listening to this or who needs to hear that right now, but you're enough. It's OK. Like you're you're you're good man, woman, whoever you are listening right now.

06:41And it's just something that I wanted to tell you. And I wanted to share what my last 10 days have been like. It's great to see family. It's nice to get a little bit of a break and travel across the country. Airplanes are completely packed. It's a little scary. Airports look like pre-pandemic airports. But anyway, we are we're back. We're excited for a good week this week. We are going to be talking with Sean from Hi-Fi Cookies. We're going to be talking to Zaire, who is the owner of It's a Philly Thing in Bellevue. I'm hoping to have another guest come on. I haven't quite confirmed it yet, but she's a she's a big one here in town. And I'm really excited to talk to her. Not going to say who it is yet, because I don't want to jinx that we're going to get to speak. So that's going to be coming real soon. Enjoy this episode. Very excited today to welcome in Dan Burkhard, who's the co-founder of Wicked Tasty and the founder of Menu. Welcome in, Dan.

07:52Thanks for having me, Brandon. Well, this is pretty exciting. So when I say Wicked Tasty, you're the co-founder of Wicked Tasty. Who's the other co-founder? How did this tell me about Wicked Tasty? Yeah, so that would be my fiancee, Michelle. She's actually the one who came up with the Instagram handle at Wicked Tasty. And that was like 2017, 2018. So a few years before we actually launched the brand down here in Nashville. So we're essentially a food blog that covers the Nashville restaurant and bar scene. We have a strong emphasis on featuring the locally owned and independently operated restaurants across town. So we really like to feature the chef driven concepts, the concepts that are owned here by local Nashvilleans or people that live in the central Tennessee area. So that's what's the deal with the Wicked Tasty brand. How did the idea come about? So it's kind of a jumbled story. So the idea for coming up with the name Wicked Tasty, I think Michelle and I were literally just at a bar one day and we were just drinking.

08:53And one of her friends has a big Instagram page up in Connecticut. And she's like, we should start an Instagram page. So she's like, I'm just going to get this handle. And we literally did nothing with it for a few years. So that's how the actual handle came about and the name came about. But Michelle and I were living in Connecticut at the time. And then in 2019, an opportunity presented itself for me to leave the corporate world and for us to move down here to Nashville. So we moved to Nashville in May 2019, quit my job. And my lifelong dream had always been to be an entrepreneur. And I wanted to do something cool, but I didn't know exactly what that was going to be. We had visited Nashville three years in a row and we love the city. We love the culinary scene here, the bar scene here. And so we're like, why don't we use that Wicked Tasty Instagram and try to create something? Not that the goal was to become an influencer, a blogger, et cetera, and make that be like my entrepreneurial vision, but it was a way to learn the industry, get connected within the industry to sort of find the passion and find an opportunity. So that's how the whole Wicked Tasty genesis happened.

09:53And then from there, we could talk a little bit about Menu, but we sort of have pivoted over the last last year when COVID hit to building a brand new concept to really help restaurants, local restaurants in Nashville through our new platform, Menu. I want to get to Menu, but there's so much more before we get to Menu. I want to go back. You said that you left the corporate world. What were you doing in the corporate world? So this is going to be really exciting for you and all your viewers. I was a sales guy who sold data products to banks. So it was incredibly, incredibly riveting career. You know, a lot of stuffy boardrooms with, you know, old old men and talking, talking bank financials, it was there was a lot of fun. That sounds just like a barrel of monkeys. Yeah, it was awesome. But now, honestly, like it was a really cool career. I got to travel a shit ton. Can I swear on here? Of course. Yeah, whatever you want to do. All right. I got to travel a bunch, but I sort of burned myself out doing that, and it really took a toll on me, like personally, like mentally, physically.

11:03And it just wasn't wasn't something that I could sustain doing long term. And my dream, it always, like I said, to be an entrepreneur. So I got into doing sales because I was an introvert. I sucked at talking to people. I hated talking to people. And I knew that if I ever wanted to be an entrepreneur, I have to be able to be the lead guy, the sales guy for my company, be able to articulate my vision and talk to people, sell people on what I'm trying to do. So it was sort of something that I almost put myself through as like getting an MBA and in that part of that part of business. So it was something that I felt I had to do, but it wasn't something that I necessarily was passionate about. But it sort of set the foundation for me to bring me out of my shell, teach me some valuable business skills. And at the same time, I, you know, was saving up a bunch of money to eventually make the leap into entrepreneurship. Wow. OK, so what did you have like a dream when you were a kid? What did you want to do when you were a kid? What is your dream job? I didn't. So my dream job had always been to be an entrepreneur, and I didn't have like a specific industry or like a specific product that I wanted to create.

12:09But I always just looked up to small business owners and always just thought that it was fascinating to me that someone could go out and open a restaurant, open an accounting firm, open a dry cleaning business, whatever it is. I just always thought that it was cool that someone could do that. And I was always like interested in figuring out like how someone goes on that journey to do that and like what it takes. Like, I always just thought like, wow, you must be like a super special person in order to be able to to do that. You have to be blessed with all this credible knowledge and you have to know all these things. There's no way like an ordinary person can do that. But, you know, I think that I've learned that that's not the case and really just takes hard work. But that's always been my lifelong goal, my lifelong goal. And, you know, I did things like starting a neighborhood newspaper when I was a kid. In college, I actually started a distributorship for a glass bottle soda company that was had been around central Connecticut for over 100 years, but hadn't really gone out of that tiny little region. And so I helped them expand into new markets. So it's always been my goal and my dream to to create something and build something. And that's sort of led us here to Nashville and led us to what we're doing now.

13:18What is Michelle? You said your name is Michelle, your wife? Michelle. Yep. Yep. And she is what does she do? So she's in the insurance industry. Another very exciting. Like, yeah, you guys are on fire with these sexy jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Health insurance, too. So it's even more fun. So, yeah, she works for a large health insurance company as an underwriter. And that's her full time job. But she does help me out with stuff on Wicked Tasty and Menu and her off hours. So she's been awesome. Awesome. So you moved to Nashville in 2000 and you say 19, 2019, May of 2019. Yeah. So a little less than two years ago. You've got this handle, Wicked Tasty, and you guys just start eating around town, taking pictures and posting about it. And you did a podcast, too, right? Do you do a podcast? Yeah, actually, we just jump started our podcast yesterday. So we had done two seasons prior to Covid and then Covid hit. And we were in the process of launching the photography business, like I mentioned.

14:21And then we started pivoting over to the menu stuff and everything just kind of got really crazy. So we sort of put a pause on the podcast. But recently, I've started talking with different chefs and entrepreneurs and people in the food industry. And it's really just ignited my passion to get those stories out there again and sort of take a different, different spin. So in the past, we had really focused on the local Nashville entrepreneurs and restaurant owners this new season going forward. I've really found passion in data and marketing and branding. And what goes in behind the scenes of creating a restaurant concept, creating a restaurant brand, scaling that, growing that. So that's sort of the angle we're taking with it this year. But yeah, we have the Instagram. We have the podcast. We had a blog, sort of shut that down, too, when Covid hit. I'm trying to jumpstart that as well. You got a lot of a lot of irons in the fire. Yeah, that's kind of put out as much as we can. Have you ever like I want to get like just some of your favorite places.

15:22I am going to get to the menu piece, because that's mainly what I want to talk about today, because there's so much there. I think really good, interesting stuff. If you own a restaurant or if you work in a restaurant, I think so many people miss the menu side, but we'll get into that in just one second. OK, so favorite places in town, what's the first place you ate at? Is that where's your favorite place to go? Do you have a favorite area? Let's talk about Nashville food scene. Yeah, so we live in the gulch. So we eat around the gulch a lot just because everything is walking distance. But first meal we ever had in Nashville as Nashville, Nashvillians, I guess, is was at Burger Republic. We love their burgers, great burgers. First meal we ever had in Nashville was in 2016. We had just gotten off the plane. Our Airbnb wasn't ready. We had our luggages in tow and we got dropped off at Frothy Monkey downtown. We are huge fans of Frothy Monkey. We love we love them. Amazing food.

16:24So you know, you know, Frothy Monkey has a bakery also, did you know that? But they deliver bread to restaurants just as a free plug to Frothy Monkey. If you're out there and you need to buy fresh bread on a daily basis, Frothy Monkey would deliver to your restaurant. Check them out. Couple of places that we always bring people when we have guest visits. Pegleg Porker is one of our favorite spots, and that's right around the corner from us. Great barbecue. We're big fans of Hattie B's Hot Chicken, which I know like to some like OG Nashvillians and people that live here. You know, there's always the hot chicken wars of what's the best, what's the original, what's the first, blah, blah, blah. But we really love Hattie B's. I mean, all the hot chicken we've had around town is great. But we've just always had had a great time at Hattie B's. Daddy's Dogs is another place that we love to bring people. It's actually like when my parents came to visit for the first time, over New Year's, my mom, like the two places that she requested was Pegleg Porker and Daddy's Dogs. She's from Brooklyn.

17:25So she grew up with like the Coney Island, Nathan's Hot Dogs stuff. And she always sees the pictures we post of Daddy's Dogs. And she's like, I need that. She's like, I know a good hot dog. Like, I need that. And like we brought her and she loved it. So Sean's awesome over there, too. Big Daddy. Yeah, I mean, the literally the list could go on. I don't think that there's been a place in Nashville that we've eaten at that we haven't liked. Like, literally, literally, like, I don't know. I can't think of any off the top of my head. And I wouldn't say who it was anyways. But I can't think of think of any off the top of my head that we haven't enjoyed our experience at Nashville. I think it's a special city for the culinary arts. It really is. Have you been to you seem to like sandwiches? I see a lot of pictures of like hand sandwiches, burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, hot chicken sandwiches. Have you been to East Side Bond Me yet? No, I have not been there. I'm putting that on the list now. You need to put that on your list right now.

18:26And you're going to send me a special message and you're going to go, dude, that was legit. And then you're going to now be hooked and you're going to eat there. You're going to start bringing your mom there when she comes down. Because they're featuring they're doing a thing right now where they're featuring different chefs. They're featuring a Sean Brock on me right now. And they've got just some really good stuff going on. Chad and Gracie are good, good people. And they're doing amazing stuff over there. So do you go to the East Side much? Do you go over that area very much? We don't make it over there as much as we'd like to. They're in Germantown or like the two neighborhoods that like we have probably a list this long of places we need to get to that we just we just haven't been to. It's a thing. I mean, there's you have to be intentional about getting over there, but there's so many great locally owned and operated places in East Nashville. And they, of course, still reeling from the tornado in March, like in a pandemic, like I tell people downtown and East Nashville, Germantown, like those three places right now are the places to go eat just because of the pandemic and the tornado.

19:31They're just still reeling. So it's a should definitely go check them out. Pelican and Pig and all those places, too. Yeah, fantastic. OK, so one of the things have you have you worked in a restaurant before? Have you been like never? Hospitality is 100 percent new to me. Like, obviously, I've eaten in restaurants. If I tilt the camera down a little bit more, you viewers would definitely agree. But yeah, I've eaten in restaurants, but no, I've never, never worked in the industry, knew nothing about it. I think that's actually been the coolest thing about like starting my show and speaking with chefs and and people who have opened restaurants is I I feel like from an industry outsider, there's this preconceived notion that like anyone that cooks food can open a restaurant. And that's like one of the biggest lie. One of the biggest lies ever is like that's like honestly, I would say that's probably like 10 percent of what it actually takes to open a restaurant. Like just because you can cook good food is not a guarantee of any sort of success or anything. And I think that's the thing that's been amazing.

20:33Like getting involved in this industry is seeing behind the scenes what goes into actually creating creating a successful concept. Well, there's a lot. I mean, there's there's so much that goes into it. And I think it's it's unique and fun that somebody that's not. You know, I think that we restaurant veterans, you know, can get jaded sometimes and we start we build calluses and we kind of get these opinions that are hard to shake. And sometimes sometimes those things can be detriments to people. And I love the fact that you have I think that's cool that you're jumping in and you're learning so much. And I think it's always good to have a different, fresh perspective. And I love what you're doing. I think it's so cool that you're talking to chefs. You're talking to entrepreneurs. And I'm sure it's a learning process for you as much as it is for them to hear somebody not necessarily outside of business, but somebody looking in going, hey, I think I can help. I have that spirit. I have let me let me I don't I'm not jaded by anything. I have a fresh perspective. And I think that's something that a lot of people need.

21:35Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, I I agree. Like, I always think a fresh perspective is welcome. And I think that I mean, what we're doing with business, too, like we're always seeking out people that have a different opinion than us or people that might not even be doing anything near what we're doing, but just to see what they think about what we're doing or if they could share their perspective on how they've done, what they've done is always incredibly helpful. And like the more different perspectives and different sets of views you can get on your business, whether it's a restaurant or anything else is incredibly important. Are you a are you a reader? Do you read lots of books? I do. I wouldn't call myself a reader. I'm not like a bookworm where I'm powering through, you know, a book a day or a book a week. But I I try I try to read as much as I can. And I really love reading books on both recently the hospitality industry. I'm really trying to just get inside the mind of what's going on with with restaurateurs and people who run restaurants. But also just any general business books I really enjoy and books about human psychology and stuff like that.

22:37Yes, I'm with you. I'm I'm actually starting something March 1st. I'm announcing it right now. You hear this, Dan? I'm making the announcement right now. I haven't announced to anybody yet. March 1st, we're going to start Brandon's Book Club. Love it. And I'm going to start doing a book every single month that we're going to listen to, read whatever you want to do. And at the end of the month, we're going to do a massive zoom for everybody in the book club. And we're going to talk about it. Hopefully get the author to come on and talk with us about the book. But it's going to be, you know, culinary books, leadership books, just different things that I'm going to facilitate for you, mainly for my teams, my restaurants, but for leadership, leadership development and culinary education. But we're going to start doing this. We're going to do a zoom that's going to be like an hour long zoom. I'm going to turn it into a podcast. We're going to put it out there so that everybody can kind of glean whatever they want to off this. But it's going to be interesting. I'm going to open up to everybody. So, yes, we're going to do a book club, Brandon's Book Club, starting March 1st.

23:37Do you have a book for the first month already picked out? Yep. We are going to be doing QBQ by John Miller. The question behind the question. And John has been on our show before and his book. It's an hour long read, maybe a two hour read if you're taking your time with it. But it's not a long book. It's a pretty easy book to read, but it's about personal accountability and ending victim thinking. So how do I internalize what's going on and how can I be in better control of myself and understand things I'm doing? And it's just a it's basic, but it's so vital. And so anybody listens, go back and listen the episode with John Miller. You'll get a big head start. I'm hoping to get him back on the show on the zoom to kind of talk with everybody about their findings. That's awesome. Fun stuff, huh? Yeah, I think I think a book club is a great idea. I love that. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know what?

24:38There's so many books I do with I'm reading like four different books with people right now, like both my general managers. I read a book with and I talk about it with them. You own the restaurant. We read a book with our chef and then I read books with like my wife. And it's like, I got so many. I always want to narrow that into one and then we'll do everybody. We'll just all talk about it together and have fun with it because. I get a lot of this in the podcast. I get to talk to a lot of people and I get a lot of different perspectives. But reading a book with a group of people and kind of getting what everybody else thinks about it, I think is just so fun. And it's just such a wow, I didn't even see that part of it when I was reading. Or maybe I was walking my dog and I missed a part of it. And you really got something. So I'm just excited to really get into some of that stuff. And hopefully we can help some people, some people, some reason books they didn't know about or work into and they can really get into it. We can have some fun with it. Well, that's why I love the idea, because I think the hardest part about reading is finding a book that like is an actual good book by an author who knows what he's talking about, because anyone can write a book.

25:40And like you just want to make sure also, like the content you're reading is quality. So I always try to ask people like, oh, have you read any good books on this or that or whatever? And I feel like it's really hard to find it. Like you can Google like books about management, books about leadership on Amazon and you'll get like 50 books. So you go to Google and it's like everyone has different reviews of different books. So I think having a club where, you know, the books are somewhat vetted and you have other people who are reading this that they can share their perspective on the book is is really helpful. Want to give someone a shout out. So Sam Remboldt, she runs Fancy Sips. It's a virtual cocktail studio. She has her own personal website. And I was on there the other day and I noticed that she has like the book she's currently reading and she's a bookworm and she reads a bunch about business. And I thought that was awesome because I'm like, oh, I've seen a few of them or read a few of them, but I'm like that one I haven't heard of. I'm going to pick that up, that up, you know. So I think that's always cool, like when people actually share what they're reading, because especially people that I respect, you know, just their opinions. So I love that idea.

26:40I love a book club idea. And I think that's going to be a lot of fun. So if you want to, I would love for Dan, I'd love for you to commit right now to be my first member of the book club. You got me. Yes. All right. Good news. What I'm going to do is I've got a website or I've got a Facebook page. It is called the Nashville Restaurant Radio Insiders. And it's a Facebook group that people can go in and it's kind of where we the idea was to discuss ideas for the show of people to feed me information, to talk about the roundup. What do we need to do? You know, anything that's happening in the industry, just an insider's guide to helping form this show. If you wanted to help out, join the group. So I'm going to change that group. The group doesn't necessarily work that way. I'm going to change that group to being the Brandon's Book Club group. And then if you want to be part of the book club, join that group. Go to the Nashville Restaurant Radio Insiders and join that group. And that will change on March 1st over to Brandon's Book Club.

27:42And that's going to be a lot of fun. Month two, I haven't decided month two yet. We'll kind of get into it, but I kind of want to make it something that's culinary based, maybe, you know, like David Chang's Eat a Peach or something that is just his memoir. And I think that he goes through so much. He talks about mental health and bipolar disorders and alcoholism and then opening restaurants and all of that. So I think that'd be a fun, interesting way to move into the next week or the next month. But month one, QBQ, John W. Miller. And that's going to start off March 1st. So there you go. Thanks for letting me turn your episode into an ad for my new book club. I didn't plan on doing that. Well, thanks for inviting me to the club. Yeah, happy to have you. So you have transitioned. So we've gone through a pandemic and the beginning of the pandemic, you had all these plans going into 2020.

28:44You're less than a year into Nashville. You've got Wicked Tasty. You're doing great. You're having a good time. Pandemic hits. You have pivoted to Menu. Tell me about Menu. Yeah. So like you said, we had plans to do something completely different prior to the pandemic. So we are running the Wicked Tasty page. We felt that we had a really good grasp on social media and how to build an effective social media platform. Specifically through Instagram, we had grown to, I think, 5,000 followers or something by just we launched in June 2019. And by the end of 2019, I think we were close to 5,000 followers or something. So we're like, we have a good grasp on how to organically grow a page. And that's not like we didn't use follower loops or follow unfollowing, all those kind of hacking strategies. It was literally organic from posting quality content and engaging with the community and stuff like that. So we felt we had a good grasp there. I was getting into photography a little bit. I'd never picked up a camera before we did Wicked Tasty. And so I was really enjoying doing photography.

29:46And I'm like, let's go ahead and start some sort of business, even if it's not a big thing, just to help restaurants with photography and social media. Then obviously, you reference COVID hit and our plan sort of went out the window. So we were sitting around and we were like, all right, we got to pivot. We got to do something. I feel like I'm ready to take that next step and actually build a business leveraging the Wicked Tasty brand. And that had always been the goal from the beginning is use Wicked Tasty to build a brand, get our name out there in Nashville, and also learn about the industry and about social media and everything. But we were sitting on our patio one day and we had just walked by a restaurant here in the Gulch and they had a big sign out front with a QR menu, check out our menu, scan our menu. And I was like, that's interesting. You've never seen that before. This is when restaurants just started reopening. And we were thinking about it. I'm like, I bet a lot of restaurants are going to go back, go to this. And when restaurants started opening up, they started going to the QR menus because people didn't want to touch menus. There was guidelines where you were giving them menus.

30:47They either had to be disposable, which is expensive, or they had to be clean between every guest. And that's difficult to do. So restaurants went to QR menus. One of the things that really sucked about them is they basically uploaded their PDF menu onto their website and gave it to their guests on a smartphone, which really sucked. It's not an optimal way to view a menu. A lot of pinching, zooming, scrolling, you have to go back and forth. It's really tough to read. And we're like, there's got to be a better way for restaurants to leverage this technology. And I was like, well, we're good at taking pictures. We understand the value that pictures bring to the culinary industry, specifically restaurants and bars, seeing food sells food. So why not marry that into a digital menu? So that's where the idea for menu came about. We started tinkering, building it out a front end platform on Wix just to have a proof of concept. We launched with Stock and Barrel, our first data partner in the early fall of 2020. And we recently launched over at AVO in West Nashville, which I think is probably around where you live, Brandon, and then also Fat Bottom over in the nations as well.

31:56We have a few other beta partners that we're working with too. And we're planning on launching our full platform in April of this year. So a couple of weeks we'll have it live. And there's some cool stuff we're doing on the back end of the platform that our development team's building out. We're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. When talking about what chefs want, really the question is, how do they do it? No fees, no fuel charges, no surcharges, never. This allows you to order as much or as little as you need, as often as you need. Seven day delivery, access products every day, trimming your waste, increasing your valuable shelf life, and allowing you fresher product. 24-7 customer support, call, text, chat, email, anytime from anywhere. They take a team approach to serving you at 800-600-8510 or whatchefswant.com. They have very diverse product lines.

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34:05So check him out. Go to our website at NashvilleRestaurantRadio.com. Click the sponsors tab. Find the link for Supersource and if you sign up there, you will get three free months of dish machine rentals right now. You can also check them out at Supersource.com or you can call Jason Ellis directly at 770-337-1143. That is so cool. That is so cool that you found this niche and a way to help restaurants. So what you're saying is what you're doing is you're taking pictures of the menu items and you're putting what the menu item is. So when you scan that QR code, it's not just a PDF of somebody's menu that you want to look at the appetizers you have to like scroll and pinch and zoom. It's a mobiley rendered version that you can see a picture of the dish and then there's a description in the price and all that stuff. Yep, that's exactly it. I can share my screen or I could just kind of like flip this over here.

35:07So this is like what we did for Fat Bottom. This is their cocktails and we actually go to their food menu. So do you go and take all the pictures? No, so actually a lot of them had already had pictures or sent the pictures over to us. We do have a photographer in town that we're working with. So if any of our clients need pictures, we have a photographer, Christy Hunter, who runs Photo Walk the Gulch. So they're a photo experience here in Nashville. So she is going to be our photographer and she's giving restaurants an awesome deal on a full menu shoot and some other stuff as well. Wow, so that's, I mean, as far as what I'm seeing when it comes down to digital and how people are buying food, everything is online. I think they say 75% of people before they go somewhere, they look at a menu before they decide to go eat there. Kids today are born with an iPhone. I think they come out of the womb with an iPhone and they're like Googling things.

36:13If you think about Generation Z and how they're going to order food. I mean, I said this a long time ago. In 2018, I said by 2021, I'll bet 75% of food is being eaten outside of restaurants. That was my hypothesis. In 2018, I said that. Now we get to 2021 or 2020. Who knew that by 2020 that would happen? It would take a pandemic to make it happen. But it really just accentuated what I saw coming anyway, is that the digital world, everybody has a phone. Have you ever been in a room with somebody and asked a question? Like, hey, do you guys know how many centimeters is in nine feet? Everybody can tell you within like 30 seconds. They go, hey, Siri, how many centimeters in nine? Everybody has a phone that can just find it. So if you say, hey, I'm hungry. What do you guys want to eat? Everybody just goes, oh, well, I'll just look right here. What do you got? And they just do that. So when you look at how people are envisioning and how they're looking at your content, they're looking at your menu.

37:17I don't think there's anything more important than you can do than to have something like what you're doing. I mean, to have a picture of the actual menu item and then the description of menu item, rendered so that anybody can clearly see not only read what it is, but they can see what the food looks like. I mean, that's absolutely brilliant. Is there anybody else doing this? Yeah, there's definitely other people out there that are doing pictures on a menu. I mean, even if you think about like any of the food delivery services, they all have little pictures on the menu. I think what makes ours different is again, kind of like what I showed here is like we're really trying to capture the entire screen with these pictures here. So display three or four pictures at a time as like the big background. So like I said, almost like an Instagram feed, right? So you're getting like almost a square block. We use four by three, but a block of picture in the background versus what you get on a lot of like the food delivery apps or other digital menus that are offering pictures is typically a small little icon or a small little square in the corner, which isn't necessarily an ideal way to again, see the food.

38:23It's more to give a representation, I guess, than to actually see what the dish looks like. Okay, so menu engineering is another aspect of, so that we're going to go back to like 1940. It seems like 2018 when you look at a menu and there's actual psychology behind it, right? So if you have a menu that just opens up, right? So where you put the appetizers, where you put the entrees, where you put the items you really want to sell actually makes a difference. Whether or not you have a dollar sign makes a difference. When people see a dollar sign, their brain, the neurotransmitters start working and it makes them think that they're spending money, right? So the idea is take dollar signs off, put a round number. People see it, they go, oh, $12 not, I'm spending $12. They just see a number 12 and they can scroll down and go 12. A lot of people buy food based upon price, but if you can lessen descriptions, there's so much psychology behind it. People read a menu, they start, I think, top left, they go down and then they go across to the top right and then down and then kind of back towards the middle.

39:31It's how most people read a menu. So you want to put the most profitable items in the places the most eyeballs are going to see, right? So the items, if you're an Italian restaurant, everybody who's anybody will probably order the spaghetti if you put it in a certain spot on the menu. You want to put the spaghetti down in a place where that's the last place they're going to look and put your veal piccata or your salt and bokeh, these amazing dishes that you want people to eat in the right places. So what we have to do in the old days is we've got to go in, we've got to run a product mix, we've got to see how many items that we've sold and then you go through your menu and you identify your top 10 moving items and you circle where they are on the menu and you kind of find this pattern and then you look and you have to run a full profitability report where you enter in all the recipe ingredients, then you have your every menu item has a theoretical cost associated with it and then you have your dogs and your stars and you have all these different ways. So there's a whole process for menus.

40:32I'm envisioning with what you do, you could probably spit out analytics that show me what items are looked at the most, what items are clicked on the most, what items are ordered the most without having to run all of those reports like I would have to do in 2018 way back in the ancient days. Is that data available? Can you do stuff like that? Yeah. So when we initially launched menus sort of in our beta phase, like I was referencing with Stock and Barrel, AVO, the Mac Shack, and Fat Bottom over in the nations, it was only a front end platform. So that's sort of what we have now. But what we're in the process of developing that's going to be launched in early April is going to be our entire backend system. So that'll do a couple things. One, give restaurants the ability to manage the menu by themselves. So rather than having to rely on me, they'll actually be able to log in, upload items from their own smartphone. So if they have a special for the day, they can go and do that.

41:33But in terms of the analytics that you were referencing, that's also something we're incorporating, which I'm really excited about because we're going to be able to show restaurants using Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels what items people are spending the most time on, what percentile each item ranks in terms of getting clicks on and to view the image and stuff like that. Also incorporating in some demographic data. So what is the typical age of a person or gender of a person who's looking at a specific item? So restaurants will really have all of this information at their fingertips to make those business decisions and say, hey, look, typically on our menu, as guests are scrolling through, 80% of our sales are being made up of the first five items. So we want to make sure that our highest margin items are in those first five, because the last 15 on that list of 20 items that we have on our entrees only makes up 20% of our sales. So we got to make sure that our highest margin items, most profitable items are in those first five.

42:34And we're going to give them the data so they can actually see within those first five, maybe it's the third item that really gets ordered the most. Or maybe there's a burger on your menu that people are clicking into and looking at that's the second item on your menu. But for whatever reason, when you're marrying that up with your POS sales data, it's only getting ordered 5% of the time. Maybe that means the pricing is off or there's something wrong with that item that people are looking at it, but they're not actually ordering it. So we're going to give restaurants all this information so they can better understand their guest behaviors, how they're moving throughout their menus, something that no one can really do now unless you have all these high tech cameras trained on your guest eyes as they're looking across their menus, right? Like no one has that technology. So like it's going to give guests or give restaurants insights into how their guests are navigating their menus and understand what the guests are looking at, what they're looking for and better optimize their menu to be more profitable. Also, if you have five dishes that are just like super sexy, like everybody takes Instagram pictures of them.

43:35And those are the first five things you show when somebody's looking to see if they want to eat there and they see those first five dishes, they go, okay, we want to go here. Let's see, I got to eat this. I got to see this. I mean, you can easily do that. I mean, it seems like something that's a no brainer. Let me ask, is this just for the website? So if I have a website, Brandon's Kitchen, and I want to show people the menu, but what if they want to order food? So if they want to go, oh, good, I want to order that. Can they just like click on that menu item and add it to a cart? Do you work with any online ordering system or is this just a menu somebody can have on their website? If they want to order it, they have to go to a separate page. Yeah, so this is actually for in-house dining. So for in-house dining. Yep, 100% for in-house dining. So that's kind of our target audience is putting this on the tables. So every guest that comes in your doors. And I think that's where the value really lies too, is I know with like delivery apps and stuff like that, they're obviously capturing data, how much data they're sharing with restaurants.

44:36I'm not entirely sure of. I don't think it's a lot from what I've heard, but what we're going to be doing is actually giving restaurants the ability to connect their own Facebook pixels, their own Google Analytics on those QR codes on their menu. So then now they can get a representation of who their guests actually are without having to someone sit there and tally, five people came in today. You could actually see how many scans you have using the data, understand what age range your guests are, what time of the days are most busy for certain ages, for certain genders, et cetera. So yeah, it's 100% in-house dining and that's where we're focused. We don't do anything in terms of ordering yet. It's something we've considered as part of our product roadmap for the future. But what we've actually seen talking to restaurants, because we're more focused on sit-down dining rather than fast casual like counter service type dining. We've run it by some of our beta partners and some other people we've spoken to in the industry, turning this into something that becomes a mobile ordering right from the table.

45:41And we hit a lot of resistance to that, surprisingly. I thought it was going to be the next thing. I'm like, people don't like to talk to other people, especially millennials. They just want to do it right through their phone, have someone bring the food to the table without having to talk to a waiter. But I think a lot of restaurants are hesitant to that because part of what makes hospitality great is the service, right? A lot of restaurants around town pride themselves on the service. And if you remove the waiter from that equation, you lose that big component of what makes a restaurant unique. Hey, don't throw away that idea because, you know, wait till there's a $15 minimum wage and you got to pay waiters $15 an hour. A lot more people are going to want that. I mean, I think that it's right or wrong as that is. I'm not going to, I don't want to make that statement. But I mean, honestly, I think that you hear a lot of people say, oh, $15 an hour, great servers finally get paid with their worth and then with the tips. And it's like, no, I think what's going to happen there's a bunch of restaurants go out of business and they'll figure out ways to replace the waiters.

46:42I mean, honestly, which is not good. I mean, I think that what we have going on right now, the level in which our servers are able to go and make tips and do the things they do, it motivates them. It's a whole and I don't know any server that makes less than $15 an hour. I mean, you have to work. It's not a good situation. If you are, go find something different. But so that's the side of it I'm looking at. I'm going, hey, wow, for to go and delivery. I mean, just to order food for somebody's website, for that to be the menu. When they click menu, when I go to Brandon's pub and I click menu, if I saw that menu, your QR code menu on the website, that would be a huge influence to me to whether or not I want to buy from them or not. I mean, is that even an option? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we could definitely. So in terms of being able to buy their delivery, no, again, not yet. That's not something that we have set up, nothing from like the merchant side or anything integrating into POS.

47:47Again, it's roadmap. It's something that we're definitely considering and looking at as we build future phases of this. But to your point, that's kind of the whole genesis of this idea is that pictures sell food, right? We decide where to eat by looking at pictures. That's 100%. We don't go somewhere unless we know what the food looks like in advance. The problem is with that, a lot of times, if you go to like Yelp or something, you get shitty pictures that someone took and dim lighting, does not make the food look flattering. Then you're also seeing reviews by someone who's pissed off because the bathroom had a soap that didn't smell the way they wanted it to smell. So now you see a one-star review, even though they say the service was great, the food was great, the soap just smelled weird in the bathroom. It's like, you don't want guests necessarily seeing that. You want to control the narrative and by having this as your menu and giving guests that one-stop shop where they're not looking at your menu on your restaurant and saying, that burger sounds good.

48:50Now, let me go to Yelp. Let me go to Instagram and see if I could find a picture of it. This gives you the opportunity to control that narrative with your guests. And then for those who are actually in-house, think about how many times you've been sitting at a restaurant back in the Stone Ages before we had digital menus and you saw a dish walk by, you know, and you're like, I wish I ordered. Well, yeah, what is that? I wish I ordered that. That looks great. Like, I think we're going to give restaurants an opportunity to increase their top line sales because when I go to a restaurant, I don't necessarily always want to get an appetizer. You know, we're a little bit frugal and we kind of know what we're going in for. You know, I'm going in to get this burger. But if I am looking at the thing and I see the white pimento cheese dip and it looks awesome, I'm like, I'm not like that hungry, but this looks amazing. I kind of need it. So it gives restaurants, I think, an opportunity to increase their average ticket size by actually giving guests a reason to order something that they might not have ordered.

49:53I love it. I think that's a cool concept, man. I think that it's definitely something that people can utilize and I think he'll do well with that. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited. I think it's a really cool way to help restaurants through this time. Sort of our slogan is, we're not here to just help restaurants survive we're here to help restaurants thrive. And I think this is a tool and a platform that's going to give them that opportunity. You know, we're not just a COVID solution that's here to help them skate by. Like we want to give them something that will set them up for long-term success, something that they can use to better their brands, better their restaurants and, you know, really build a profitable operation and restore what they had prior to the pandemic. Well, I love the idea that the backend analytics, when you kind of get to it, I mean, that's the stuff people like me, you know, as a director of operations for two restaurants, that's the stuff I'm looking at all the time because that's how I'm making informed decisions. You know, if I don't have that information, I can't like all those reports or reports I run every week.

50:56Now I'm looking at theoreticals, I'm looking at food costs, I'm looking at bar costs, but I'm also looking at labor and I'm trying to, we use C2IT and I go in the back office and I look at, I can run a hundred different reports and that's all I do. I mean, to have a report to see what everybody's looking at when they sit down in the restaurant and what items they're looking at the most and what's actually ordered and I think that's really good stuff, man. You're doing good work and that's a good pivot and I thank you for coming on today. This has been fun. Yeah, Brandon, this has been great. Thanks for allowing me to share a little bit about what we're doing and it's crazy. Like you told me when we moved down to Nashville, 2019, that was less than two years ago that we would be launching like a tech company for the restaurant space. Like I would have been like, you're crazy, but here we are, you know? Wow, well, it's cool. I didn't, when I first started my podcast, I was like, I don't think there's another podcast out there that's doing this and then I found yours and I was like, oh man, I love it.

52:00It's really good stuff and in this business, in this city, we're all about supporting each other and doing great things and you know, I'm a big fan of elevating the industry in any way that I possibly can and it sounds like you're doing similar things. I'm so excited to have you part of the book club. I'll get stickers made. I'll hook you up with sticker. We'll do a hat trade because I definitely want one of those hats. I want the blue one back there. Those are cool hats. What do you got going on back there? Those aren't bananas. What are those? No, those are my, I think, I don't know what type of squash is, but they're some sort of squash. That's a yellow, it's a yellow squash. Doesn't even look like a crook neck. It's a straight neck, yellow squash, medium size. I'm a produce guy. All right. Do you guys do a lot of cooking at home? Who's the cook in your house? Not me, it's Michelle. Michelle.

53:01Is she there today? Is she, I thought I saw her like walk by in the background. Is she here? Yeah, she's back in the office. Yeah. Okay. All right. I love those cabinets though. I'm just, I'm doing this to sell the fact that you need to be watching this video because so many people listen to it on the podcast that you need to go to YouTube and watch the videos. Those cabinets are cool. Is that like, are they see-through? No, they're blue. They're like glass, but they're blue. They're like painted. No, you can't see through them. Man, those are cool looking, man. I like that. I like your kitchen. It's a cool kitchen. Thank you. I got a little, can you see it over my shoulder? It's kind of in the background. I have a yum sign back there that we like to feature in some of our videos. I don't see it. Where is it? Yum. There it is. I was at home good. So when we first started Wicked Tasty, I was like, all right, we're going to do a lot of like home cooking videos because we were looking at other food Instagrammers and food bloggers were like, oh, they do a lot of cooking at home.

54:07So we're like, why don't we do that? But I hate to cook. So I don't know why I ever thought that we should do that. But anyways, I went to home goods and I spent like $150. I'm like random stuff. Like if you look down like below here, like all of those like different serving trays and stuff was all stuff that I just bought at home. Good as like, oh, this will look really great for like plating all of our food. Like we'll get creative shots. We've probably used it like a total of five times, but we've done a couple of cool videos. Actually, if you go to the Wicked Tasty Instagram probably scroll back a little bit on our Instagram TV posts. We did one where we took a Hattie B. We took Hattie B's and we built it into like a Hattie B's hot chicken pizza which was one of the most delicious things ever. We also took a five daughters donut and used it as like a bun for some crazy donut that we put like peanut butter and bacon on. We took peg-like porker and we took like their slaw. We took their pulled pork. We took some French fries and we made like sushi.

55:08So we actually bought like the wraps and the rice, the sticky rice and we made like a barbecue sushi which was pretty fun. So I don't know, we try to feature our yum and everything. It's like Seinfeld, they always have a Superman in every episode. It's like, can you find the yum sign in all of our videos? I don't know, you have to go watch it. Ah, so see there, now I have to go back and watch. I'm like, where's Waldo? I'm like, there's the yum sign, I found it. I actually don't know that it's been in every video. So if you don't see them, don't go crazy. We're watching them. Well, I'm honored to have you here. It's nice to make new friends and to have you guys on the show. I've got one of these coming at you. Yes. The charcoal snapback. This is actually my personal one. That I wear, it's kind of dirty because I wear it like in the pool and everything. But that blue one, yeah, we'll do a trade here. That's awesome. So can I buy that hat somewhere? So actually, that's a good question.

56:08So I bought them mostly to like give away as like promos to restaurants and people. But we're selling them here in the Gulch at Pet Wants. So they're a local dog store run by a veteran and he has a new charity that he's doing. It's called Dogs on the Streets. Every week he goes out with Metro PD and he gives away dog food to homeless people that have dogs to make sure the dogs have food and he also gives them some other supplies and stuff. So we are selling them there for 30 bucks and for every hat that you buy, we're giving away two pounds of dog food to the Dogs on the Street initiative. So if you want to go support a great veteran-owned local and business here in the Gulch, Pet Wants, you can also pick up a hat there and part of the proceeds goes to Awesome Cause. That is so cool, man. I love that. It's a great idea. It's a cool hat too. If you're watching this, you'll get to see the hat again. That's right. On the YouTube page. And I want that blue hat.

57:08We'll have to go have lunch sometime and we'll do a hat and shirt trade because that's what I really have them for. But I sell them in case people want them. Maybe we'll meet up at Eastside Bondi. Oh, I like it. Yes, let's do that. And I'll introduce you to the place. So I love the fact that you're like super analytically driven and you love data. And I think I don't know if I mentioned it before we were on the air early when we were on the air, but our podcast, like we've taken that new pivot to really having a fresher look at like marketing, branding, data. And I'd love to have you on at some time to just talk about like everything that goes on from like an analytical standpoint, you know, behind the scenes at restaurants. I'd love to. Yeah, anytime. That's my wheelhouse. I love numbers. Numbers are the, you know, I've always said math doesn't lie. There's, you know, math is math and numbers always make sense. When you look at them enough, you can find patterns and rhythms and you can see it's really the ultimate report card with everything, with all of your actions and all the things that you do and how we're intentional with everything that we do is all based around the guest.

58:19So I was gonna say numbers, but it's all based around the guest. Numbers come second. Dan, one of the things I always do every episode, I let the guest take us out. I don't know if you listen to the, if you watch the show or listen to the show, but every episode the guest gets to take us out. So I open the floor, whatever you want to say, you can talk about anything you want for as long as you want, floor is yours. I am a huge UConn basketball fan. So went to UConn. My dad went to UConn. My brother went to UConn. My uncle went to UConn, born and raised. There is home videos from when I was a child. My birthday is March 27th. So always right around like the Elite Eight time. And there's home videos. I was born in the 90s from the mid 90s when UConn basketball, I mean, we've been great because we have four championships in the last 20 years. So we've been great since, but we are really, really good in the mid 90s. And that was before we had won our first championship. And my dad, there's a home video of me, like as a two or three year old, trying to rip open a birthday present.

59:22And my dad is on his knees in front of the TV, like with his hands over his head. And my mom's like, Dave, Dave, come help, come help Dan open his present. And he said, I'll be there in a minute. I'll be there in a minute. You can just hear him yelling at the TV, watching the TV. So that's where my love for UConn basketball came. But we got our star James Boak night back. He's going to be a NBA lottery pick. And I'm hoping that we can finally get back to the NCAA tournament. It's been four years now since we've been there. So we've had a little bit of a rough road the last couple of years. And I'm looking forward to watching some March Madness with my UConn Huskies. So if there's any other UConn fans out there, even college basketball fans, I think we all missed March Madness last year. So I'm excited for what the next few weeks is going to bring with college sports. There you go. That was a unique take to finish the show. I like it. That was the first time, and that's good stuff. I don't know if that's what you wanted, but... Dude, that's exactly what I wanted.

01:00:22I want anybody to say whatever's on their heart, whatever's on their mind, whatever they want to say to the people. So there you go. If you're a college basketball fan, look Dan up. He wants to talk UConn basketball. Check him out at WickedTasty on Instagram. Do you have a website? Yeah, so eatwickedtasty.com is our website. And that's where you can find everything from our WickedTasty stuff, but also all the menu stuff is on there now. So anyone that's interested in the menu platform, definitely just either hit us up on WickedTasty or go check it out on eatwickedtasty.com. There it is. Dan, you've said it all. I appreciate you coming on the show today. It's nice to meet you. Look forward to our lunch at Eastside Bond. Me and best of luck, man. Thank you so much again. Yeah, you too. Have a great weekend, Brandon. All right, will do. Thank you so much, Dan Burkhart, for joining the show. What a fun episode that was. Again, if you want to join Brandon's Book Club, feel free to go to our Facebook page, follow us on Instagram, join the conversation.

01:01:26If you wanted to read books with other people in the industry, this is your chance. Thank you guys for listening today. You are enough. And I really hope that you guys are being safe out there. I love you guys. Bye.