36:18
Owner: Jeremy Julian
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
restaurants, brands, guests, technology, pandemic, acquired, experience, growing, people, discount, week, acquisition, turned, margaritas, inherited, randy, business, bit, years, company
SPEAKERS
Randy (72%), Jeremy (27%), 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. Thank you guys out there for joining us. I know that, as I say, every time you guys have a lot of choices on how you spend your time and energy, so we appreciate you guys spending a little bit of time with us on the show when we post one of these episodes. Today, I am joined by one of the best restaurant operators I know. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my friend. But I’ve got close to 20 years with, with our guests today that I’ve got to watch him in a couple of different brands, grow his career and continue to operate restaurants. And so I am joined by the one and only Randy sharp. Randy, for those that aren’t familiar with you, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? Maybe even where we met. And we can talk a little bit of fun, fun, old school stories from 15 or 20 years ago, I actually just was going through some pictures, some pictures from Cabo. And and your face popped up. So I’ll text them to you later. But But why don’t you let everybody know who you are. And then we can talk about what you get to do day in and day out with extra G?
RS
Randy Sharpe
1:11
Sure. Well, I mean, you already made I don’t want to ruin your introduction. But yeah, really sharp restaurant veteran of going on 30 years. And I started out a million years ago, what it feels like a million years ago in the industry. And from there, more of independence. And then Jared, Jeremy and I met I think it was probably been, I joined a little restaurant chain at the time, you know, grown to about 50 restaurants. And it stayed a alfagar restaurants. I joined them in 2000. And then grew my career from an assistant manager to end up moving on to a different pursue a different opportunity. I was an area director and new restaurant openings. And that’s where I believe we met I think we actually met in Cabo and want to work or break, come company retreats out there. And I think we actually met when we’re going on nice long jog.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
2:15
We did, we did that was one jogging combo, early in the morning, and everybody’s hung over
RS
Randy Sharpe
2:21
early in the morning, and everyone the night before us thinks that they all commit during an hour were the two that actually felt follow through, we’re sitting there at 6am and everyone else to show up. And I think that’s when we started conversing. And since then, I would say I spent about 13 years growing my career at Elephant Bar. And when I moved on to a few different opportunities, and we re caught up, I was the senior vice president of operations for Avanos Macaroni Grill, your, your you’re working directly with them just in there and helps move that project forward, where we got North Star integrated in documents time and got all kinds of fun, real, you know, a lot of really good progress made then. And as I joined, that, proceeded to want to make that a long term career where I wanted to help pick that brand and turn around and bring it back to its relevance. I was tapped on the shoulder. We’re an investment company, it was buying what was real next restaurants, what we would say would be the good parts of what it was it one point it was 200 restaurants. And I think at this point, they were buying 52 of them. They wanted to turn it around. And I had spent three years and prior prior to that as VP of ops for one of the brands that real Max and after sitting down and going through it and really, you know, looking at that opportunity, including the ability to create my own team and form our own little restaurant company and grab something that we know would would do well with the right attention in love and growing and I jumped on the opportunity and end of a king we took over those 52 restaurants as of today we’re at 72 Yep. Got four years of volunteer fiber for four years, four and a half years later we’ve we’ve grown by over 30%. And you know, 19 was a banner year 2020 was 2012 it Yep. Yeah, we survived enclosed within a single restaurant in laughs single manager or above through that which really our calling card on our performance through COVID. And then 2021 was the best year that company’s ever had, which allowed us to open 60 restaurants last year. organically. We have three more in the hopper to open up in q1, close to probably q1 Although I’ll be open up back q2, q1 q2, and then we just acquired a sixth restaurant chain and beautiful A outskirts of Fort Worth, Texas, which, you know now and super excited about, I’ll be spending quite a bit of time in the great state of Texas. But we’re just you know, we’re just excited to where we’re at. We’re super humble. We know, the group that runs this company has all come up the ranks. And we’ve all learned, you know, what we feel is the right way to do business here, which is taking care of your partners and taking care of your guests. And it’s paid off to the point where we’re still looking at acquisitions, and we’re still looking at growth. I was actually on the East Coast until late last night in New York, and Washington, DC ofan potential sites to continue our growth. I
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:43
love it. I love it. So you talked about real next. And I know there’s been a lot a lot of storied history, the brand that you inherited, and I say you inherited obviously, it was an investment group that owned it, but the brand that you got to take over was not in the best place. I mean, they they had been declining sales, they had been declining. You know, the I mean, you and I have talked offline, not on the podcast, but just about the brands that you guys took over. And the brands I guess, for those that aren’t familiar with real Max, which is now XR, G, give give, give our audience a little bit of the brand names that they might be a little bit more familiar with the 70 restaurants. And then we can talk about really what you inherited and kind of how you took some of those same core principles that you just talked about. Taking care of your guests taking care of you that the team members and taking your partners and how it changed the change or trajectory of where you guys are at to be able to have the success you’ve had. But today, let’s talk about the brands. What are the brands that you guys run at this point?
RS
Randy Sharpe
6:35
Well, we run 11 Now, yeah, I know it’s crazy. lovin, we inherited by No. Yeah, sorry. You always extract a couple one offs to inherit seven brands, they’ll treat as big one. It’s it’s 32 restaurants strong. Then you got Chevy special next Sokka poco restaurants are so small, or SoCal Chang moss breezes, everyone’s heard of Osprey system or going to beach. And then you’ve got the Senegal in New York, you’ve got who song And Larry’s in Vancouver, Washington, which is a spin off of El Torito. And then you get out to Rio grill, which is now you know, down to one restaurant. We acquired it, we had to we’ve since converted into one of our other brands that we acquired a magazine. So those are the base brands we acquire or we came into fruition for El Cerrito, and then, with the success of 19 brought on the opportunity to acquire Sol Cosina. And so Lita tacos and margaritas, but to your point getting back the end of 1819 is I think when we came in, we had about three weeks to get to know the shape of the business prior to the actual acquisition going through and the investors bought purchasing. And they’re down about 9% in sales, which was pretty big. The funny thing, and this is just crazy. And I think just this is a testament to the team that we had, and and the excitement of us coming in. Obviously, we had quite a few relationships with people that were at real Max and we acquired the brands in October, the end of October 18, November of 18, we were up in sales. It was it was starting to get the systems and standards in place right away. And it started the run. And you know, I think the first year or first month we were close to being down to sales was February of 19. And I don’t know if you remember February of 19. In California, it’s like now with the rain. Yeah,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
8:38
exactly. We’re well on Super West Coast heavy, because so many of the brands were on the west coast. So yeah,
RS
Randy Sharpe
8:44
almost everything’s west coast, or was west coast, we’ve since expanded, but it was one of those situations we were still up so we just started that run. And it was really the other core principles was what I mentioned before, it was really you know, be that be that operator slash that company, that employer that people want to work for. Important. do right by your guests. And you know, too often that gets understated where you know, people you know, that’ll push a customer’s always right, well, they may or may not be it doesn’t matter they’re spending their money and take care of and then the other the big thing was the condition of the restaurants was not great. It was we inherited a some brands that I think the bones are great, but they just weren’t taken care of. So we started a remodel process with El Torito goal was to remodel all the restaurants within the first year we got close until COVID hit and we’re going to pause that we’re pretty much there. There’s only a few left that hadn’t been remodeled. And that just that’s that started the brand and just really show the guests that we love. We love the brands, we love our people and we love our guests and we then we hit the menus and and really spent quite a bit of time looking at what worked and what didn’t work and what was great at one point in time One of the things that I saw, you know, early on was the previous regime had really gotten more focused on food cost versus food quality. And so we fix that. And so within the first three months, we remodeled three restaurants, revamped the entire menu, re rationalized staffing needs for our restaurants to make sure that’s focused on guests first, and just really focused, I believe on the right things. And we’re rewarded and you know, things took off. So we were launched that the Chevy’s remodel project shortly after same same result, you saw anywhere from 15 to 20%, left, sometimes 30, in some of the restaurants that were renovated, these restaurants have been around 2030 years. And
JJ
Jeremy Julian
10:46
they hadn’t been remodeled in 20 or 30 years, and many of them
RS
Randy Sharpe
10:49
correct. It seems like carpeting 20 years ago. So you think, you know, then again, 19 turned into be that banner year where we were able to have the calm, get the confidence in our investors to actually start looking at acquisition. So that’s when we were able to negotiate a great acquisition in Seoul preceded Sarita tacos and margaritas and there were six restaurants for sold to Salinas at the time of acquisition, not the best time in the world to acquire a company end up November of 2019. Sure, yeah, exactly. Sort of derails or at least pauses, your plans, growth, and so quiet. And then shortly after the pandemic, really, you know, took a big bite. And the one thing that was super interesting is El Cerrito and Ocracoke, Vaughn said he’s had a pretty, pretty robust takeout program, had to really dig in quick, because that was something that was a little bit broken, too. And we’re working on fixing, and we fixed it quick to where the automation and the ease of guests experience from online order and whatnot. But also, we didn’t have anything, they didn’t have any take up program at all. That was
JJ
Jeremy Julian
12:01
they were local neighborhood, really high volume. I mean, I know the brands and they were all in California, in the middle of the pandemic, it was it must have been tough.
RS
Randy Sharpe
12:10
Yeah, we didn’t want to, we didn’t want to send them down, we wanted to keep our employees, we keep the managers on and then have room out place for the, the hourly staff to run to when we reopen. So we created that takeout program pretty quick and got creative, continue to look at how to pivot through it. And fast forward. When all said and done, we had six ohms to leaders, we have 12 now, and we are opening to more souls, we’re opening a soul in New York on Fifth Avenue and then in Boston, and the payments Back Bay Area of Boston. That’s awesome. You know, they’re in the next six to eight weeks, depending on when Mr. Construction tells me he’s done. But you know, so that’s really our story. And it really just is great people to work with great team, we’re still looking to acquire other companies long as it matches who we are in our DNA. And we’re always looking for opportunities to open new ones.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
13:08
That’s great. So I’m gonna ask you real quick, Randy, because I was on the inside, I was a consumer of the brands before you guys took them over. And there was a perception of it being a value based chain. And you know, there was a lot of discounting going on, when you guys took over, there was a lot of a lot of discounting. And I know at one point, my family wouldn’t go to El Cerrito unless I got a discount, because it was one of those brands that you would get a coupon in the mail, you know, kind of like Bed Bath and Beyond. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys fought your way through that so that everybody wasn’t waiting for the coupon to drop that that because when you and I grew up, and we’re growing up in the restaurant industry, Wall Street, it was like the place to go hang out, it was the place to go have margaritas after work. And then it turned into kind of this, you know that the energy wasn’t there, but not anymore. And I know you guys have turned that around. But talk to me a little bit about how you guys evaluated that that value, you know, value proposition to the guests without having a discount heavily to get it?
RS
Randy Sharpe
14:02
Yeah, so good point. I remember discount line was pretty really high about five or 6%. And one thing that I saw on a regular basis, like six FS is a free standing answer. So you would, you know, pick your mailbox, go out, it was that they were really they’re really hooked on him and me our discounts are like drugs, you get hooked and it’s hard to get off of them. And you had to infuse you had to give the guests have different reasons. And you had to do the work the menu needed work, staffing, needed work, buildings needed work, and that was really our standpoint from day one. You know, making sure that the guests wanted to order online, it was easy, so we had to give them different reasons. Once everything was able to get in place El Torito stance, you know, the other brands start standing on their own. There. We don’t do we don’t do emphasize. So we’re able to effectively eliminate that thing Moo from a marketing. You know, marketing has a bunch of different facets, that the mark, you know, couponing and discounting is one form, it’s really transactional marketing, we really were able to transition to experiential marketing where it’s really more image based, we want to show off our beautiful buildings. Now we want to show off our beautiful food one, I want to really just show the lifestyle pictures of what is going on in the restaurants when you’re there. So really went from transactional will give you a discount, please come in. And we’ll give you you know, the markdown on the restaurants and then to now where it’s pretty much full retail. There’s a there’s a loyalty program, that’s great. And that rewards long term guests. But that’s super small, super small piece compared to before, it would be hard pressed to find a guest that wasn’t coming in from with it without a coupon in hand. Well,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
15:51
and again, that was what you have. And you guys turn that around, which ultimately turned around gross margin, and it turns around your profitability, which gives you the cash flow to grow, which I think is a bold move, because a lot of restaurants, you know, I’ve been around for a long time watching. They just count themselves to death, and then nobody shows up. And then your clientele start to not come in anymore when you stop. And that just counts.
RS
Randy Sharpe
16:12
Yeah, the other thing that they do is they and I’ve been part of some brands in the past where they wanted to get away from Discount. Great plan. If you have a right strategy. Yeah, see that too often, or say we’re gonna eliminate this, but no strategy. If you don’t give your guests a different reason to come, and you try to peel that off. Yeah, there are a lot of money in the bank,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
16:34
you better backstop because you’re gonna be
RS
Randy Sharpe
16:37
hurting. It’s a long curve to get to where you need to be and be successful. So you know, it, we weren’t going to do it until we were ready. And we ease off of it. Now, it’s one of those things where, you know, value is always an equation, right? It’s what you pay. It’s part of that your experience as part of that, you know, what you walk out feeling as part of that. And I think it’s just still feel they’re getting a great value at El Cerrito without having to have a coupon in their hand anymore.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
17:07
Yeah, I love that. You threw out the the concept of an experience. And for anybody that’s been to Laguna Beach and been to Las Brisas. It’s an experience regardless of when you’ve been, whether it was this, you know, leadership or different leadership, last resort has always been that way. I got the privilege to go to Seoul. And I had been to, you know, before I prior to your guys’s leadership, but I watch both on social media and I watch, even for myself, when I consume your brands, it’s a place to go. And it’s a place to see and it’s a place to be seen. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that guest experience and creating a place that people want to talk about being at, because I think that’s part of the aura of getting in to these places is when you go to Seoul and Newport Beach or whatever. Like it’s the place that people want to be seen and they want to go hang out and they want to go enjoy. Because it is part of the lifestyle. It’s part of taking a selfie, you know, on Instagram and posting it. How do you guys consider that because that, again, is a very different methodology than what you inherited five years ago.
RS
Randy Sharpe
18:11
Well, we inherited five years ago was feeding.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
18:15
Yep, it was just about sustenance.
RS
Randy Sharpe
18:19
There’s no difference between that and going not to knock places. They’re great. But they serve a purpose. There’s not they’re not experiential, and El Cerrito was built on experience built on, like you mentioned, you and I growing up we went there for birthdays holidays, brunch. You went there for a specific reason. It turned into Hey, you know, 999 Taco deal, which doesn’t? The Hold on, sorry, Jared, you’re gonna put that in somewhere. There’s an extension cord there. Sorry. I got I got technical help. So we don’t die. Anyway. It turned in from from you know, that to you know, it wasn’t the same. And we there wasn’t going to survive on that. And everything we focus on right now is how people feel when they leave the restaurant. Not about just food. It’s about food. It’s about experience. It’s about treating your guests like family. It’s about I went to Seoul and Newport Beach mazing service, great food. Great. That was the ambiance was amazing. It just made it a special experience for
JJ
Jeremy Julian
19:28
anniversary, or whatever birthday for an anniversary for just a business dinner, whatever.
RS
Randy Sharpe
19:33
And you become the destination. I think that’s what people want. And I can tell you right now, there’s takeout that’s still part of our businesses about 10% of our business is obviously grew to 100% during the pandemic and was at 20 for a while it’s about 10% which is about 5% higher than it was before so you have that piece of the business and you need in love so make sure your group Hall is high, but you have the other piece that is the memories and that’s what the people especially coming out of the pandemic are looking for, they were looking for an experience and reason to go out. And it was our responsibility to take care of them. And, you know, throughout this entire five years, one thing we never take for granted is guests have a lot of choices out there. Money is not unlimited to anyone. And yeah, you’re gonna get them come in to better appreciate every visit, and ever make special. And I understand, our team understands that. And that’s our focus. And we always can get better and learn. And one of the things we try to do is stay humble. Understand that, hey, it’s never going to be perfect, we’re very few times but we want to make the brand. And we focus on the great side of that versus, versus Perfect, perfect, something you’ll never got to thanks, we’ll never hit, you can be great meaning they can have a great experience whether this little thing happened or that little thing after I didn’t get the exact thing they wanted that you can get the you know, there could have been a little hotter and quit us being on top of it and taking care of their experience to come back. Yep, super important.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
21:07
Again, we talked about a lot on the show was just creating a good guest experience through technology through people through a process or systems is exactly why restaurants exist. Because if not, then they can get the same calories from McDonald’s or Burger King or subway. But they’re paying two or 3x for Seoul in Newport Beach, because they’re getting a better experience.
RS
Randy Sharpe
21:27
Yeah, that’s a good point on the technology side, because that’s one of the things that would definitely, you know, you think about these brands, and some of them were even 68 years old. And so I think some of them were created in the 80s, like Chevy’s and our technology was sub 80s. And we, we said, you never want technology to interfere with the guests experience, you want to enhance the guest experience and user experiential restaurants are there places people go for special occasions, but if we don’t have technology, you’re gonna fall behind, you’re gonna lose, you just can’t, you can’t physically muscle through plus freezes will do north of $400,000 a week in the summertime. Yeah, cannot go through something like that, unless you have technology as your and one of the things we did last Greece is coming out of the pandemic, we are able to grow. Now permanent, an extra 80 seeds that that in transforming part of our parking lot into this beautiful recall the rose garden out there. But then you think well, all that How’s all that food going to come out of kitchen? Well, we launched KDs and launched BARKEVIOUS and launched technology and really look at the back end of this, how does the back end of this that the guest doesn’t see going to actually help us grow. And that’s one of the things that we’re always looking at, we’re always excited about trying, you know, with with very sensitive lines that we want to make sure that the guests doesn’t feel like they’re being served ever by a robot. But you’re using you’re leveraging technology to be able to sell and we weren’t doing those sales before kts. We couldn’t we couldn’t do it without it. Yep.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
23:10
Yeah, no. And the one thing that I’ve always appreciated about you, Randy is just the the fact that you embrace technology to solve business problems. You’re not a human, you’re an executive that truly understands the value of technology. A lot of other CEOs that I’ve worked with in the past, they just, I don’t know, it’s somebody else’s problem, just go figure how to make it better, I just want to be able to do whatever it is I want to do as a business. But you, you’ve always been really good about embracing and understanding that technology is an enabler to do $14,000 A week in sales at last resort on on, you know, on a summertime week in Laguna Beach, which, again, is a hard thing to do without having systems in place to do that.
RS
Randy Sharpe
23:47
You know, I appreciate that. But you know, spending that time, probably though, it was really for drinks and exercise. Some of the same folks that we’ve grown up with, that are on the technology side are really obsessed with operations, but just spend time and I learned early on that it’s such a hand in hand relationship. And if you have the right, IT folks that work with you that are really focused on making sure it’s an experience for your guests, they’re gonna teach you why everything else is so important. And then you learn it. And then in my mind, right now, today’s operator, if they don’t use and leverage and are always looking for the best technology to improve their guests experience, they’re gonna fall behind.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
24:28
Yeah, yep. And you’re not gonna be able to deliver on the brand promise that you talked about. There’s no,
RS
Randy Sharpe
24:32
there’s no chance anymore to do that. There’s just too many. There’s too many variables out there that if you don’t have the right technology in your business, you’re gonna you’re gonna struggle at some point
JJ
Jeremy Julian
24:42
and your competitors are doing it. So you got to figure it out. So yeah, um, so you talked about acquiring soil and Selita in you know, 19 right before the pandemic, you guys just recently acquired I happen to ironically, not because I even I chose it, but because the customer chose to go to the brand that you guys acquired here in Fort Worth. So, talk to me a little bit about what the brain acquisition strategy is. I know you guys are all Mexican at this point, is that kind of where you guys are staying? Are you guys looking for small local brands? Are you guys looking for large brands? Are you guys looking for medium sized brands? Talk to me a little bit about what that what that strategy looks like, and how you guys are trying to continue to grow, not just organically, because you guys are growing organically, the brands that you guys have you guys are opening up new stores every day, every week, every month, but you also are looking to have strategic acquisitions where it makes sense. Talk to me a little bit about what that looks like and and what should those listeners be out there looking for and thinking about when they talk about SRG?
RS
Randy Sharpe
25:34
Well, fun fact on that. So we actually part of this acquisition or inspection in Texas that just literally inked a couple of weeks ago. There six restaurants and all four of them are Tex Mex. That’s what we’ve done. What we knew, well, there’s actually two of them that are called the rim. And they’re not textbooks, they’re our first endeavor into, you know, craft cocktails, craft foods that, you know, quote, unquote gastropub, fetal live entertainment, so they’re smaller footprints, but they’re really a bar forward concept. So that would, that would kind of lend into what our strategy is our strategy is we want something that matches quality of operation, and quality of culture. And we wouldn’t buy anything that would jeopardize what we currently have, meaning. There’s a, there’s brands that there’s plenty of brands out there, and quite a few of them can be up for acquisition. But if the they’re, you know, struggling to a point where it might put a strain on our current company, we probably would stay away from it, we felt the quality was there. And we felt the opportunity for growth was there and we thought the people really represented you know who we are, it’s hard to buy a company that doesn’t have the right people in it. The right people, then we would look at it and sighs You know, that was a six restaurant chain, we we would look bigger, if it lent itself and we would look outside Mexican, if it lends itself but it really has to have some of those key attributes. We’re not sleeper. I think CFO is counting in there. I think we looked at 45 cities last year. Wow. And you know, we’ve wanted acquired one to 19 year and we just acquired our second. So it’s a pretty pretty stringent lens that we go through to make sure it’s right for our company. We’re pretty pretty, you know, upset, obsessed in a good way with our company’s success and continue to access and so we want to make sure we make the right decisions.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
27:48
I love it. I love it. I’m going to ask you to to forecast you and I have been doing this for a long time. Where’s the restaurant industry heading? We’ve seen a lot of change since the pandemic, you know, since you really took over this brand. We’ve had so much pivot. Where’s the restaurant industry heading? Is it heading to a place where we’re hiring people from the valley and technology’s going it’s technology thing? Oh, what happened? Yeah, you’re good. Okay, there you go. Okay,
RS
Randy Sharpe
28:19
so where’s the industry heading?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
28:23
Yeah. Where’s the industry heading? What like, what do you think? What do you think the industry is? What are our kids? I mean, your kids and my kids are in the same age demographic? What are they going to experience when they either get into the workforce, and they’re managing restaurants and running restaurants? What is going to be different from what we grew up with? Or what we’re dealing with now is just the advent of technology and allowing us to figure out where guests are at and help deliver on the brand promise? Is it robots in the kitchen helping us cook food and measure things? Is it kts? That’s, that’s, that’s delivering? You know, and I see a utopian world where I see Randy walking in from the parking lot. And I know who he is, I know that he loves margaritas with, you know, salt on the rim, and you know, on the rocks margaritas with salt, and he likes, you know, high level tequila, so I want to make sure that that’s ready for him when he walks in on a Tuesday night. Like is that what you see that that technology is going to enable us to do what you and I were trained to do, but can only do at a small micro scale. You know, talk to me a little bit about where you think things are going.
RS
Randy Sharpe
29:23
So I think you’re gonna get a little bit of both, I think from a fast casual, slash quick casual slash that world you’re gonna continue to see a lot more automation, just with the labor, the labor, you know headwind and everything you have going on. There’s a lot of there’s a tremendous opportunity for when people are going to get a meal for it to become a little more seamless and experiential. I think you nailed it to where Jeremy Julian makes a reservation. And the restaurant will know your favorite coming. Your favorite appetizer restaurant meeting to get The server’s because it’s going to, you know, it’s gonna, you’re gonna have your profile there, and we’re already we’re already working on that, you know, quite a bit, we’re getting close. But then you look at our kids and say, by the time they’re, they’re in our seats, that’s probably what they expect. Yeah. So you gotta be ready for that. And you got to think about it. It’s like, who’s gonna survive? Well, the ones that are not embracing, looking at those little attributes that make it a little bit more special experience. You know, where are they going to be? I don’t know. I think the ones that are going to succeed in this business, it’s hard to say that. You know, the wheel has been created in the restaurant business a long time ago. And it’s hard to recreate it, but how can you make it better? How can you make it smoother? How can you make it more effortless, and I think everyone wants an effortless experience versus easy. I gotta, and we all lived it. We lived the pandemic, but then we live the 21, where you walk in 21, where you walk up to a restaurant staffing is such an issue, that it was almost anxiety when when you talk to your significant other about going out for dinner? Is that our way? Let’s go to one of my restaurants, because I know we’ll get right. And so we’ve we’ve live we live that you don’t but think about that, like fast forward and continuing on what did you learn from that? If people don’t want to have to work? And they don’t want to have to consider work when they go out? How do you make it easier? How do you make it easier? Make a reservation? How do you make it easier to have the things that you want? How do you make it easier for them to get in and out from a payment processing? How do you know from your favorite server? Right? All those things are components that we’re always looking at. And there’s a ton of manual intervention. Yeah, our the rest of the year, the manual manual intervention is the bigger these these these restaurants are. And we’ve got some pretty large ones, the harder it is for that individual manual intervention. So that’s leveraging all those tools that we talked about. And there’s plenty of them out there is a great one that will really help you understand that when I make a reservation, they should know when I’ve been there right now, they should know when I’ve been there in the last time, you should know some of my favorite profiles, and they should know me by name. If you focus on those things, it’s still personas. It’s personalizing that experience, and it’s making it that much better and become great at that you’re gonna have a leg on the competition.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
32:20
Yeah, well, and part of why during 21, you went out to your restaurants, as you knew you were gonna get what you need it. And, and unfortunately, more and more that that doesn’t exist that cheers factor. So
RS
Randy Sharpe
32:31
that’s a really good point, we had some real specific pillars in, you know, 20, you know, moving out of the pandemic, and to now still following them. And part of that is, you know, think about it the guess. And this is this is operations. This is leadership. And this is also technology. If you go to if I go to a restaurant with my two kids, and it’s a 45 minute wait, the chance of me sticking around is is like if I it’s a 20 minute, wait, I’m gonna I’m gonna be there all the time. So it’s really leveraging those things to make the experience easier for our guests.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
33:09
Yeah, no. And I can see computers enabling that I mean, I was talking to somebody last week at Mar tech. And just the, the idea that I can even call into the host stand and figure out what my real time is going to be that when I go to third party delivery or right order, I’m going to get the Domino’s Pizza experience. Even though I’m sitting in the dining room, I can see when the order got put into the kitchen, I can see when it hit the hit the fire line, I can see when it’s coming out. So I can control my experience so that I know with my four kids, what the guests experience is going to look like because I know how awful it is. When I have that bad experience. I was a brand that we do business with just this week, and I had an hour and 45 minute dinner. And it shouldn’t have been an hour and 45 minutes. No, it should have been an hour dinner for our party of seven. But it was bad. And it’s now got my wife going do we want to go back there and it was a regular spot for us. But because of that guests experience, it turns into this this desire to you know to consider maybe I should go somewhere else.
RS
Randy Sharpe
34:04
Yeah, it’s turns into that question. You never want that. You don’t want to be you want to be consistent. Do you want to be reliable? And that’s the name of the game. So how do you continue to get better about?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
34:14
Yep, absolutely. Well, how do people learn more about you how to love people learn more about SRG you know, experience the brands, you know, figure out what cities they’re in and, and you know, how can they engage with you your team and and experience the restaurants that I’ve gotten the privilege to grow up going into and still get to get a chance to go to overtime? And
RS
Randy Sharpe
34:34
go to our website. It has it all there. It has all even as our new brands on there already or our crack it team. Honestly, you guys, hell Jeremy, we already have our new restaurants on the website, go to there, what you’re gonna learn about it, you’re gonna learn about some of the great history that maybe you don’t know, like El Cerrito. 69 years strong. I mean, it’s awesome. Think about that. How many other Restaurant Brands have been around that long they are the founder of Mexican food restaurant in Southern California and founder of many firsts from Taco Tuesday to your first frosty Margarita, the first tableside guacamole. I can keep going on, you’ll learn that there but you’ll learn where we are to get the map and he can show exactly where we’re out three. United States, obviously California is our base will be, but we are growing in other markets and we’re growing strong in other markets and we’re becoming well known in several different markets. If you go there, you can learn a couple of things you learn about our leadership team, who we are, you learn about our restaurants, the history of our restaurants and where we’re at.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
35:38
I love it. I love it. Well, Randy, I know it’s been a long time, longtime coming getting you on the on the show. So I appreciate you spending a little bit of time to our listeners, guys. I know that you guys have got choices. So thank you guys for listening. Randy, thanks for being on the show and make it a great day.
RS
Randy Sharpe
35:52
Now thank you so much, Jeremy. It’s always great to spend some time with you and looking forward to doing it against him. Awesome. Thanks, man. Yeah, take care.
I
Intro
36:01
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
