Will Jocson

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, powered by Gordon Food Service. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Today we're going to be talking with my new friend, Will Joxon. Will is the founder and CEO of a company called Maintain IQ and I am such a big fan of what he's doing that this interview kind of feels like an infomercial, I'm not going to lie. We did it and I think the point of the interview was to introduce you guys to new restaurant technology. This technology works in any business, it works in a family, as I outlined in this interview, but really if you own a restaurant, if you own a small business, this is one of those, this is a piece of technology, this is an app that you will use every day, all the time and it is not in Nashville yet and it is now, I mean it is officially a Nashville thing.

01:20So we're very excited to introduce you to Maintain IQ and I want to say thank you to Benjamin and Max Goldberg for coming on the show this past week and our special visit musiccity.com episode. At the end of that episode, you will hear me describe our Nashville hot list. These are five restaurants that if you're coming to Nashville or you live in Nashville and you want to go out to eat, five restaurants that I'm guaranteeing you can't go wrong with. These are solid, solid choices. So this month, our Nashville hot list for the month of June includes Audrey in East Nashville, the Continental in the Grand Hyatt, Yolan in the Joseph Hotel, the Catbird Seat and Cane Prime. Fine dining, high end restaurants that you cannot go wrong with if you're coming to town and you want an amazing experience, that's the Nashville hot list for June. So for July, we are going to do the top five and they're not any kind of, that's not like the best, these are just five, it's not the top five, just five.

02:26We're doing five hot chicken restaurants. If you're coming to Nashville and you want to know the best places to go, you cannot go wrong with the best hot chicken, then this is going to be your month for the month of July. The hot chicken festival is going to be on July 4th. So there's hopefully will be very timely as it comes out. So if you want to nominate a restaurant, go to whatever, go to Instagram and use the hashtag Nashville hot list when you go eat somewhere. Take a picture of the hot chicken that you love the most and post it. And I am definitely looking for submissions to see which one is the best. So again, use that. If you got to eat somewhere amazing and you love it, use the hashtag Nashville hot list and I will see it. It'll probably make an episode coming up soon, but we're looking to let people know who are coming to Nashville, what the go-to, you cannot go wrong restaurants are and how we'll build a compiled list. And I've got stickers I'll be sending to all of you who win the Nashville hot list.

03:30So very excited to do that. Hey, again, go follow us, go follow us on Instagram. We have the brand new Nashville Restaurant Alliance page is out there. It's at Nashville Restaurant Alliance. We're still working on all of the details to that, but I wanted to just get it out there. I'm going to do an episode probably in the next two weeks where I outline the entire program and it's really some exciting stuff. Hopefully if you own a locally owned, if you're in a restaurant, locally owned and operated restaurant, this is going to be a chance to bring everybody together and help you make some more money. I think it's going to be a great, great, great Alliance. Anyhow, this episode today with Will Jackson is brought to you by SuperSource, the SuperSource with Jason Ellis. He is your guy. He does all of your dish machine and chemical needs and he's growing like crazy, guys. And you want to get in there now. We started talking to Jason Ellis two years ago about dish machine and chemicals and like who knew about dish machine and chemicals as a managing a restaurant.

04:36I didn't even think twice about it. Just somebody came in and serviced it until I dug deep, until Jason helped me walk through and learn like, oh my gosh, there's so many ways these companies are just taking advantage of us. I had no idea, but it's definitely a line on the P&L and my line on my P&L has come down significantly. I mean, Jason, I'm not just saying he's cheap, but he's helping us utilize our chemicals the best way. I mean, he's not, he's teaching you that you don't need five times the degreaser. You just need what you need to use and he's working with my dishwashers and how to save, you know, detergent. It's been amazing. The guy's amazing. You should give him a call. 770-337-1143. That's Jason Ellis with Super Source. All right, let's jump in, guys. We got Will Joxon today. This is not going to be, there's like a bunch of commercials in this one. It's rather short, 35 minutes and hopefully after this is over, you're going to want to learn more and you're going to call him to do a demo. It's super easy. It's 30 minutes and this could be a game changer.

05:36I hope you love it. Super excited today to welcome in Will Joxon. He is the founder and CEO of Maintain IQ. What's going on, Will? How are you doing? You know what? If I was any better, I'd be twins, right? It's a, it's a, it's a new week. It's Monday. We're here live in Nashville. You are a Californian. How's your stay in Nashville been? It's been great. First time here. Yeah. And you showed me around, showed me a first, a good, great first night. So we've, we've got to spend a little time together during your visit. I drove him downtown. I drove him through Broadway. So we've been to Nashville. I drove him through Broadway. We went through Hillsboro Village. In a new car. In a new car, right? You don't want to talk about your new car? No, I'm talking about my new car. Okay. I'm not talking about the new car, but yeah, yeah, no, there is a new car.

06:38I love my new car. It's great. I get a Jeep and we'll talk about it if you want to talk about it, but yeah, we took the top off. It's a, it is an electric Jeep. I'm looking for, I'm trying to save my, I'm going to save, I'm like, reduce my carbon footprint. Is that the word I'm looking for? I think so. Yeah. Or reduce my carbon footprint. So Will is the CEO and founder of a company called Maintain IQ. And I met, so we had the, we had a guy on the show, his name is Zach Oates. And I tell the story of the day we were in Phoenix and I showed up to eat lunch and it was the brightest day I've ever experienced in my life. I didn't have sunglasses and it was like, I don't like really, really bright. My eyes are sensitive, I guess. I don't know. So we sat at this table and you and Zach were at the table and I feel like I was so rude because you were like, do you have a checklist? You kind of asked, I was like, we use Zenput. And I got, I, and I know he gives me the faces like Zenput, but you, you started this company called Maintain IQ and it came back.

07:43I followed up with you and I was like, Hey, I'm so sorry that I was just, I was out of it. I couldn't even see straight. And I said, let's, I want to learn more about your product. So we did a demo and it is so much better than the solution that we were already using in the company called Zenput. Zenput, there's one called Jolt that you may have heard of, but Maintain IQ is new to Nashville. You don't have anybody in Nashville besides me who's using it, do you? No, we're one of the newer guys on the block, but there's not too many like digital checklist companies that focus on restaurants. So we're one of the new ones we're founded in 2018 and we focus purely on restaurant operations and any restaurant that is moving away from pen and paper and either using us or any of the handful of competitors out there, I say bravo. Yeah. I mean, you got to, it just, it's just a lot better. You save a lot of time. Things are streamlined. You reduce your training, just positive all around.

08:45And so what separates us from the rest of the pack is we focus on ease of use of our interface has to be super easy to use. So if there's an 18 year old who's new at a restaurant, new to restaurant operations, he or she would be able to pick up that tablet or use their phone. You can use your phone or a tablet and be able to know what to do, how to do it and when to do it with very minimal training. So this is, this is amazing because it's kind of like Facebook or email, right? I can send a message to anybody immediately and I can have it on my phone and I have a record of it forever, essentially. And like if I was to mail you something and just to use paper and write it down, I got to carry that paper with me at all times if I want to reference it or I take a picture of the paper on my phone and then I can look through my archives. Well, most people or most restaurant operations, nine out of 10 of them are still either using pen and paper when it comes to their food safety, pen and paper when it comes to opening and closing checklists, doing their line checks and sometimes they're not even using pen and paper and they're just kind of winging it.

09:53So we digitize everything and it brings that level of accountability and it helps restaurants achieve consistency in their operations because inconsistencies occur when there's turnover. You have a great new manager or great manager that's been operating a restaurant. He or she knows exactly what to do. They run a tight ship. There's institutional knowledge that they have, right? And it's all in their head and they're great at managing people. They're managing a team. But sometimes they go on vacation or they leave. And then a new manager comes in and Mr. Owner Operator has to train that manager and that's where you get those inconsistencies because they're not used to your current operations, how you do things, the quality, the safety that you have in place. You get a lot of, well, my last restaurant I did this, my last restaurant I did that. I get it. But let me show you the way that we do it here. I just interviewed Benjamin and Max Goldberg, who are the owners of Strategic Hospital. Their episode came out on Friday.

10:55The part two of their episode is going to come out this Friday, which is really us catching up and talking. But one of the things that I asked them, as I said, you guys are brothers, but you're also operators. What are your unique individual roles? And it was funny because Max started laughing and he goes, I know every time Ben walks in the building because the lights change, because the lights change, music changes, like all these things start happening in the building. And I thought, you know what, that's something that I used to do because you know what happens you walk into the building as an operator like myself, I'll walk in and I'll go, why is that door not unlocked? How come these lights are these lights are way too bright? Why is the TV on TNT? Because they were watching a baseball game last night and then they turn it on today and now Judge Judy is on and needs to be on sports or news. Like somebody didn't follow a checklist this morning because you're going to miss these things. But we use a checklist every day. It's a digital checklist. The manager walks in the door and literally says, hello, Johnny.

11:59And he opens the door and it says, greet kitchen staff. And then you click, yes, I've greeted the kitchen staff. And then you walk over and says, walk over to the light switches, turn on every light switch and put them to the line that is marked AM. And then you hit yes. And then you walk to the next room and says, walk into this room and flip the light switches on, turn on the music at this level, turn it to level four, hit the light switches, make sure that the thermostat right there is set to 72. But it walks you through every single room of the house and at Mayor Bowles I'm talking about, and we also use the Greenhouse Grill, but every day if you do this simple checklist and you sign off on at the end, every single detail is done. And that's what Benjamin is doing. He's walking into the building and he's seeing lights that aren't set the right way. He's hearing music that was left over from the night before when they were closing the restaurant. So he's changing all these little things. And I'm like, if your managers had this checklist when they started their day, he would walk in, you would never know when he was there because everything would already be done.

13:00Right. The long story to get you to, you'll hear it Friday when I talk about it in the interview, but it's amazing because so many people don't have this kind of checklist. Right. They're again, still on pen and paper or they go by their memory and there's so many things you need to remember running a restaurant operation, so many little details and you're going to miss something. You're going to. And in this episode, listen, we just did a demo with you. That's the second one I've kind of gone through, but you did it with my entire management team. So this interview, I'm asking you questions and we're talking about it because I'm sold and I'm using this product now and I want to share this because nobody else in town has this technology. Nobody else is using this one and the ease of use of it is so amazing. At the end of the demo with all of my managers, who we currently use a company called Zenput for this exact same thing, but we're going to you and you get done with the demo. What did all my managers tell you?

14:01I mean, almost uniform, they said we hit it right on the head in here and it's all because of the ease of use. Like this thing is very intuitive. It does exactly what we want it to do and it's customizable, obviously for your operations, but it was just easy to use. So that's the praise I got. It's like this is this is like a no brainer and it would save them a lot of time. What do you think the thing is that most people use maintain IQ for? It's a mixed bag. So our software covers everything from food safety to daily tasks and checklists. It also includes like prepless. You could do a physical inventory check gets rid of the clipboard and then we also cover maintenance so it can track all the equipment in your restaurant. You could put all the warranty information on there, put your vendors who work on them and then we also have work order management. So we have a full suite of solutions and some restaurants use all of it and we have a group that just love the maintenance and the work orders and there is some that I'm most excited about.

15:12Yeah, that's a that's a great feature and the company actually started with preventive maintenance and work order management. So we have a very robust feature set when it comes to that and then we built upwards toward the daily checklist, this food safety, the line checks and the prepless. So this is pretty amazing and I'll outline what I love about this because it's the most exciting thing for me. We have a house that's built in 1942 at Maribor, right? You were there. It's really nice. It's beautiful. We have a great time. Green Hills Grill is another restaurant we're doing a bunch we're doing over five thousand guests a week. I mean, it's we're putting a lot of people through there and carpets get dirty. People bump into walls and chip paint and furniture breaks and things break and when I walk through the building and I see, you know, gunk build up on the carpet somewhere where I can see where there's a lot of foot traffic, I got to then notice that I got to somebody, hey, look, I need you to do this and then I need you to get some air to clean this or I need somebody to go clean this, rent a steam cleaner, whatever it might be.

16:18And I got to follow up on it. But if this app I can go, oh, I see this needs to be done. I can take a I can go to the app, hit the plus sign on the work order management or the any kind of job needs to be done. I can take a picture of the carpet, circle it, assign it to the general manager and say, hey, we need to get this carpet cleaned ASAP. He then will get a notification that says, oh, there's a work order for me and I can do this all over the restaurant. So I'm an owner of the restaurant and walking in, I go, why did nobody see that? How come all these things in here? Well, you just walk through and create 10 work orders, send them to the GM and then email and go, hey, I just send a bunch of things to be fixed in the restaurant. And then all of a sudden he owns them or he or she owns them. And then the owner can come back and check in and go, where are we at with this? They can look in the app because they're going to update as they get finished in the app. The guy's got all the answers right there. And it's like, these are the things that drive people in the industry. Absolutely bonkers. It's effectively communicating with people. It's effectively communicating. And we define that as shared understanding from the sender to the receiver in the method in which they both choose that works the best.

17:26Right. And what are you doing now without this? You're calling, you're texting, talking about it in the hallway, sending a picture through text messages. You don't know if they saw it or not, right? You're pulling them away from something important and then you can't track it. You have to follow up with them. You got to visit the spot again a couple hours or a few days later to see it again to go, hey, why didn't that get done? And they go, oh, we got busy, but no, I can just look in the app and I can go, when was this? I get an update. Hey, we've called in carpet cleaners. They'll be here on XYZ date and I can go, cool, I can put that to bed. I don't have to go back and say, when is that going to get done? I can look in the app and it's just there and it houses this stuff forever. Right. So it's not going to go away. So another cool aspect of the checklist, right? So if you're a server and I want to come in and I've got opening duties, I can put like, let's just say you have like a salad dressing station, right? So you've got salad dressings. There's eight different dressings. They go in this particular order every single day. But I've got a new server who's her first time doing this site.

18:28I can have a checklist. They can log in to maintain IQ. They can click opening duty one, which is salad set up. They can click on it. And what it's going to do is it's going to say, go to the region cooler, go to this cooler, pull out the the dressings. And then there's a picture that shows you what it should look like when it's done. And then they have to take a picture to verify that they did it the same way and they can't access their old photos. It's just got to be a new picture, but it will walk somebody through exactly how to set up the salad station. And it's got pictures. And at the end of it, they sign their name that they completed it. So at the end of the day, someone goes, hey, who set up the salad station? We can easily go back and look and see who did it. They clicked that they did all of the things and then they signed for it. And you go, oh, it was Sarah and she oh, look, she did do it. Oh, we thought that. But it brings a level of accountability and that lives there forever. Right. So you're simultaneously training them. You're maintaining the quality and standards of the food. And then you have that level of accountability that it was actually done.

19:32Yeah, the tool maintain IQ is it's not necessarily meant to be a big brother tool. So your accountability for everything. Oh, we want to make sure that who did this, who did that? It's there for that. But it was designed to help that new employee, that inexperienced staff member to get up to speed quickly without having to take more of the manager's time asking him or her questions how to do something. And that manager is one of the pains of their job is constantly retraining new staff, telling them how to clean that ice machine. You spend time training someone how to clean that ice machine. They leave after a couple of months. Guess what? You got to train the next person. You're going to repeat the same steps. Take a video of it, put it on the checklist. Next time someone comes in, how do you clean the ice machine? It's on there. There's a there's a there's a video of me cleaning it. Click play. It'll show you their step by step actions. So it tells the staff what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

20:37And then every time they do something, they're incrementally getting trained. And so if I was a leader and I needed every all of these different things to get done every day, there's a dashboard at the end of the day. I can look at to see what got completed. Right. So I can I don't have to go back and individually check every single one. I get an email that says, hey, these were the tasks that were completed and these were the ones that did not get completed. And then I can go the next morning and go, hey, the host didn't do their opening duty yesterday. Right. Why did the host not do their opening duty? Because that means cleaning all the menus and cleaning out the ashtrays out front and wiping down all the windows and doing all the things like I need accountability. I also love the bar side because every single day for years, you'd come in and the daytime bartender hates the person who closed. Right. If you're listening, there's people listening to this right now. And like, I feel this in my soul. Right. Because as a manager, you walk through and the bartender says, hey, who the fuck closed last night? You know, like Tina, like she didn't stock wine and she didn't do this and they didn't do this.

21:39And you go, whoa, that's OK. Like, hold on. I don't know what happened last night, but you can go back and I can look and see who closed and I can go, did they do all the closing duties? Did they click that they stocked wine and then sign that they did it? But it ends that. Right. And but again, it goes to why didn't that person do it? So it's not necessarily that they're lazy. They're probably very busy and they probably forgot. They probably got caught. Something came up and the manager pulled them away from their closing duties. They got distracted and did something else. But that's why you need like these checklists around. It brings accountability. It brings accountability, but it also reminds them. So when the manager looks at his dashboard at the end of the day and there's something that's red, he'll go to that staff member, say, hey, Amy, you forgot to do the closing on the on the bar. Oh, OK. She'll go right on top of it. She'll look at what she needs to do step by step. No one needs to hold her hand. Just click it off. It shows her what to do.

22:40Boom, it's done. And if she did it instinctively, she can go back. And I yeah, you know, a lot of managers will look, I do it every day. I don't need to use and the the the maintain IQ. Right. And so they go through and then they'll miss something. But you can at the end of it, you can just look at it and go, OK, I did that. Oh, I didn't do that. I didn't do that. I prefer to actually walk in the kitchen in the morning, turn on the app and just walk through the steps because I don't like to miss anything. And if I walk in and I walk in, sometimes if I walk in and I go, that door is locked. You didn't do yours and you didn't do your we'll use the new term for M.I.Q. is what they're going to call it. Maintain IQ. We're using maintain IQ. Using maintain IQ. But I go, I can tell they didn't do their maintain IQ this morning because that there's a little lamp at the host stand. It wasn't turned on. And there's clearly a thing that says turn on click, turn on the lamp at the host stand. You mentioned the managers dashboard to see the summary. Right. And what I want to do is kind of get a layer deeper than just saying, well, why didn't you know how come they didn't do it all because they were lazy.

23:49Again, you want to see trends in your operation. Why are they always late in doing this? Why are they always skipping that task? And this is where you can have a constructive conversation with them. And maybe you're stacking up too many things to do at that one time. Or you don't have enough staff members to do it. Maybe you need to spread out the task a little bit more, put different times on them. So it's more of a constructive tool to help them do their job better. Not necessarily, again, to get them in trouble. Does this have to be for restaurants? No, it can be applied to, well, hotels, hotels, have restaurants. Well, like a retail, like a convenience store. Absolutely. What about like my cake? What are like in my house? Yeah, you can do it for your. So I was just thinking about this work order thing. Like if my wife could go into maintain IQ and type like you need to fix the backdoor, I need the plunge, the toilet upstairs. I need you to mow the yard. If she could just put the list of things she needs me to do and then I can update it. I could update it for my wife and say, yes, I'm working on this.

24:51Part is ordered to be here Thursday. I'll have the door done by Friday. Stop asking me, you know, I could. OK, on the positive side, yes, but there could be a negative side where she overloads you and maintain IQ will have a bad rep from all husbands across the country, because now there's no excuse. Now there's no excuse. How come you didn't do it's right there. It's still red. Change the filter for the AC. Before you had an excuse, honey, I'm busy. Oh, I forgot. You're not going to have an excuse to maintain IQ anymore if you use it for your home. Listen, I don't I don't miss stuff like that. I like getting stuff done. What I don't like is when she goes, no, I told you while you were sleeping that I needed you to change the track. And like you never told me that, like, what do you mean? Like, no, you were you were talking, you're on the phone and you were playing baseball with the kids simultaneously. Well, I whispered it to you. You didn't hear me, but I know I said it out loud in your direction. Maybe I wasn't there.

25:52This turns into a fight. And you're like, if you just put it and maintain IQ, I can't I'll get that. I'll do it. I'll knock it out. You just let me know and she wouldn't be interrupting you while you're doing whatever it is you're doing. Why do we ever have to speak to our spouses again? So obviously, I'm being tongue in cheek and I'm writing about this. But literally, the application could be used anywhere. Like if I have kids, hey, kids, when you get up today, brush your teeth, put your clothes on, do this. I could do the whole thing like it's but it's that it's that simple. It's not you said ease of use is not complicated. Right. Like my eight year old can click on it and go, I'm going to do my morning duties. If I want to get an allowance, I have to close all of these every week. Right. And I don't have to go. Did you brush teeth? No, I clicked it. OK, well, they could fake it, too. It could be in the room. Just click, click, click. Well, then you're going to have to require them to take a photo. Yeah. Oh, I like that video. Take a video. Take a photo video. You're actually brushing your teeth and you can't access your camera roll.

26:54But you saw the demo going off topic. Right. This is the second time you saw the demo. Your whole team saw it. Yeah. What did you genuinely, honestly take away from it, from what you saw based on the existing tools you've seen or used? What was the one thing that stuck out to you? I will tell you, the one thing that stuck out to me was buy in. Right. So when we buy in, we first initially did our checklist a couple of years ago when we started this process was input, which you can't even use input now because they they you have to have like 20 restaurants to where grandfathered and where we're grandfathering out. But there's a when we did this, we brought the management team together and we said, hey, guys, guess what? Congratulations, we have a new checklist for you. And they all kind of looked at each other like this dude just keeps coming up with shit for us to do. And so I said, no, this is going to make your life easy. So I'm not going to walk in and go, why didn't you do these nine things? You clearly know that this is the expectation is right here on a checklist. And it worked for a long time.

27:54But now the words input is like a four letter word. Did you do yours? And we've made it a verb somehow. But did you do your did you do yours? And are you going to put that as input or you get its input? And it's like, I think people are just like, why do they make us do this? So today in our, you know, when we did this demo, I'm watching my entire management team completely engage every single one. Hey, can we do this? Hey, can we do that? Can we just I've got bar managers, I've got kitchen managers, got sous chef, GM's in the room who are all excited about the ease of use of this and how it can make their jobs easier and more effective. Because all we want to do is communicate effectively to people what their expectations are. Right. People know what's expected of them. It's real easy to do. Same thing as a husband and wife. Like if you tell me what's expected of me, I'll do it. It's when you start throwing stuff out of left field that I didn't know I was supposed to do that frustrates people. So if it's right there on a checklist and go, no, I did my entire checklist and I'm going to go help Johnny and Janie do theirs.

28:58Then that's that's just a different level of it. And I think that my entire leadership team today saw that and they went, do this is this is going to be a game changer. And so. The process of me leading my team through the change is so much easier today because I've already had two of them come to go, hey, I want to be I want to run point on this on run point on this and I'll be the guy that helps upload them and do all these things. And I was just like, wow, this is great. Like, this is great because now I don't have to go to them and sell anything. So the number one thing that stood out to me was that everybody on the management team was really excited about moving towards it. I mean, you guys, your management group, your team, we're already ahead of the curve with using some kind of digital system. Yeah. So you're running a tight ship already. We're just making it easier for you. And that's what we really focused on. Maintain IQ focused on ease of use. You have to understand how to use it and it has to be super intuitive right when you pick it up.

30:02It's easier than using it's easier than using Facebook. You just log in. Everything's just right there. You click a button and you just go. I deleted my Facebook account, so I don't I don't use it anymore. Well, that's nice. It's very nice for you to be able to do that. I don't. But I think that the I think about restaurants and I meet with restaurateurs all the time. I meet with people and I go hiking or I do these things and I just like to hang out people and I say, what do you got? Let's talk about things. In communication, how they communicate, how they cascade messages. You know, I love there. There's a workforce part of this thing where you can actually you can. We have a handyman at work, right, who does a lot of our stuff. And I can get him on. I can invite him to this app. And when I have a work order, I need the ice machine fixed. And he'll get a notification that says, hey, the ice machine needs to be fixed. And then he can come by and check it out and he can leave updates in there. And then there's also a function where you can have a complete database of everybody who you would call for whatever you need. So any manager who's on the shift, something happens. They've got it on the app.

31:02They can look and see who is our approved vendor for this particular thing that we need. Right. I think that's such a I mean, it just levels everything. And I guess what I was saying was I work with so many people and I talked to so many people who have none of this stuff in place. And they're drowning. They're going, I'm just tired. I feel like I'm babysitting. I'm constantly telling people four, five and six times. And it's like, no, no, no, just just go to a digital checklist. And then you can say in line up, hey, did everybody do their checklist this morning? And if you didn't, I need you to go ahead and complete it. And then everything's done. It's such an easy like, wow, it manages every all these little details of all the things and walking around telling people to do because, oh, I forgot to do that. Oh, like, no, it's on a list. You can just do it. So I think that the idea that there are restaurants out there that could do this and it saved them so much this could save them a salary of a whole manager because it's kind of it's intuitive. It just kind of it's intuitive.

32:04The managers can focus now more on front of house, the customers, the guest experience, food quality. They're less they spend less time training employees, retraining them, answering questions that are can be easily answered, you know, with a digital checklist. And it's all the answers are there on how to do things and when to do them. So I love this. The question I ask myself for this, and this is where I'm going to sound really infomercial, because I want people to call you and I'll get plug it. I want people to call Will Jackson and I want them to set up a demo with you because I think it's going to change their lives. And the fact that nobody in this town is using this right now, it's a brand new kind of thing to our city. I mean, they're using all over the country, but not in Nashville. Nashville hasn't been a market. So not until now. Now is the time you're going to Nashville. And I am excited. I want people to use maintain IQ. And I want a phone call from these people in six months. And they go, holy shit, you have saved my company. I want I want that phone call.

33:06And so when I think about like what this might cost, again, here we go. This is going to be my very infomercial. I can imagine this thing probably costs three to four thousand dollars a month. I mean, right. Is that what you're talking about? Is that what you're going to charge? Well, I wish I wish three to four thousand. I mean, OK, so a thousand a month, right? No. OK, OK. Five hundred a month. Is it I love the setup. Five hundred a month. I love it. Is that what it is? But the bar high. No, no. Four hundred a month. This thing is three. How much is it ready? How much is this a month to have all of this? It is super expensive, by the way. All the features. Forty nine bucks a month. Unlimited users. Unlimited devices. Forty nine dollars. Forty nine bucks a month. Now a restaurant per restaurant. Now think about it. This thing saves managers ten hours a week. Ten hours a week. If you're paying a manager twenty five bucks an hour. Fifty grand math. Well. You're going to get a five to ten times ROI on this right away.

34:08If you know you're saving, let's say you don't believe my ten hours, let's say you save them two hours a week. That's still what is that? Fifty bucks a week times four, two hundred bucks. And this thing's 50 bucks a month. I mean, I don't even think about I don't even care. In terms of productivity. Yeah, I do. To me, like that makes no difference to me. I don't even care. You know what I care about? I care about the guest experience. That is it. Well, your managers will be able to focus more on the guests. Well, I imagine when you walk into a restaurant and you walk up to the front door and the light bulb is out and the ashtray is full of mint wrappers and you walk to the front door and the mat for the company is facing the wrong way. And it's got like debris, like leaves and stuff on it. And you go, wow, I guess nobody cleans up around here. Like the fact that those things get completed every day. Those are the light at the host stand. It's not dark at the host stand. It's bright that all the lights are at the right level. They're all burning. You walk in restaurants all the time and there's light bulbs out.

35:08And you're like, is nobody walking around looking light bulbs out? Like, that's the guest experience to me, because it's like anybody can cook an amazing plate of food and bring it to your table. But it's all those other details throughout your dining experience that really most diners go like, oh, that guy's this table isn't set up or the sugar caddy is not full or there's debris on the ground or the the there's dust on the wall. Like all these little things that people recognize and they make these we call them moments of truth or they have a moment of truth when they're going to come back into the building. And you've got to get all of those things under control. And that's where this comes into play, because that's the thing. Hey, look, if I can not have to walk around the building, the level of stress and frustration I feel when I walk into a building on a Friday night and the paper towels are out in the bathroom and the sink is dirty and there's a light bulb out, I just I start my blood starts to boil. Look at the amount of energy you're spending to look at all those details, to check every little thing, to ask each employee, did you do this?

36:12That's what I'm saying. That's the stuff. Right. That is that's the time that helps. But then also those things get done. So the guest isn't walking in the bathroom, tap me on the shoulder at seven o'clock going, there's no paper towels in the women's room. And I got to go, I don't have time to get paper towels at seven o'clock on Friday night. I could have done that at four thirty when we're doing opening duties. I could have checked all of those things and not had to do that at seven o'clock because we planned ahead and we did our checklists. All right. We beat this to a dead. Is this is this beaten? Yeah, it's beaten. OK. Yeah, it is. You get it. I'm excited about this. I'm on Team Will and Team Maintenance IQ. You guys maintain IQ, maintain team. I said the wrong name, didn't I? Maintain IQ dot com. Check us out. Maintain IQ dot com. Like, look, folks are going to run on their own time, right? They're going to adopt technology on their own time. But at least you you're aware of what exists out there. So you can make the right decision for your organization.

37:13Yeah, that's all we want to do. OK, I like it. I think that works. If you out there. You out there want a demo, this guy, well, he's a nice guy. He'll do it over the phone. You know, he lives in sunny Southern California. He's I do. I do. I do the demos in my pajamas. Nice. Don't tell people that. No, no. Who are you wearing a suit for you, though? Nashville, who wear a cowboy hat? No, he'll do a demo. I'd love for you guys to send an email. It's will at maintain IQ dot com. Right on our website, they can book a demo on our live scheduler. They can just pick a 30 minute slot today, tomorrow, next week. Boom. They'll get a Zoom link and everything will be set up and they just got to click on it on that date and time. So what I want to know is, is there any kind of special we can offer for our listeners today? Listen, when we can put a time cap on it, like they got to call you by June 15th or something.

38:15But, you know, so the one thing I think that I would ask is, it's tough to set this up. You know, we got to get it set up and there's no one likes setting up. There's all these checklists that you've got to upload into the system. Right. That's a pain in the ass. That is a pain in the butt. Right. So what we can do is we typically charge a one time fee for setup. You give us all your checklists, all your Excel sheets, all your Word docs. We put it in the system. We charge you a custom price. And it's a fair price. We just it takes our team time to put it in there. Sure. But a special we can do is we can do a free setup for your location. No one likes moving day. No one likes setting up any type of technology you adopt. You still have to set up for your operations, make sure it works. It's customized. So we will take that off the plate and do that for you for free. Well, that's a hell of a deal. Yes. So it's not easy to setting up, I'll be honest. No, it's a pain. No, it's like moving day. No one likes to move, but you got to do it. And once it's over and once it's over, once it's in there, you're on cruise control.

39:20Your operations are on cruise control. So what do I have to do? I have to email you well at maintain IQ dot com or I send you. I can call you. I can message you on any message on Facebook because you're on Facebook. Now we're not on Facebook. We have our number out there. My email, my life schedule is out there. So let's get but they can mention your name. Mention Nashville Restaurant Radio. We'll know where they came from and we'll hook them up. Yeah. So if you mention Nashville, if you're in Nashville and you call me, hey, I'm in Nashville, he's going to know where. Oh, yeah. Anyone came from Nashville. It's coming from you. Anybody know from Nashville is coming. They're going to come for me. So anyway, call them and say, hey, look, I'm from howdy. I'm from Nashville. Where's my free setup? And I want to do a demo. I want to see what the interface looks like. And I I want a free setup and he will set up. Now, do I have to sign a contract? No, no, this is as simple as like signing up for Netflix. There's a monthly subscription. So they're hidden fees like taxes.

40:22And it's no, it's not even ninety nine. It's just forty nine bucks. Oh, it's forty nine. We're not even charging the ninety nine cents. It's just forty nine bucks. You should charge the ninety nine cents. You'll get it every time. He's looking, he's like, come on, the bitch has lost thousands of dollars. That extra ninety nine cents. We're keeping it simple. That's our model. Just keep it simple. But no, there's no contract. You sign up. You don't like it. Cancel, you know, doesn't renew. We also have an annual plan. If you want to do an annual, get two months free and you have like a 90 day money back guarantee so you can try it out. So it's a thousand dollars a year if you pay for it at one time. Five hundred. Yeah. Four, four, ninety, four, ninety nine. Four ninety. Now, four ninety nine. I know my prices. Forty nine a month or four ninety nine a year. It's on our website. Are you going to test me on my own pricing plans? He's actually looking it up right now.

41:23So this is forty nine dollars a month and you're paying for ten months because the two months are free. Then it's four hundred nine. Ten times forty nine is four ninety. You almost get four, almost get two months for free, but fine. OK, so you're going OK. You're going to get me on technicality. You win. That wouldn't be two months for free. Two points for brand nine is four ninety. OK. You see, Will and I have had some fun over the last 24 hours. I feel like he's a he's like a brother now. We're just poking fun at each other. So this is fun. So there you go, ladies and gentlemen, Will Joxon from Maintain IQ. Well, anything that you know, one of the things that we do here on the show is we have the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. So we now have a sponsor for our final thought. It's the Gordon Food Service Final Thought. These are amazing people of our Gordon Food Service. Good friends of mine, and I'm honored to have them sponsor this segment. They like inspiration and that this is this is your time to say whatever you want to say to the people of Nashville.

42:28Anybody who's listening, you get to take us out. Final thought. Go. Oh, you're talking about me. I thought you were doing a sponsor plug. No, you're doing the final thought, man. My final thought is to take us out. Whatever you want to say for the final thought, the Gordon Food Service Final Thought Gordon Food Service Final Thought. Well, look, this is my first time in Nashville and I had a great host and Brandon still from Nashville Restaurant Radio took me on Broadway on a Thursday night. I mean, I thought I was in Vegas. The lights, the people, just great town and I'll be back. Beautiful town, beautiful people. All right. I love it. Will Jackson, thank you so much for joining us today on Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thank you, Brandon. So like I said, I feel like that was somewhat of an infomercial, but I really think that his technology is great. And I think that if you used it, you would have so much more accountability. And it's nice for the health department aspect, too.

43:30So if they come in, you've got everything set up. Hey, stay tuned. This Friday is going to be part two of our interview with Benjamin and Max Goldberg. The first episode was them talking about all of their restaurants and kind of what their favorite places are in Nashville. And the second episode is just us kind of shooting the ball, just kind of hanging out and laughing and talking about what they individually do for the restaurants. And we just had a lot of fun. We're going to have some amazing, amazing people coming up. I'm not going to tell you yet, but I will let you know on Friday. We've got a new lineup topic coming out on Wednesday. Hope that you guys are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.