Jeremy Julian
Jeremy Julian
46:28
Owner: Jeremy Julian
business, restaurant, food, epic, recipe, people, bit, kitchen, pictures, talk, michelin star restaurant, allergens, customer, base, chef, art historian, menu, tool, build, cost
Carl (69%), Jeremy (30%), Intro (1%)
I
Intro
0:02
This is the restaurant technology guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better
JJ
Jeremy Julian
0:13
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I thank you guys for joining us. As I say every single episode, I know you guys have lots of choices in the world of technology in the world of podcasts, feels like new ones keep getting released every day. And, you know, there’s, it’s been a little bit of a journey on my podcast journey. It’s been fun to be along with some of your longtime listeners. Today, we are joined by a technologist and CEO and co founder of epic base, Karl Karl Jacobs, some Carl, why don’t you introduce yourself first. And it’s a very cool story and intriguing story, then we’ll talk a little bit about what what we’re trying to do with with epic base. All right.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
0:51
Yeah, my name is Karl. I’m co founder and CEO at Epic base. And at Epic base, we are building a food and beverage management platform, which helps basically, hospitality businesses like hotels or restaurants, catering businesses, dark kitchens, with the streamlining and centralization and standardization of their back of house. So we are focusing on recipes, food costs, inventory management, procurement, everything that has to do with your kitchen, basically. But that’s what epic Bay’s this.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:31
Love it. Love it. And I know that you and I were able to talk pre show talk to me a little bit about your history, where did it come from? Why kitchen management? You know, give me a little bit about your professional background, and where, you know, what I found, when I talk to our listeners that one of their favorite things is to understand how Did something come about? And where did a brand come from? And why why did Carl decide to go take on this world of of kitchen management?
CJ
Carl Jacobs
1:56
I know you asked this specifically for me because my background is actually not in the hospitality industry. I’m actually an art historian. And before actually, my career as founder of epic base, I was I was working in museums and in art house, writing books and and doing a lot of study about especially pop art. And so if you if you want to know anything about Andy Warhol just asked me, but then
JJ
Jeremy Julian
2:27
how that translates to kitchen management. I’m excited for our listeners to hear because it’s always fun to talk through it. So I’ll let you keep going. Yeah, so
CJ
Carl Jacobs
2:34
So basically, one of my friends who I met in university, he was working in restaurants, and he had a great relationship with a very famous chef in Belgium. And he had a Michelin star restaurant. And he one day, you know, they they started talking, and they say, you know, we make so many different dishes, and we make so many different recipes. Because you know, you have regular customers, and you don’t want to serve them all the same. So I want to have a tool, which kind of gives me the freedom to take pictures of everything I do in the kitchen. And and then they said, you know, maybe we have to install a camera somewhere in the corner of the room and you know, record everything. But you know, these are very impractical solutions. So, so they, they, they started talking about this, and they talked to me about it. And they said, you know, can you build something like this? Or can we buy something like this? And in the beginning, we thought, yeah, let’s just buy in something like that. It didn’t seem to exist in the way that we wanted. And so that’s how I actually epic back then epic was founded, it was actually a photo studio, which took pictures in a standardized way of everything you you did in the kitchen. And right before it went to the customer, really the honest stuff, you just put it below the camera with some optimized optimized light. And then you took a picture, it was immediately uploaded into the cloud. And, you know, you had a huge library of all these pictures that were taken by the chef himself actually. And actually, that’s the start of epic base. And in the beginning, we had a lot of customers that were just buying the photo studio and we were we that was let’s say our main focus. But along the way, some bigger customers, especially in the airline, catering etc came by and they say you know this tool that you’ve built for these chefs for these for these Michelin star restaurant chefs, you know, we like this as well because you know, we have menu tastings and we we never know after the tasting what the customer now chose, because we have to take pictures and you know, they ended up at phones and cameras and things like that. So you know, this tool that you’ve built can be used it and you know, we were just getting started So he said, No, no, we only sell Michelin star restaurants. And, and but then a few weeks later, I kind of realized maybe that’s not a good business decision. So I phoned them back and said, you know, let’s, let’s talk, let’s listen. And that’s how, you know, this, this tool ended up in some bigger businesses and with multi outlets, and with a lot of, you know, high, high volume. And and then, you know, from one thing comes the other, you know, they say, you know, we have these beautiful pictures now, but can we add the recipe to these to these pictures? Can we add ingredients to these pictures? And we so we build an ingredient tagger and, and then after, you know, you, you, they say, Yeah, food cost is really important. And, you know, that was back in 2016 2017. Actually pretty new at that time, because before that, nobody was talking about food cost and margin, you know, they were just cooking. And, yeah, and that’s how we started building epic base. And then in 2017, we really made the switch, we looked into the kitchen, we had a lot of these studios, working all around the world. And we said, you know, what can we solve in the kitchen, that that really annoys every business? We looked into the kitchen, and we saw a lot of opportunity because it was digital desert. It basically they were, you know, using pen and paper, they were using the fax, they were emailing, there weren’t any portals, to order at suppliers, everything was a chaos. So we set ourselves to go, you know, why not streamline this side of the business, you had a lot of point of sales that were coming up Lightspeed orders were already growing in that in that time, but the back of house was big, big mess. And in 2017, then, you know, we moved from taking nice pictures, to really solving their operational shit in the kitchen, basically. And that’s how we came from taking pictures as an art historian being interested in, you know, the evolution of food, to really solving one of the core issues of a food business.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
7:11
It’s, it’s eminent. And again, I know you were teasing about it, when I asked you the journey, because it’s, it’s such a fun, you know, I because I don’t I mean, other than just hanging out and having a couple of adult beverages, maybe, I don’t know that I would have asked my friend who’s an art historian to help me with photography for, for taking pictures. So, you know, tell me a little bit more about that. Because I think it’s I personally think it’s an interesting story. And I’d love to share fun stories with our listeners.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
7:40
Yeah, the reality is actually that, you know, if you’re in the art world, and you you make exhibitions, because you know, most don’t, one of the most fun things to do in the art world is making exhibitions. It’s basically the same as doing a startup, you know, you the only difference is that within with an exhibition, you don’t have a profit goal, you just want to show nice art to people. But you that’s basically what you’re doing, you’re setting up a project, you’re you’re doing this from A to Z, you’re you’re making sure that you know, you get visitors, so you need to do marketing, you need to do research, you need to build a product, and the product is the art. And, and yeah, that makes made me a very, let’s say versatile person, I could do a lot of things. Not all of them as good as I would would have wanted to do them, but I could do a lot. And and the the friend that I knew, and actually still part of epic base as well, is he knew that and he saw that and he said, you know, we are looking for someone who is very hands on who can really bring this project from A to B, and then we can see but but that’s that’s basically the same idea. So of course, the the end goal is different doing business, really is about making profit in the end and making sure that you know, everybody has a decent living. But the way to this, this goal is the same it is it’s going all the way it’s an 80 hour week. It’s it’s it’s failing, it’s getting up again, it’s it’s talking to hundreds of people to to convince them about your product. So yeah, that’s that’s actually why my friend back then asked me to do the job.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
9:29
I love it. I love it. So you went through kind of what the product does and the evolution of where it’s at. But let’s talk a little bit deeper. You know, let’s, let’s talk about what you were trying to solve in the beginning. You know, so you got this photographs, and we all have ordered food on an online platform and the picture that you get oftentimes isn’t what shows up in the box. Even at you know, at the table side it might not be there. So talk to me a little bit about kind of the the start and what were you know, what’s what age were you trying to scratch It, you know, business challenge where you’re trying to solve and then we’ll kind of talk about the evolution because I think it’s a, it’s a cool story. And I do think that, in general, you guys have solved a lot of different problems and different and unique ways that I haven’t seen other people do it. So I want to, I want to kind of walk through the journey to help help our listeners understand how you guys got to where you got to.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
10:18
Alright. Yeah, to be very honest with you actually, the reason why in 2017, we switched from studio to software is because the need for a software that solves back of house issues is much bigger than the one that we started. The business with. On both is a important but not life saving issue within our life threatening issue within the business. Everybody is annoyed by ugly pictures, but nobody is dying because of a ugly picture. Businesses are dying, if their food cost is wrong businesses, people are getting sick if the allergen information is wrong. So these things are much more crucial to your business than photos. The reason why we started with this is and that’s why it’s important to mention that, you know, the segment we were focusing on was totally different than the beginning. We were at Michelin restaurant star, Michelin star restaurant sorry, we were focusing on chefs that were extremely aware of the evolution, the advancements they made in foods that think about the fusion kitchen in Spain, think about the top Michelin star restaurants in France, that were really, you know, defining how food will look like or will taste in a few years time. And these people, they’re very aware of their status and about what they’re doing. And they’re they’re very, you know, proud of what they’re doing. And they are buying basically a photo studio to make sure that this heritage is safeguarded. So that was actually the first thing that we we focused on. And, and, you know, to make the little link to back to my history. Well, as an art historian, heritage is, of course, very close to art history, and that people have a tendency to try and find that say evolutions and, and understand how food evolves, how our defaults, or all of these things evolve. So that was my initial spark of interest to join the project, it was really like, I really liked this idea of, you know, setting out 1000s of photo studios around the world a little bit naive back then. But that was the idea. And really, you know, have these 1000s of chefs take pictures over a long period of time, and you can actually see the evolution of food to pictures. Luckily, then, as I said, also big enterprises came by, and they had a very businesslike issue. They had these things. They had shipped pictures that did not know what they were selling to their customers anymore. So they said, you know, from now on, you have this photo studio standing next to the menu tasting, and every menu, got a number and the picture in epic base, and they could start this per customer. And that’s basically what we sold back then. But that was a very small niche of a niche, or. And then they started asking questions that they came with questions like recipes, ingredients, food cost, allergens. And that’s actually how we kind of listened to the customer and move into that kitchen more firm, and more deeply. And the 2017 question came, actually, because at that time, we built a very nice product information management tool we had, we had the recipes menu development. And the goal was actually to connect to procurement tools, inventory tools, every kind of tool that was in the market to API reset, you know, let’s have the central data. And then you can you know, buy API or by any means, go and fetch this data with epic base, we keep it kind of sane and healthy and everything in order. And when you’d want to do orders, you can do this with our data. But the businesses that were in the market at that time and that were focusing on procurement, inventory, etc. They kind of shut the door on us they said you know, we don’t want you to do this. It’s a stupid idea. Why would we want to do this we do this ourselves. So instead of working together, they forced us actually to build these things ourselves. And that’s actually why we, we start building, let’s say different modules ourselves because we said you know, we have such a beautiful tool, we want to add more value to the tool. How can we do that? And we that’s why we looked in the kitchen and we say okay, we are going to solve inventory management. We are going to solve this procurement issue, and Tang They’ll all of these things that happen within the within the within the kitchen, and hopefully help the business gain more money by making sure that they’re ordering in an orderly fashion that they don’t waste as much and that they have a clear understanding on their theoretical and actual food costs and the gap that exists between those two.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
15:21
I love it. I love it. And I know, you and I talked, you know, in the past about just once you get beyond one or two locations, it’s impossible for you to have consistency unless you have a system and a process to help those chefs to help the, you know, funny enough, you talk Michelin sharp star restaurants and one of our clients years ago, US based company, the French Laundry in Yorkville, and when they opened up there, per se, and this was back in the early 2000s, in New York City, they had a live video feed between the two kitchens, in order for Chef Thomas to be able to look at stuff going through the pass. Yeah, they think about this, and how, how important it is for him to see the food going out and ensuring that it’s going to uphold his name. How do you do that, and again, this was 2025 years ago. So it’s a different, it’s a different world different technology, I was just at a different client, and we’ve got a we you know, they have a product deployed, that does recipe management, not necessarily the ingredients in the purchasing, but they have videos of how to chop an onion properly in order to get these. So talk to me a little bit about how the adoption was once you get beyond one or two. You know, even in this Michelin star restaurant, you may not be able to work seven days a week, actually, you shouldn’t be working seven days a week. And so you’ve got your sous chef that now needs to either sit under you for years and years and years to understand exactly how to chop this type of onion, or you build a system when you build a process that gets you there. Talk to me a little bit about what your guys’s learnings were in that beyond store one or two.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
17:00
Yeah. Well, funny thing is that you’re I think you’re talking about Thomas Keller. Yes, sir. Sir, he used to be a customer at Epic base when we did pictures when we did photo studio. So I don’t know if he’s still a customer have to look into that. But if you walk into his into his kitchen, you might bump into one of our studios. But but but you know, the truth is that you know, when you have one single restaurant and whether or not this is a Michelin star restaurant or not, simple mom and pop store, you will be able to manage your restaurant. And I think Thomas Keller is a beautiful example of exactly where where the switch goes, it doesn’t really matter what kind of restaurant you are, if your your high end or low end restaurant or you know doing fast casual or anything. From the moment you start scaling your business, that’s when you need software. Because when you have a sous chef and you have a single restaurant, you know, you don’t need to work seven days a week because you have people that understand exactly how you breathe and how you talk and how you cut your onions. But once you have multiple restaurants, you you you want to have a certain standard way of doing things because when people enter the IV collection somewhere and they enter the IFA collection in another place, they want to act yet they expect the same recipe and the same product in both restaurants because they’re part of the same brand. And we see that typically a tipping point is three to five restaurants. Because if you scale from one to three restaurants, you probably you know, manage, you will have an Excel sheet somewhere and you will manage to you know, send it around by email when you make a change. But once you go beyond these three to five restaurants, then you need a tool that really says okay, this is the way you you you built your recipe. This is where you order your stuff. And this is how much you need in your inventory. And also when you need to order etc, etc. Because most of the time also the bills start to go to a different place than where the intake is going. So all of these things start to change. And that’s where software like epic base becomes an important tool in your in your kitchen. I recently did a case study basically basically about epic based in an a bigger chain. I think they had 70 outlets or so. And really the gap between their theoretical and actual food costs was actually caused by the fact that they had a recipe with fish in there. And they instead of doing too small fish they did for small fish that was you know, it was grown like that, you know, nobody talked about this, you know, the recipe set to PDF, that’s not enough. So that’s put foreign then. So they, they, if they found this out by having a tool our to Epic base, and they they could save a million euros that’s incredible. Just one recipe. Yeah. And that’s really that’s what this is about. If you don’t have a tool like epic base, you, you, you really you don’t know what’s going on in your kitchen. Basically, in the end, your accounting department will be able to say, Yeah, your food cost was 32%. Okay, but how can you I know what do you know? Yes. To how do I get from 32 to 28? Yep, you, your accounting department will not say that to you, they will just say 32%. And then they saw over portioning is a huge issue in my business. That’s what we need to tackle. And that’s the actionable thing that epic base brings to you.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
21:10
Well, the other thing that we found in deploying recipe management systems is no different than 20 years ago, you probably had 10 Phone Numbers memorized, right? You had 10, maybe 1520 Phone Numbers memorized, and you would memorize them because you were having to dial them every single time and you had a phonebook or or you know, some way to capture those phone numbers. Now, you know, my children, I don’t remember their phone number, because I look it up. Because I look it up each time. And in the recipe management world, it’s very similar, where you have the ability when you put it into their place where where they need to do that, that that slow drip on your two to four fish ended up coming oftentimes from people that were not maliciously trying to do that it was an accident, but they thought they remember the recipe properly. And it went from two to three to four. And ultimately, it hurts the business.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
22:00
Yeah, it’s it’s it’s an honest executive decision, which has very tremendously bad
JJ
Jeremy Julian
22:06
resistance consequences. Absolutely. And I’m not
CJ
Carl Jacobs
22:11
saying that they’re doing this because they want to maliciously do something wrong in the business. Absolutely. You have to be able to, you know, point is out and tell the guys Hey, guys, you know, you’re making this but change it back to this because that’s why when we make money, and that’s when we lose money.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
22:31
Absolutely. I’m gonna pivot just a bit, because you talked about it in your intro about allergens. allergens are a big deal. And, you know, allergens are a big deal. And ultimately, anybody that lives with somebody that has allergies or, or knows somebody with allergies, it’s a big deal. You know, you put peanuts into something and you’ve got a peanut allergy, and they’ve told you about it, you can ultimately, you know, have somebody passed away because of it. And so that’s, that’s a pretty big deal. Talk to me a little bit about that. Because again, the the chef may have had a prep chef make this, you know, this product, and they go pull it out of the walk in and, and they might not recognize that there’s peanuts in this. And again, I’m using peanuts, because they’re just super, super prevalent. But it’s anything, it could be lead. It could be gluten, it could be any kind of nuts. It could be eggs, yeah, it could be shellfish, you know, they could have us the fish, you know, some kind of fish stock that had had their you got shellfish that they can’t do. Talk to me a little bit about what you have found, you know, in the way of allergen management and helping the frontline employees. One of the other things that we continue to hear and I think it’s, it’s probably pretty irrelevant where you are, but it certainly is in the US is, is turnover of employees. You know, with COVID, a lot of people left the restaurant industry. And so you’re constantly, you know, that chef that might have been there for 20 years, or that that had cooked might have been there for 20 years, knew that there was shellfish in this in this recipe, but he left her in the middle of COVID and didn’t come back. And now I’ve got this new chef that’s, you know, this new cook. That’s that’s running the line that doesn’t know they’re shellfish in there. So talk to me a little bit about how allergen management has been, has been, you know, exacerbated and how you guys have helped solve some of that.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
24:08
Yeah, so allergen management is a very difficult topic. First of all, it’s important to mention that this is a human thing to do. So you need quality assist a quality assurance team, to make sure that when you are a business data is at a certain scale, that you make sure that all of the recipes that you put out there, that they are controlled, and that you control the ingredients that you’re using, and that you make sure that the data that is entered in a sewage system, whether or not this is epic base or Excel or any other tool. That is correct. It is always a bit of a difficult thing because people are looking for the Holy Grail, which is kind of an AI tool that magically A does all of that calculations for you. And we do help them. And we do connect with suppliers. And we ask them if you have data about allergens, please send them with the data and we will display them. Also, we have connections with, for example, the USDA, but others as well. But USDA is the one that used most in the US. We we have all of these connections in place to help you know make improve the life of the quality assurance team. But in the end, it’s the quality assurance team that needs to check a box with an epic base that says this recipe is verified and approved for production. And this is of course, the red thread throughout the software. If you open recipe and epic base, it shows immediately whether or not you should be producing this recipe or not. And if you open a menu in epic base, it shows immediately which allergens are in which recipe, when the customer asked for this, they can actually immediately look this up. Or even better, they can share the menu with a with a QR code. And then the customer can scan this at the desk or at the tail or anywhere. And they can look this up immediately without even having to ask to the to the to the customer to the server. And the great thing about it too. And that’s really the benefit is this work this work about putting the allergens in the right place, that’s something you had to do. And you will have to do quite for quite some quite a while there are in let’s say businesses that try to solve that. But it’s extremely difficult because you have so many hundreds of 1000s of ingredients changing all the time. So it’s a it’s a very difficult thing. But anyway, putting that in is one thing. You can put this in Excel, but rather put it in epic base. Because when you do this in a software like epic base, when you change something within an ingredient, it is recursively changed everywhere we’re using. And that’s the benefit of having a tool, because you don’t nearly you only have to worry about this once. When you put it in when you put a new ingredient in your database, make sure that the data is correct. And then the tool takes care of all of that.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
27:23
Yeah, no. And one of the other use cases that people that don’t have a solution like this Excel, it’s almost impossible to do it with but something that’s centrally hosted, is when you get a scare and you’ve got a you know, a recall on spinach, just for sake of argument, how do I change the recipe to pull the spinach out of everything and change it for arugula instantly across 2020 or 30 or 70 stores? To your example earlier, it’s impossible in Excel, you’ve got to make a bunch of phone calls, you got to send a bunch of text messages, you got to send a bunch of you know that yeah, so
CJ
Carl Jacobs
27:55
yeah, maybe if I can just add something to that, because it’s an interesting topic, because now you’re talking about recall. Of course, in a restaurant, it’s different because restaurants that they’re not obliged yet to, to label everything and know the ins and outs of every everything. But once you start packaging your food and sending it to a school or sending to an office building, you need to label it, you need to make sure where every chicken that you’re using is coming from and have the whole operation throughout the chain. Yep. And if you don’t, it causes huge losses because you you just don’t know what to recall. So you call everything that’s out there, you know where everything is coming from, you can actually limit it back to just that batch of food that is bad. And you can just take that out of the out of the production chain or the chain. And that’s exactly what epic base does, you can go as far as really like to the to the really to the detail of one item in one batch. And we tell you exactly in which supplier or sorry, in which fridge refrigerator somewhere in the world, you’ve put that that batch. So that’s really something you cannot achieve without good software.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
29:13
I love it. I love it. I still I still am always blown away that we’ve got an art historian that turned into turn turn tech entrepreneur but I love the story. Let’s let’s some take the journey down kind of the food cost and the purchase management side because I think that’s really where where you guys have found not just the most success but you know and again, I would implore all of our listeners if you don’t have a recipe management system, if you don’t understand because truly even even what you guys are doing now with purchase management and food cost software is very different than plating instructions and, and prep instructions. You know, they are two different systems but are part of the same. I guess you know what your chef uses and a lot of times people think I’ve got a food cost management system, but they don’t have something to instruct the the people will actually in the prep line are the people on the on the make line for those things. And then the the opposite often happens, they have a recipe book that’s digital or is, you know, might be paper that they email out or whatever. But they’ve got a recipe book, but then they don’t have food cost. So talk to me a little bit how you guys have tied those things? Yeah,
CJ
Carl Jacobs
30:17
yeah, both of those things are actually covered in our, in our menu development suite and the module that that focuses on really on the intellectual property of a business, that’s how I call it and because that’s really why people come back to your business, it’s because they liked the food. And that sets you apart from any other business. Now you can have a nice concept, but if the food is bad, they will not return. So you have to have a great concept. And then you have to add great food. So there’s two things on great food. The first one is, of course, you need to know how to make it. So you were referring to videos, when you were talking about Thomas Keller? Well, we do this differently, we have a step by step guide, in which you can actually add pictures per step. And you can actually almost also animate those steps. So you can really see somebody you know, with seven, eight pictures go from an empty plates to a fully dressed burger in eight steps. And they know exactly visually how to do it. So that’s covered with one part of that that module. The other part is, of course, the food cost. And honestly, I think when people start taking food costs seriously, they will very often their their margin, even at the start of when they you know, go into business with that menu, their margin will be too low. Because they think it’s an 8020. The margin is the 80 80% margin on their food cost. But in reality, they’re at 67%. Yeah, at least in theoretical reality. So when they start making the recipe, they see oh, it’s only a 67% margin that I have. And then the reality hits because you know, food cost rises over portioning waste. They have to throw it out, because it’s not good enough anymore that the food
JJ
Jeremy Julian
32:17
and then the real margin is 58%. Yeah. So if you start that, it becomes even worse. So it starts by putting in the recipe and making sure that you, you know, you’re close to the 8020 rule. And if you if some of your products, and the recipes that you sell, the menu is sorry, the dishes that you sell in your restaurants are maybe less profitable, fine, because there might be signature dishes, but then make sure that your menu card evens this out. And you have higher margins on different items. Exactly. Yep. Well, and I think it’s interesting that you say that, because I find a lot of restaurant tours that don’t have a food cost system, they take total purchases and divide it by sales. And you know, they take their AP, they say I bought $10,000 worth of product I sold, you know, I sold $20,000 worth of worth of food. And I’ve got a 50% margin. And it’s like, it’s nowhere close. But it’s just interesting. And I’m sure you guys have experienced that, that people take really, really gross numbers, and they don’t know where to even move their product. They don’t know what to focus on where to drive customers how to make more money as a business because they’re not measuring it and they’re not managing.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
33:36
Exactly and and basically, what you were mentioning is really, you know, they do this after the fact site. Yep, at the end of the month, when they have hopefully make made a bit of profit, but probably also a bit big loss on certain items, then they come to the realisation that’s weird. I’ve bought so many produce, and it’s so expensive, I can’t get out of costs. So luckily, when you are a bit bigger, you probably also do this beforehand, which is which is much better. But that’s really you know, where the shift needs to go, you need to understand where your menu is, at a certain moment in time. And that’s at the beginning of your cycle, not at the end of your cycle. So that’s, that’s really one of the things that people need to understand this really, it’s not just about taking all your your profit and dividing it by your food cost. Yeah,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
34:35
yeah, and getting a gross food cost. Now, I’m gonna ask you to double click a little bit on kind of menu engineering and does, you know identifying that I’m making this filet mignon dish with, you know, pureed potatoes and green beans just for sake of argument. And when you decide to change that fillet for flat iron steak, what you know, going through that menu engineering project and trying to get Your ideal food cost. So understanding what your other costs are in your business, as well as what your actuals are talking a little bit about that process and how you guys deal with that at Epic base, and how you guys are helping people to make smarter decisions on what they put on their menu, what they focus on, and, and then really measuring back, measuring back, not just that one day or that one week, but even across the chain. As I’m rolling out that menu item. What does it look like when I get to the 10th store in the 15th? Store? And why do I have a you know, a 22% food cost in this one store? And a 28% food cost and a different store? You know, how exactly are you guys helping people to work through that?
CJ
Carl Jacobs
35:39
Well, there’s a bunch of different tools that you can use to understand where you’re at in your business. Basically, one of the most powerful graphs that we provide our businesses is the Boston consultancy matrix or the Miller matrix in food terms. It’s about the cash cows, the dogs, the question marks, etc. And that’s basically about you know, what’s the profit you have on a certain item? And how much did you sell that item. And then certain items pop up on the right top corner, which is great. And some are in the bottom somewhere, dying away or eating your margin. So these are the this is the let’s say one of the most important ones to look at when you are running a business. I think that that shows you which you which items you have to kill off which items are high in profit, but you have to push more to the customer and which ones are just you know, your cash cows. But then, of course, the second thing is, of course, also understanding, I have a theoretical food cost and I have an actual food cost. And I have to compare both of those. And then there is a gap that exists and that gap I need to fill I need to understand, and where does that go to. And then of course, you have different options there. And if you use software, like epic bass, basically, in a big most basic way, then of course, we will tell you that there is a gap, which is already a good thing, because most people don’t know, yep. But then when you start using software a bit more intensively and you know, you want to know where this goes, you start registering your waste, you start registering your creation of items, and going from a potato to a french fries, things like that. And then you you have a much more in depth grained control, uncontrolled waste, because you know, where the waste went, what happened to that waste, at cetera, et cetera. And then you you start understanding, okay, these are the items I need to work on. And these are the food costs, or the sorry, the costs of the ingredients that went up, maybe not a lot, maybe 5%. But I buy a lot of those. So I have to do something about these things. And that’s really where software like epic Bayes really, you know, makes the difference.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
38:10
Yeah, so I’m gonna go the opposite route real quick. And as we’re starting to wrap up our conversation, this is, have you seen customers that go too far, I had a customer implemented inventory system, and it was a fast food restaurant. And he measured the ketchup, he measured the ketchup packets, and the napkins that went into the bag, he measured the salt that went on to the French fries. And, you know, we had 10, you know, 10, fast food burger places. And, and, and, quite frankly, the the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze as, as they say, you know. And, you know, talk to me a little bit about how, how you guys have managed to keep people from getting so far in the weeds, that they’re measuring things that matter so much less, and they don’t even focus on, you know, a lot of places will say, You know what, let’s just take our top 20 items and measure them, which is which is better than zero, then you get the people that want to measure every single thing and, and they end up killing themselves and they’re not running a restaurant, they no longer they’re running a tech stack, trying to measure salt and catch up and pepper and you know, things that matter a lot less talk to me a little bit about how you guys have helped people through that journey?
CJ
Carl Jacobs
39:17
Well, honestly, the truth is that most businesses need encouragement to improve their measurement rather than slow it down a little bit. Because I think a good balance is actually when you when you make sure that you know the large items within your large volume items in your business are measured. I think those are the most important ones to measure. What we do see a lot maybe that’s a little bit what we what you’re pointing out as well is that you know when people are taking the decision to go for food and beverage management tool, they often tend to drink Give away about a castle with a lot of rooms and everything goes automatically and they want and they come to Epic bays and they say, you know, I want to measure the waist, and I want to have the weight and I want to have exactly what I’m wasting. And then we ask question, okay, but what are you doing today in your kitchen? How are you working, and then they don’t have food, because they don’t have inventory. They don’t procure in the in an orderly way. So what we see often is, you know, first steps first, and, and going from, from, let’s say, zero to an automated inventory system, without maybe knowing exactly where all of the waste is going, is it theft? Or is it expiry date, or is it over portioning. And as long as you know, I’m wasting 7% of my food. That’s already a huge improvement. And then, okay, if you’re there, let’s talk about next step, maybe integrate with a scale or anything like that. So you can go even further with that. But the goal is actually, you know, to, to go, let’s say that, the 80%. And then you’re already very, very far down the road to understand exactly where your food business is going.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
41:21
Well, and at the end of the day, when you get that 80%, you’re so much better off than the majority of your competitors. And so with that, with that, that’s and, and I remind people to crawl before they walk before they run out at the end of the day, trying to eat all of it, you know, eat an elephant, one bite at a time, you can’t take it all, you know, I’m awful today of all of these little things. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to focus on the core to start, and then just start to build on it because it gets easier with time as you continue to do that.
CJ
Carl Jacobs
41:50
Yeah. And to build on what you say about the competitive advantage. I think that’s one of those things that that I mean, you couldn’t be more right, I think, knowing the data, that is a competitive advantage over any of your competitors. And if you know what you’re doing, if you if you if you if you measure you can manage that’s that’s basically it. And that’s how you make the difference between it Okay, restaurants are an OK chain, and heavily profitable one.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
42:22
I love it. I love it. So we’ve taken a huge journey here, Carl, talk to me a little bit about what it looks like to get engaged with your team. You know, if I’m, if our listeners are out there, and they’re like, You know what, I need epic bass, I need to figure it out. I you know, I’m not doing it. And they’ve just been so convinced that whether it’s the recipe management product, or it’s the ingredients, or it’s the allergens, or it’s, you know, the the full on purchasing and everything. What does it look like to engage with your team? What can I expect as a consumer that’s running in a restaurant that, you know, once I engage with your team? How does that look? Yeah,
CJ
Carl Jacobs
42:54
first of all, we have built our software in such a way that we only need to give you what you need. So if you’re not looking for inventory management, just for Product Information Management, that’s fine. Epic base is there to help you solve the issues that that you as a business have. Secondly, if you if you want to understand more about epic base and and want to talk to us, it’s just a matter of going to our website, get dot epic base.com, where you can, you know, browse around, understand the different modules that we have. But also definitely go to the Resources page, because there’s a huge, you know, blog section with a lot of articles about how to do certain stuff. And if even if you’re, let’s say, a mom and pop store or a small restaurant, and you’re saying, you know, I like epic based but maybe it’s a bit too far fetched for me, because you know, I just need basic stuff, then also go to our upside, because we do have a few, you know, Excel sheets freely available, ready to download. And you can, you can start off your business with Excel seed sheets. And once you grow, and you come to a certain you know, volume three to five restaurants at a minimum, then it’s, it’s, it’s really good to get in touch with epic base, and you just sent us an email or you you fill out the form on the website. And then we are there to really understand your business because that’s really the first thing that we do is understanding your business. And we try to map your issues on the software that we have. And then once you sign your contract, we don’t leave you just hanging there. We really have a customer success team that’s world class and really there to you know, solve any of your questions, help you in the right direction, get get on the right track and make sure that in the end, you can say you know, I invested in epic bass, but I got it back 15 times.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
44:53
I love it. I love it. And so I would encourage all of our listeners go check out epic bass. Carl has been awesome. to work with us, we’ve been kind of talking through, you know, helping educate the restaurant community at the about the things that, that it is that you guys need to be doing. Because if you’re not, I promise you, your competitors are doing much of the same thing. So, you know, you know, not that I’m trying to scare anybody into going and checking it out. But at the end of the day, you’ve got to figure these things out. Because food costs only continues to rise, commodity costs only continue to increase, you know, allergens, famine, it’s getting harder and harder to run a restaurant. And at the same time, tools are getting easier and easier to implement. Tools are getting easier and easier to put in the hands of your team to be able to help them to run a better restaurant. So while you guys are online, checking out, pick base, go give us a rating on your favorite podcast player, because it helps to get the word out. Go check these guys out connect with Carl and his team. He’s got an awesome team that really be willing to help you guys out. If you haven’t already done so subscribe to the newsletter. Once a month on the first of the month. You guys will get an email with all of the blog articles, all of the podcasts. I’m not going to spam you just looking to get get word out about all of the cool things that are happening at restaurant technology. Guys. Carl, thank you so much and to our listeners make it a great day.
I
Intro
46:11
Thanks for listening to the restaurant technology guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com For tips, Industry Insights and more to help you run your restaurant better
