FULL COMP: The Voice of the Restaurant Industry Revolution

Over 100,000 restaurants were lost in the pandemic and there's so much we can learn from that. But there are also organizations that thrived during the pandemic. What did they do differently? What did they see that so many didn't? Today we chat with Joth Ricci of Dutch Bros who saw opportunity in tragedy and used the pandemic as a catalyst to build the coffee shop of tomorrow, today.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

[2:38] Cutting teeth: lessons from and starting over and building from the ground up.

[4:28] Starting something with nothing: What defines a successful founder.

[5:20] Strategic planning, discipline, and defining yourself.

[6:43] Exploding the brand: Staying true to core values.

[7:40] The secret sauce: Ignoring the shiny light, keeping it simple, and being the very best at what you do.

[9:20] Examining Dutch Bros.: opportunities in technology, operations, leadership, and marketing.

[11:01] Achieving traction: setting the runway and hitting the ground running.

[12:23] Seizing The Great Pandemic Opportunity: putting rubber to the road when everything else stopped.

[14:32] Becoming a better leader: managing emotion in chaos, gaining perspective, and setting an example.

[17:53] Companies as a classroom: building teams through the lens of education

[18:22] Dutch Bros. 2.0: plowing into digital connection.

[20:07] Building a data-driven business: understanding your customers' journey.

[22:43] Be good at being who you are: the value in rejecting trends that don't serve your service model.

[24:34] You can't be all things to all people.

[25:54] Being big and being small: staying connected through community.

[27: 56] Baking social impact into the fabric of your business.

[29:44] Stay true to yourself, communicate who you are, and remember that service always wins.
For more on Dutch Bros., visit www.dutchbros.com
FULL COMP is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.

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CLICK HERE to Chat with Josh

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FULL COMP

Restaurant Marketing School

The Playbook

Industry Town Halls

Today, Olo is a billion-dollar company with a captivated audience of restaurateurs excited about the future of restaurant tech.

But the story of Olo and its founder, Noah Glass, is far from an overnight success. Noah has spent the last 16 years evangelizing the merits of restaurant tech to an industry unwilling to change. But he never lost hope and he never gave up.

And I can only imagine that a man with that kind of vision and that kind of fortitude must have a clear vision of what’s coming next for all of us. Today we talk about the future of restaurants and restaurant tech.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES

[2:25] The ripple effect that planted a seed: Lessons learned from Silicon Valley

[5:11] Finding the courage: seizing the opportunity to realize a vision

[8:38] Evolving an ideology: rallying the troops and doing good while doing well.

[11:50] Evolving a leader: the challenges of scaling and having faith in your partners and values.

[16:38] How one restaurant Dallas, TX changed Olo’s framework.

[22:08] Embracing the Digital Age: Is the industry backsliding as we lean into tech?

[24:20] Imagining the future of the restaurant industry:

[27:25] Turning the tables: The kind of restaurant Noah Glass would open.

[31:15] The North Star metric: Customer lifetime value and what it means for your restaurant.

That's Noah Glass. For more on OLO visit https://www.olo.com
FULL COMP is brought to you by Yelp for Restaurants: In July 2020, a few hundred employees formed Yelp for Restaurants. Our goal is to build tools that help restaurateurs do more with limited time.

________________________________

CLICK HERE to Chat with Josh

Free Download: 5 Steps to Achieve a 15% Net Profit

We have a lot more content coming your way!

Be sure to check out the FULL COMP media universe by visiting:

FULL COMP

Restaurant Marketing School

The Playbook

Industry Town Halls

Every restaurateur knows how important their digital footprint is but who has time for all of that? It’s hard to tweet when you’re backwaiting tables because your busier didn’t show up.

Then the pandemic hits and, like it or not, your entire livelihood is determined by an audience you chose not to grow online.

I found myself in the same boat and worried it was too late.

The good news is that it isn’t and Shawn Walchef of Cali Comfort BBQ is going to tell us exactly how he transformed his restaurant into a BBQ media company.

Click to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Click here to book time on my personal calendar.

Click here to download our Restaurant Recovery Guide.

Want to streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over to http://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcast to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.

SHOW NOTES

• The beginnings of Cali Comfort BBQ
• 2019 achievements
• Cali BBQ relied on digital marketing due to having a non-obvious location
• Getting people to care about BBQ, community and craft
• Becoming your own PR person
• A publicist was out of budget for Cali BBQ
• Shawn about books to learn about PR
• Focus on finding your own voice
• Internet has changed the way traditional business is done
• Cali BBQ became a media company when they were struggling in 2008-09
• Why the internet is more reliable for marketing
• Provides actionable, measurable analytics
• Physical ads in newspapers are not as measurable
• Creating digital hospitality
• Hospitality has a competitive advantage
• Connection to customers
• Willingness to serve
• Having a full-time host is an example of investing in hospitality
• Recreating this experience digitally
• Responding to online reviews
• Interacting no Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• Proactive mindset to online audience building
• The difference between digital marketing and being a media company
• Digital marketing is about telling your own story online
• Media companies also tell the stories of others
• Cali Comfort BBQ share stories within the community
• Operators who are willing to be vulnerable online do best
• During Covid, operators are sharing their story and struggle
• Connecting with the community
• The key is reframing your relationship with your smartphone
• The pros and cons of outsourcing
• Outsourcing enables you more time
• You won’t learn as much if you outsource straight away
• Shawn originally did all social media, podcast editing, and blogging in house
• Now employs blogger and podcast producer
• Consumer habits have changed
• Pivoting during Covid19
• Asking the right questions during this time
• Your website is your #1 asset
• Be known for what you do best
• Book recommendation: Story Brand by Donald Miller
• Focusses for getting started in digital marketing
• Continuous experimentation is what got Shawn and his company to level it is today
• Personalization of digital hospitality
• Now is the greatest time to build digital infrastructure for the future
• Social media is just one aspect of online marketing

If you own and operate the best restaurant in the world does that make you the best restaurateur in the world?

If I didn’t believe that Will Guidara was the best before our conversation I certainly do now. His love of craft and of industry inspired him to create not only a restaurant empire, but to create the Welcome Conference: a platform whereby the hospitality industry can come together to chart a better future for all of us.

Today we chat about what it takes to be the best, the strategy to get there and what's he's doing to make sure we, as an industry, come out of the pandemic stronger than ever.

To learn more about the Welcome Conference go to welcomeconference.org

Click to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Click here to book time on my personal calendar.

Click here to download our Restaurant Recovery Guide.

Want to streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over to http://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcast to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.

Not all heroes wear capes, some write books. The books Gino Wickman has written are directly responsible for helping me to create multiple million dollar businesses, become a better leader and find balance within my personal and professional lives. Today we discuss his latest book, the Entrepreneurial Leap, and how we apply those lessons to the hospitality industry.

Click to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Click here to book time on my personal calendar.

Click here to download our Restaurant Recovery Guide.

Want to streamline your front-of-house operations and increase sales? Head over to http://restaurants.yelp.com/fullcomppodcast to claim your free page and learn more about these powerful tools for your business.

SHOW NOTES

• Writing Entrepreneurial Leap
• Did not become an entrepreneur until he was 29
• Wants to show others the opportunities available to them
• The book is in three main parts
• Finding out if you are an entrepreneur
• Discovering opportunities
• Creating a path to success
• Hospitality workers are running a business within our businesses
• Success of their micro-business means greater success for your business
• 6 essential entrepreneurial traits
• Gino offers an assessment online to discover if you have these traits
• Allow your staff to take the quiz if you are comfortable with them taking their own entrepreneurial leap one day
• Can be the best employees in the hospitality industry if they stay
• Entrepreneurs are generally unemployable
• Advice for leading leaders
• Lessons from a book called Drive
• Give autonomy
• Provide guidelines and rules but otherwise, let your team have ownership of their work
• Allow mastery
• Give them the opportunity to learn the business
• Make your staff member feel part of something bigger than themselves
• The bigger the problem you solve in the world, the more successful you will be
• Get close to the ground and know your customers’ needs
• Know your customers better than they know themselves
• Evolve to the new needs of customers as the world changes
• 10-year business cycles
• 2 great years
• 6 good years
• 2 terrible years when you almost go out of business
• In another ten years, something else will come
• The power of 10-year thinking
• Have a 10-year goal but not in great detail
• Learning to take action whilst being patient
• 8 critical entrepreneurial mistakes
• Not having a vision
• Not spending time with your people
• Not knowing your customer
• Not staying true to the core
• Not knowing your numbers
• Not crystalizing roles and responsibilities
• Hiring the wrong people
• Grabbing the closest people to you is not a good strategy for hiring
• Make sure people are in alignment with your core values
• Make sure they have the right skill set for the job
• Not charging enough
• Psychological mistake
• Insecurity/lack of confidence
• Many businesses barely break-even in the first 3 years
• Advice
• TED Talk by Casey Brown
• Tip from Dan Sullivan - Pick a number that scares you, then add 20%
• There are many free resources on the e-leap.com website for budding entrepreneurs
• Who inspires Gino