This is the complete transcript of Restaurant Marketing You Can Track — Brett Linkletter, Dishio, episode 354 of the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast, hosted by Jeremy Julian.
Summary. Brett Linkletter is CEO and co-founder of Dishio, a restaurant guest-data and marketing platform that sits under Dishio Holdings alongside the agency Dineline. He came into restaurants sideways, from e-commerce advertising in 2015 and 2016, where a basic ad could return ten to twenty times its spend and no marketer survived without proving ROI. His first restaurant client saw roughly a 7% sales lift across 37 stores in three months — a number Brett assumed would get him fired, and that instead made the operator happier than he had ever seen him. In this conversation he explains the tracking gap that defines restaurant marketing: e-commerce measures everything because it happens online, while restaurants transact in person and end most months with no data about who walked in. He walks through the two ways to close that gap — Google store-visit tracking, which matches phone location against a Google My Business listing inside a roughly seven-day window, and QR-code menus, which act as the conversion event Meta cannot otherwise see. He also covers why seven-plus touches are needed before an ad has economic impact, why the money is in marketing to a third visit rather than a first, why his team built software instead of buying it, the $2.5 million seed round they raised at a $20 million valuation after eleven bootstrapped years, and the half-million contacts he routinely finds sitting unused in a client’s point of sale — what he calls uncashed checks.
Jump to a section
- From E-Commerce Ads to the Restaurant Industry
- The 7% Lift Across 37 Stores That Changed the Business
- Why Billboards Lose to the Phone in Your Guest’s Pocket
- Why It Takes Seven Touches Before a Guest Buys
- Revenue Channels and Picking the Right Call to Action
- How Google Tracks a Walk-In Back to an Ad
- QR Code Menus as the Restaurant’s Thank-You Page
- Multi-Channel Guests and Marketing to Three Visits
- Why a Marketing Agency Built Its Own Software — and Raised $2.5M
- Ingredient Transparency and Where the Digital Menu Goes Next
- How Dishio, Dineline and Dishio Holdings Fit Together
- Personalization, AI, and Building the Restaurant’s Brain
- How to Get Started With Dishio
From E-Commerce Ads to the Restaurant Industry
Jeremy Julian (0:01): Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I like to say each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices on the internet to go spend your time. So thanks for hanging out with us this week. Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics. And it’s gonna be fun to jump into this with with our guest, Brett, but really it’s kind of marketing and how restaurants really struggle to get their name out there and some of the different ways that Brett and his team have have learned. how to do it right and really quite honestly some of the things that he’s he’s seen people struggle with. So before we jump into kind of what you guys have been building and kind of what you guys do, Brett, why don’t you give our listeners a little bit of background? Who is Brett? Kind of a little bit about where you came from and then how did you jump into restaurants and restaurant technology?
Brett Linkletter (0:43): Yeah, 100%. So it’s it’s it’s an interesting story. I’ll make I’ll make a long story short. So my background actually before working at restaurants was doing a lot of e-commerce advertising. This is back in like 2015, 2016, where man, it was I call it the glory days. I mean, you you could run an ad. Yeah. You could you could run an ad on on on Facebook or Instagram and it could be straight up a photo of a pair of sunglasses with a white background, and you could get sales to your e-commerce website.
Jeremy Julian (0:59): The wild west, man.
Brett Linkletter (1:12): It was incredible. I mean, you could, you could very, very simply get a 10, 15, 20x ROAS return on an ad spend with the most basic ad you’d ever imagined because the competition was so low back then, right? And I think back then e-commerce direct to consumer advertising, it was still somewhat new, right? And so I started out in e-commerce. We we very quickly, our company at the time our agency was was was growing very quickly in this sector, in this niche. two, three years into that business, a good family, friend of ours reached out and he goes, Hey, can you help me with my restaurant? I I’d like to see what you can do for us. I know you’ve had a success with the e-commerce thing, but maybe you can help us in the restaurant sector. My view of restaurants at the time was low profit margins, the rate of success seems fairly low in the first couple of years. Like, I I don’t know. We have a really good thing going for us in this sector. Like, why do that? We gave it a shot.
The 7% Lift Across 37 Stores That Changed the Business
Brett Linkletter (2:10): We went for it in the first three months. They came back to us. That’s that’s that was about a 7% lift that we saw overall across 37 stores. To us, that sounded terrible because in the e-commerce space, I was used to these like 15, 20x ROAS. He came back to us, was like five, seven percent lift. I was like, I thought we were gonna get fired. He came back the happiest I’ve ever seen him like my whole life. And so it was kind of in this moment I thought. Wait a second, I messed around with this e-commerce world where if I’m not getting at least like a 5x return on investment, we’re getting fired. All of a sudden I check out the restaurant sector and this guy’s happy with a 7% lift over three months. This is this is nuts. And so, long story short, we we opened our minds up to maybe there’s something here. we started going deeper and deeper in this space. And what we realized, which which was a big problem, which again we’ll we’ll dive into quite a bit today, is When it came to restaurant marketing back then, and still today, by the way, it’s still a problem, is you have a large majority of restaurant operators and marketers, by the way, that are spending thousands of dollars online, yet they can’t even see the return on investment. So they’re they’re essentially just lighting money on fire. Where in the e-commerce world, my my background was: hey, it, I’m never gonna spend money if I can’t actually correlate that this sale actually happened, where I can actually track. What’s my cost per acquisition of customers? What’s this look like to bring someone back? All that good stuff. But so it was foreign to the restaurant sector. And I was like, there’s a sweet opportunity here. We dove in head first. And I think it was by 2000, like mid-2019, we decided to fire all of our e-commerce brands, go all in on restaurants, which we were really excited about. But then if you remember, 2020, COVID rolled around. And so we we were kind of regretting that decision in this moment. but it it turned out to be a great one for the long term. But that’s that’s how I got here, which is it was fully by accident, honestly.
Jeremy Julian (4:11): Well, and I and I love that that you’re able to take kind of this e-commerce. I have a very good friend of mine who has lived in the e-commerce world and sold, you know, primarily apparel and those kind of things in the e-commerce world. And he would sit and talk with me. He’s like, I don’t understand how restaurants can’t market. He’s like, I can drive thousands of people to your door right now if you want me to, based on kind of all of these different so why don’t you help educate our listeners a little bit about kind of just I’m gonna say the tools because it’s I feel like the the restaurant owners a lot of times, and I and I want to dig into this more throughout our conversation today, but a lot of times that it’s like this black box that they don’t understand what’s happening, whether that’s in the Google world or any of the social media platforms, that that you can really target who your consumer is to get awareness about your brand at a very finite level. I can pick this specific region. I’d love for you to educate people because I think there’s so many owners out there that are probably listening to this going, Yeah, this guy’s full of crap. I have no idea how to do this. But I think once they understand that you can pinpoint people that are soccer moms with a hundred thousand dollar income in, you know, within three miles of my restaurant, it’s like that’s my consumer. I want them to come in and get my my salad or whatever. You know, I’d love for you to kind of help help educate some people on that a little bit.
Why Billboards Lose to the Phone in Your Guest’s Pocket
Brett Linkletter (5:26): Yeah. So well here here’s the here’s the thing that’s that’s I always get just mind blown about. You still have restaurant operators and owners that are still doing billboards, they’re still doing radio, they’re still doing TV. And for some reason, they still think that’s a better opportunity than this thing in everyone’s pockets, which by the way, millennials check their phones about 330 times a day. Gen Z, even worse, as you can imagine. Right. And so let’s just like Just starting there, this is absurd that you would ever imagine, wait, let’s go spend $3,000 a month on a billboard instead of reaching someone in their pocket. So I just want to start there, just real basic, right? Number one. Number two, so when it comes to actually targeting someone on these little boxes in our pockets, right? Like you just said, you can get super specific on who you want to target. But to be honest with you, what’s really interesting, and the algorithms are always changing. Like literally almost quarterly at this point, which is really, really exciting and also scary and interesting and all the same, right? But what you can do that’s really, really interesting is every single time someone comes into your restaurant, actually let me back up first. Let’s go back to the e-commerce example. When you go to an e-commerce website and you click on a pair of sunglasses you want to buy from some website, and then all of a sudden you get distracted, you navigate to some other website and you don’t buy those glasses. What happens typically the next day? You’re gonna see the same
Jeremy Julian (6:54): Yeah, you get an email, you get a more advertising, you get lots of different things, right?
Brett Linkletter (6:58): Bingo. Exactly, exactly. So even if you don’t even know who to target as an advertiser, the algorithms, what’s called the pixels, the Meta tags, all these things that are on a e-commerce website, they’re gonna follow you whether you make it to the website and buy something or not. That’s how they should be doing things. The problem in the restaurant sector is even if you really don’t even know who your customer is, there is tech available, which also what we offer, which again we’ll get into today. That allows you to do the same things these e-commerce brands are doing to help you understand who are your customers, where are they coming from? And more importantly, how can I get back in touch with them again and again and again? Because what I will say is a lot of clients we talk to, their number one goal, majority of the time, is I just want new customers coming in the door. Because if I get new customers coming in the door, then I’m gonna do a great job on my end and we’re gonna grow the business to wherever we want, right? The reality is this. Most restaurant operators, the the frequency of visits that they think they’re getting from their local the repeat customers is not nearly as great as they think it is. And I’m sure you guys have seen this on your point of sale too. I mean, it is so we always actually try to guide our clients, and the the money and advertising is actually in the repeat business. Of course, we do a ton of stuff to bring in new acquisition too, because everybody wants it. Let’s just be honest, right? And I think you always do want that, but When it comes to targeting, you know, I always tell people you can have a theory of who your customer base is and who you think is going to convert, but you really don’t know until you get there and start testing. So I actually really like to start a little more general. And based on the data that comes in, we start narrowing in on which audience we really want to target, ultimately understanding who is the customer, who can we target, and ultimately what’s going to what customer is going to give us the lowest CAC, right? The cost to acquire a customer. and again I’m I’m throwing on some like, you know, e commerce, maybe advertising jargon stuff that maybe some owners have never heard before, but we’ll we’ll dive deep into these topics, I’m sure, I’m sure today.
Jeremy Julian (9:03): Yeah, no, and and I thank you for the education. And again, I I I recognize this, but I talk to restaurant owners every week and I’m like, I don’t comprehend it. And there’s such mystery in this whole idea that they just they struggle to understand that they can be in front of their the exact customer they want to be through these digital means. Whereas a billboard that’s on the side of the highway or or whatever else, they have no idea, you know, there’s there’s no direct correlation. And the thing I guess I’d love for you to talk a little bit, Brett. more about is is this idea because in e-commerce I don’t want to say it’s easy but it is easier because you you you have to give them your content. You have to say, I am this person before I buy something. I little life hack real quick. If you really want something in e commerce, go throw it in your cart and leave it there for a day or two. Amazingly you’ll get a 10 or 15% you know rebate. Sorry. That’s that’s a that’s an aside that has less to do with restaurants. But even even in that world I’m sure there’s things that you guys can do
Brett Linkletter (9:38): Way easier. It’s way easier. Facts. Facts right here. Yes.
Jeremy Julian (10:01): in the restaurants to say, hey, you you engaged with us, but you never came in or you never you never bought. Help me understand that. And so I just I love that idea that you’re educating people on that. And so now that we are in front of these people, not just on a billboard, but in a digital way on your phone, like you said, now what? Now how do I get how do I get not just awareness? So now we’ve got awareness. And again, I guess before I go there,
Why It Takes Seven Touches Before a Guest Buys
Jeremy Julian (10:27): Talk a little bit about how many times you need to be in front of somebody before you’ll typically get a transaction, because I think that’s also a a misnomer. I sent out one email. Why did I not get 10,000 people to show up? It’s like you’ve got to constantly be there. And so I’d love for you to talk a little bit kind of from the agency side. You got to be in front of them a bunch of times before they buy.
Brett Linkletter (10:41): Yeah. So yeah, like seven or more times, honestly. So people people don’t really understand that. And and the reality is like someone will say they’ll come to us, I did an email blast, it didn’t work. Or I I tried an ad on Instagram, it didn’t work. And I was like, Well, okay, what was the budget and and like what was the reach? And we’ve talked through the numbers. They’re like, I spent five hundred bucks, it didn’t work. I’m like, dude, you you you you reached those people one time, maybe two times, and you and you say didn’t work. You need to re reach them seven plus times to have any kind of economic impact, right? So the other thing about this though is I wanna talk I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about like converting from an ad to an actual customer and store because I always tell people like our business is very simple, right? In order to work with us, you book a call, you have a call, if it’s a fit or not, we’ll tell you the price, and then you buy. That’s the only way you can buy from us, right?
Revenue Channels and Picking the Right Call to Action
Brett Linkletter (11:39): In the restaurant sector, it’s like you got walk-ins, you got reservations, you got private events, you maybe have like a beer or wine club, you have online orders, you have maybe these third-party apps. So there’s lots of ways in which someone can buy from a restaurant. We call these the revenue channels. And so whenever it comes to any type of ad that we’re gonna do for a client or or or they’re gonna work with us on using our platform, you know, there’s you have to consider. What is the CTA, which is called the call to action? What am I trying to get the person to do once they see this ad? Do I want them to order online? Do I want them to make a reservation? Am I trying to push catering, private events, et cetera? Right. And depending on how, let’s say, cold or warm or hot the customer is or loyal, right? We oftentimes will market different things to them, right? So long story short, for example, let’s just say, We have a client, they’re like, we want to push catering. Catering is so good for us. Blah, blah, blah. Great. Okay. Well, generally speaking, who are the customers that order catering from a restaurant? Probably someone who’s actually been to the restaurant, experienced the restaurant, and likes the food. It doesn’t make much sense to run a catering ad to someone who’s never heard of you before. Hey, all of a sudden, like throw in a catering order for five, like 500 plus bucks. You’ve never been to our restaurant, but trust us, it’s good. Trust me, bro. Like, right? Doesn’t make sense. So what we always do is let’s let’s let’s start with what we’re gonna run ads to a cold audience, people who have never heard of you. Who are we gonna run ads to people that are maybe current ex customers? And then who are the customers that are super loyal, love us, and what do we want to run to them? Right. And when I say run something to them, I’m talking mostly about ads. Now we love email too. we’ve had some clients that have had crazy success also with like SMS campaigns.
How Google Tracks a Walk-In Back to an Ad
Brett Linkletter (13:36): But generally speaking, our sector is ads and email marketing. And probably like 80% ads and only maybe 20% email marketing. Ads is really our forte, right? And so if we talk about these different revenue channels, there’s a lot of different ways in which you can actually track that your ad performed. So for example, if you wanted to just push walk-ins, there’s two ways we can track for walk ins. There’s something on Google where you can do store visit tracking. Which means and this is gonna sound crazy to some people, but the
Jeremy Julian (14:06): Yeah, all these people that have no idea that all of this stuff in the the po the phone that’s in their pocket is tracking that you’re going into that restaurant after you saw the ad. Sorry, I’ll let you keep going, but
Brett Linkletter (14:14): Bingo, no, exactly. So, no, but like you probably said that, and people are like, There’s this, no, there’s no way that’s true. Well, let’s explain to you how it’s true. Google owns Google Maps. go figure, right? Of course they do. That little blue dot when you’re on the map, they’re tracking you. Like, right? When you see an ad and you look at the ad, not even click, just look or click, they start tracking you. And we generally start tracking within like a seven-day window. So if you see one of our ads, you click one of our ads, you engage with one of our ads, maybe you get map directions through one of our ads. We’re literally tracking the moment you are interested in this restaurant and literally arrive. And so people say, Well, how do they know what the restaurant is? Google Maps knows your location. Google My Business knows your location. So that’s one way. So that’s on Google, and that’s really powerful. Meta doesn’t have the same type of tech. So what we do on Meta, that’s really interesting too.
Jeremy Julian (15:08): Meta be in Facebook, Instagram, just for those people that don’t understand. Sorry, I’m not not trying to cut you off, but you and I live in this world and so just you know, the boomers that are on Facebook and Instagram, you know, for
Brett Linkletter (15:12): No, a hundred hundred percent. No, you’re right. I and I always
QR Code Menus as the Restaurant’s Thank-You Page
Brett Linkletter (15:19): No, and and thank you thank you for clarifying that. Cause I I get I sometimes I get so stuck in and talk in this jargon and I forget that yes, for some people they don’t know that, right? So Meta is Instagram and Facebook, and some of these other channels and WhatsApp. But so if I’m running it out on Instagram, I can’t do that same location tracking tech that Google has. But what we do have within our platform, which is really cool, is personally I’m a big fan of of QR code menus. A lot of people say, my God, I don’t want that. I don’t want my customers on on their phones, blah, blah, blah.
Jeremy Julian (15:28): And WhatsApp.
Brett Linkletter (15:46): But here’s what’s so powerful about QR code menus. We call it more so like a Trojan horse. So, in the example I talked about on e-commerce earlier, how can e-commerce brands do these amazing things with tracking and remarketing? Because everything is online. In the restaurant sector, everything is in person. So, how do we digitize the in-person physical experience? QR code menus. So someone walks in, they scan that QR code menu. Boom, the moment you click that, when you scan that menu, I know who you are, where you came from. If you came from an ad, I can literally track the conversion from you seeing an ad on Instagram from the moment you walk in and scan that QR code. That’s a conversion. In the same way where you buy a product online for an e-commerce product, right? You click add to cart, checkout, boom, get to the thank you page. Shipping coming in a few days, whatever, right? We do the same thing. That is that is our thank you page. That is the tracking mechanism. That tracks this from the menu to the ad. So Google, track your cell phone location, Meta conversion with the QR code menu. And what that also does, though, is not only can we track that you came from this ad, but any customer who walks into the business is now the same type of customer that goes to an e-commerce brand and just scrolling through the website. A lot of these brands we work with, they’re getting five, 10, sometimes 15,000 customers a month. These customers come in and then they leave. And zero data to show for it. Right? So we just put these little QR code menus in, and all of a sudden we have five, ten, fifteen thousand new data points that we can remarket, build an audience, and grow the brand in new heights. so that’s again, I don’t know if that went over some people’s heads. I hope not. I’ve tried to keep it simple. But
Jeremy Julian (17:18): Yep, one hundred percent.
Brett Linkletter (17:39): Those are those are a few ways we track it. On on the more fine dining or full service side, we love reservations because reservations give us the ability to run an ad for conversions of reservations. Someone made a reservation, they come in the restaurant. Great. All of a sudden we can track it. We saw that they came here. We captured first party data, most likely, of course, too, with the reservation. Then they came in. And so There’s lots of ways in which to track it, but I think what people make the mistake of is they do these like brand awareness campaigns where they think they’re smart and they’re like, I reached a hundred thousand people. Well, dude, how many sales came in because of it? Well, I got a bunch of likes. Well, you can’t deposit likes into the bank. So what the hell? Like, you know.
Multi-Channel Guests and Marketing to Three Visits
Jeremy Julian (18:22): Yeah. Well, I’d love to go back a little bit in our conversation, but you you talked about moving people through different channels and moving them up the value chain. And that’s not the words exactly you use, but you talked about they’re an in-person guest. Now I’m trying to drive into online and I’m trying to drive into catering, you know, for those super fans. Talk to me a little bit about philosophically how you coach your clients, because I really want to get into the product here in a few minutes, but I didn’t want to miss that point that says those customers that order from multiple channels from you. At least what we’ve found in our POS are typically your super fans that are that are so valuable because they’re ordering from you in person. They’re ordering from you in drive-thru. They’re ordering from you online. They’re ordering from you in lots of different channels. They are your most likely, you know, that those typically typically those people are seven to 10x more valuable than your first time guest once you’ve gotten them. And so I’d love for you to talk a little bit about those different ordering channels and why you guys try and drive people there, at least based on the data that I have. And is that kind of what you guys are saying on your side?
Brett Linkletter (19:19): one 100%. And you’re so right. And I love that you say this because for someone in your shoes that’s behind a point of sale company, it’s and I’m sure you already see this the time. So many point of sale companies do not even have these conversations. And and it is so important. So first and foremost, there’s there’s this video, I’m sure you’ve seen it from from Jon Taffer that’s gone viral on YouTube multiple times. And I’m so jealous of him of this because it’s every time it’s like a new year, someone posts the same video and it goes viral again. And it’s the video, which a lot of people, I’m sure maybe in the podcast are listening to and they’ve probably seen it too. That he always says you want to market to three visits, right? Or three purchases. Because once you’ve gotten someone to buy from you three times, you’ve you’ve pretty much made a customer for life, right? unless you really screw something up on the fourth visit, right? Let’s just say. So we really guide our clientele and and our staff as well to always, always push to market to three visits. And so there’s there’s lots of different ways you can do it. It of again it really depends on the brand, whether you’re you’ll you’re full service, QSR, et cetera. QSRs we work with, they love these bounce back offers. Those are so easy, right? Someone comes in, they scan this QR code, boom, there’s an offer. We have this like marketing funnel approach where you if you scan like this QR code menu or you scan a QR code with an offer, you join a loyalty club, whatever. There’s lots of ways you can take this, but we love to do a bounce back offer for those QSR brands to three visits. Boom, we got them for life. Now we know they’re a great customer. When it comes into the full service sector, it depends on the full service brand. Some brands want to do this bounce back offer, complimentary offer, whatever they want to call it. Some brands really don’t. and that’s okay. You know, I I think, I think a lot of businesses in general, to be honest with you, they they do get stuck doing these constant offers and promotions because it it’s like they almost feel like they get this nice like spike of business. They’re like, it’s working. But that’s not, that’s not something that we see long term working very, very well. So it’s something that, you know, you can experiment with, but but don’t, don’t lean on that forever. But ultimately, it’s it depends on the brand a lot, right? but we always, always, always want to push two, three visits. Now, when I say three visits, it doesn’t mean necessarily in person. Like you said yourself, it could be someone ordering online, making reservations, walk-in, catering.
Jeremy Julian (21:25): Very much so.
Brett Linkletter (21:38): But ultimately, we want to track these multiple revenue channels. So, what we do oftentimes is run an ad for a reservation. Someone comes in, boom, amazing. We got them. They come into the business. We know they’re there. We re-market and say, Hey, thanks for coming in. We know you had the steak. We hope you enjoyed it. By the way, you know, we also do online ordering and delivery. If you order right now, we’ll give you free delivery. So right then and there, we got the first customer to come in. Maybe it’s a new customer. We re-marketed to another revenue channel, online ordering, gave them free delivery, which is basically an offer, right? They didn’t buy online because it’s online. Again, we track that sale there. And then maybe we remarket again. By the way, thanks for coming in. Looks like you got the steak again. That’s incredible. Personalized remarketing, right? Hey, by the way, just so you know, we do these really amazing like party catering packages where you can get exactly and and now we’re in that.
Jeremy Julian (22:31): Yeah, wine dinners, whatever. Yeah.
Brett Linkletter (22:35): third sector. And if you get them to buy then, again, you you’ve basically got them for life. So that’s that’s generally speaking how we promote to three visits or three purchases, we’d say.
Jeremy Julian (22:45): I love that. I got a I got a quick story that I gotta share. many of our listeners may have have been there. I got the privilege one time I was I was the board chair for a association and the the keynote speaker was Jon Taffer. So I had to get on stage after that guy. talk about the freaking energy. Like the guy had like all this energy, and I’m like, crap. I’m sitting backstage listening to him go and I’m like, no. Now I gotta go back to, you know, in front of I don’t know, two thousand people or whatever and and and speak after him and I’m like, wah wah wah, but it it’s all good. The the guy was about as incredible in person as he was on stage and the guy that you see on TV. So sorry to sorry to segue for our listeners that were there, they’ll they’ll laugh at me because I was just like so nervous and they’re like, yeah, you get to go on right after Taffer. I’m like, awesome.
Brett Linkletter (23:24): Now he Yeah. No, he’s a he’s a legend. He’s such a cool guy. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian (23:33): Yeah. No, for sure. so you you talked about it just a few minutes ago. I know and and you’ve alluded to it a ha a half a dozen times throughout their conversation. You guys have built a platform. It’s not just ad spend. I’d love for you to kind of talk about why did you build a platform? Why did you build build a piece of tech to kind of sit on top of what you guys have been doing for a number of years? Because I I think that that way too few people understand not just the value, and I love that you’ve educated people there, but now putting it into a system that’s replicatable.
Why a Marketing Agency Built Its Own Software — and Raised $2.5M
Jeremy Julian (24:03): It’s measurable, it’s manageable to get to that place. So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about why you guys built the tool that you guys have.
Brett Linkletter (24:09): Yeah. So we we built it honestly for an internal need initially. again, my my background was in e-commerce advertising and I I’m used to using tools in e-commerce that I was I was just I was not just shocked, but I was actually like really frustrated in the restaurant marketing world that like these things didn’t exist. I it it like it didn’t make sense to me. I was like, How is this entire industry functioning?
Jeremy Julian (24:15): Love those.
Brett Linkletter (24:37): without these tools. And so it it was more of like it was not an annoyance. It was like almost like like an anger in the beginning. I was like, why the hell do these things not exist? Right. And so we built them internally for ourselves because, you know, it’s it’s not to go I don’t go too deep on this story, but my even before I was doing e commerce advertising, my first first initial background right out of school, I I went to USC. Southern California was I was a photographer and filmmaker. And and just like so many guys in LA at the time, everyone, you know, was all excited by content and social media and like, you know, the entertainment space. I was one of those guys. But what I really learned at a young age was that like in order to have success as a marketer, the most important thing that that you had to show your clientele was a return on investment. Right. Marketers are the first people to get fired when things go bad. you you had to be able to prove ROI. And so that’s why I gravitated towards e-commerce in the beginning. Then I got into the restaurant sector. And like that story I shared earlier, they saw their sales grow by 7% and they were excited by that. But I I I wasn’t able to truly show them specifically. I know their sales went up, but I at the time I I was even confused myself exactly how we did it. Right. So I was excited and and surprised and also nervous and I was thinking, I I gotta be able to prove this ROI. I gotta be able to prove this because if I don’t, I’m gonna get fired. Right. So I had like almost PTSD from that in the past of if I can’t prove it, I’m I’m gone. So it was almost like a security blanket I had to build for myself in order to to get to the next level. And so that’s how it started, but it evolved a lot over the years. And so You know, I I that’s where it began. But as we started building, we started seeing more and more and more and more problems in this industry. And it wasn’t just about tracking our CAC or tracking the frequency of visits or or tracking, hey, then which customers are the best customers based on what they’re spending, which came the need for point of sale integrations and all these other things. And you know, this industry goes so, so deep and it’s so, so complicated. And there’s so many
Jeremy Julian (26:52): It’s so fragmented.
Brett Linkletter (26:54): It’s so fragmented. Yes, exactly. and so, you know, what what what we decide to do was okay, so we’re gonna build this and solve this problem. And then another problem it basically evolved. And then we started just building, building, building. And so, you know, it’s interesting because I talk a lot about the e-commerce space, but in in my for my business, the way that we get clients is we run ads on Meta and Google, people book calls with us. We evaluate the people that book the calls based on these applications, whether they’re a fit or not. We then take the call. We know our close rate over the years is about 25 to 30% on average. And we know our cost per call. We know our cost per acquisition. And so we can predictably scale our business. But in order to build that what we call marketing funnel, there’s a lot of tools that you’re going to need in order to do that. It’s not very simple, right? Well, it’s even more complicated in the restaurant sector, right? So I talked about coupons, I talked about reservations, I talked about online orders. Like you said yourself, they’re all so fragmented. So we’re like, okay, well, we’re gonna need a funnel builder if we wanna capture first party data, offer coupons and these kinds of things here. But we’re gonna need an integration into these reservation platforms if we’re gonna start doing that. But we’re gonna need an integration into these online ordering platforms if we’re gonna do that. And so it just it just kept going. And What was really crazy is as we started building, we’ve been in business for by the way for for just since 20, since 2015, right? And so 11 plus years now. And we had never raised money, by the way. We completely still funded the whole thing. I was really proud of that. but as you’re building a tech product, you start learning the amount of money you have to spend in order to get your product. To not an MVP level, but actually like a prod you’re proud of. And so only in actually December of last year, we decided to raise some money. We raised two and a half million at a 20 mil valuation. Very excited by that. And we did it all through family and friends. Because our family and friends over the years have seen what we’ve done, they’re like, You guys are legit. I’m I’m in, right? And and we had the track record to show for it. And so it it started again as a necessity. and almost like a frustration. But as it’s evolved, it’s it’s really evolved into something that not only am I really proud of, but there’s I almost have like a a new aspiration in in this sector. so for example, you know, one thing that really frustrates me about the restaurant world as a customer going to restaurants is I’m I’m very conscious of of what I eat. I’m very conscious of my health.
Ingredient Transparency and Where the Digital Menu Goes Next
Brett Linkletter (29:44): I wear one of these whoop bands. I track everything I’m doing. I I’m very careful about what I put in my body. It’s interesting to me how people go to the grocery store and they’re so specific about the eggs they buy. It’s gotta be pasture-raised, organic, no, not cage-free, because that just means they could be in a barn. They’re they’re all particular about it. But they go to restaurant, they’ll eat whatever and not think twice about it. So where where we’re evolving someday with the product is I see a world where This digital menu that we’ve created, not only are you looking at a menu, but you you can actually get some really interesting insights into where’d your food come from? What are the ingredients? Is this seed oil free or not? That’s a big trend right now, right? And so we’re we’re we’re trying to eventually get to the point where what we’re doing for our restaurant clients is beneficial to them, but it’s also very transparent to their clientele of what’s actually in their food. And and I and I hope that through creating this transparency about this, it’ll help consumers make maybe more educated decisions about what they’re putting in their bodies. Because I mean again, I don’t know how deep one go on this topic, but we have an obesity pandemic in the US, right? Epidemic. I mean, it’s it’s really bad. Like we we’ve got a really fat country. Like and and people have no idea what they’re putting in their bodies. And so, I mean, even some of our clientele I talk to. about seed oils. They have no idea the the dangers of seed oils or why that’s a big deal or not, right? And I and and so I I have this almost new aspiration to eventually get there someday where this becomes a talking point. I don’t think we’re close there yet, but it’s it’s it’s I love this industry because it’s constantly evolving. It’s growing yet it’s still so far behind I think other spaces. And so it’s it’s interesting to see interesting to see where this is going to end up. But I I I I love where we’re at and I and I’m excited by it every day, honestly. It’s really cool.
Jeremy Julian (31:46): I love that. thank you for sharing. and I love people that scratch their own niche and build products because it’s something they saw need for in the market and said, not only do I need it, I need it for me and I need it for the industry. you we’ve gotten 30 minutes in without you even saying the product’s name. So why don’t you give everybody as the marketer in the room, you should probably talk a little bit about the product name and kind of kind of what would engagement look like. And then I do want to dig in just before we before we wrap up, because you said something that really sticking out to is the whole customized, personalized marketing. But before you go there, talk a little bit about the product. You’ve talked about where it came from, but what what’s the name of it and kind of what’s who are your clientele that you’re looking to go talk to?
How Dishio, Dineline and Dishio Holdings Fit Together
Brett Linkletter (32:24): So, so our our we’re kind of a complicated org structure. So our company, our our parent company essentially is called Dishio Holdings. And under Dishio Holdings is Dishio, which is our software product. The website’s just dish.io, if you want to check it out. And then our agency is called Dineline. And Dineline is just dineline.co is our website. And so we we actually operate right now as essentially like a tech enabled agency. you know, it we We do have select clients that are are using our product, you know, as a SaaS tool for their internal marketing team. But what we found is a lot of our clientele, you know, they’re not great marketers and there’s really incredible tools within Dishio, but they’re not very educated on how they can use it. So we do provide a service layer on top of the software to help restaurant owners get started. and sometimes just take over on their own. or sometimes they they just want to stay with us forever. And we have some clients. Have been with us for for close to 10 years, even from the early, early days. They rode with us through all the ups and downs through COVID until now, which is really exciting. But the the platform is called Dishio. And you know, our our entire company, Dineline, on the agency front, we we use that to get the results that we that that we have today. And so it’s entirely under Dishio. We we don’t use literally any other tools other than integration partners that we have, whether you know through the point of sales or the reservation platforms or online ordering platforms. But I’m I’m a big believer in in integrating into as much as you can because the more data that feeds into Dishio, the better the result you’re gonna get. you know, and and so that’s how we work, that’s how we operate. you know, I I saw by the way on your guys’ website, I read this that you said the the restaurant point of sale platform built around your operation, not ours. I love that because we operate the same, right? We’re like, hey, this is this is for you. This is you own the data. You have the power. Let’s let’s help you be profitable because if if your win is our win, right? there’s some other point of sale companies, for example, Toast, these guys frustrate the hell out of me because they they’re so closed when it comes to these integrations.
Jeremy Julian (34:40): Well, it’s whatever’s good for Toast is good for Toast. And I I don’t like saying that too much out loud, but it’s like at the end of the day, they’re a tech enabled company that really is looking to maximize profits for their shareholders, not necessarily for the restaurants. Whereas our philosophy has always been about how do I grow the restaurant business? And part of where this podcast came from is I’ve spent 30 years in restaurant tech. How do I help give back to the brands and the and the people out there that have
Brett Linkletter (34:52): Frustrates me a lot.
Jeremy Julian (35:04): You know, and get aware of things like what you guys are doing, which is part of why we always try and start with education before we start product, ’cause talking about education and helping educate people is gonna end up helping them get to the place that they need to.
Brett Linkletter (35:15): A hundred percent. I mean it’s it’s like if you look at I’m I’m a I’m obsessed with AI, like to to a fault. My wife is like, it’s funny, we’ll we’ll be like getting ready to go to sleep and I’ll be on my phone. She’s like, Who are you texting? I’m like, I’m actually talking to my agent, you know. I’m like before I I’m giving it a job before I go to sleep. And that I’m just that’s that’s my life. But people likewise AI and and also software, AI is only as powerful as the data that you feed it.
Jeremy Julian (35:33): Yeah, it’s funny.
Brett Linkletter (35:42): Right. So some people say, I tried chat tried ChatGPT, I tried Claude, I didn’t get the success I wanted. It’s like, Well, you’re not feeding it the right data to begin with. It’s like an employee, like you hire someone
Jeremy Julian (35:51): I try and remind them it’s like an intern that doesn’t know crap about your business. You’ve got to educate them, give them what you need and tell them when it’s wrong and tell them when it’s right. Just throw in a prompt at somebody, hey, go create an ad campaign for me without them knowing what kind of brand you have, what kind of restaurant you have, who your clientele is. It’s so silly. But which I think but helps me get, I guess, to the place that I really want to make sure that everybody understands is the power, not just of AI, but the personalization through AI to now be able to pinpoint. I happen to not drink.
Jeremy Julian (36:21): Doesn’t matter that I don’t drink. I don’t it’s not a condemnation on people that that drink or don’t drink. But when restaurants get me into their loyalty package and start sending me the wine of the month club and the beer of the month club and the new cocktail that they came out with, it turns me away from the marketing because I’ve never, I’ve been to this brand 10 times and I’ve never ordered an alcoholic drink. Why are you sending me this stuff? Back to your personalization. I’d love for you to kind of kind of start to rap on the idea of. Capturing this data of who they are, what they bought, and then being able to give them relevant ads to move them around the menu, but with stuff that’s relevant to them, not necessarily just throwing slop on the wall and hoping that it sticks. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that.
Personalization, AI, and Building the Restaurant’s Brain
Brett Linkletter (37:01): Yeah. So by the way, I I respect that a lot about you by the way, not drinking. That’s that’s incredible. I try to limit the drum, I drink as much as I can, but it’s tough in this industry because you meet a client, first thing offering you is a beer. Like right. So I respect that, number one. Number two, personalization is is where the this whole world is going. That that that is in it and if you if you’re scared of that or don’t understand it or or not open to it, you’re you’re going to lose. I I can promise you, you’re going to lose. So
Brett Linkletter (37:31): When it comes to personalization, let’s just start here. So we talked about a little bit about AI, right? It’s only as good as the data that you feed it, right? Within Dishio, one of the first things we do is we build what we call your restaurant’s brain. Like literally, it’s an AI brain. And again, it’s gonna this might sound crazy to some people, but the onboarding process is we ask you about it. Sounds like a lot. We ask you about 40 questions about your business to understand everything. What what are your revenue channels? who’s your ideal customer? What’s your average ticket? Like what what are all the things that make up your business? And then which kind of customers do you want? And then there’s a lot of other factors that go into it. But first we have to understand your business and who who we’re working for, right? Who who what kind of clientele do we want to attract, right? And what do we want to sell them? Right. Then once these people come in, and this again might sound kind of kind of crazy and freaky, but we have this like guest analytics section. Where it’s kind of like a like a micro CRM where every single customer that comes through, we’re kind of like our our software is like, think of it like a detective. So we want to collect as much information about the customer as possible, starting at bare minimum. Like, where do they come from? And did they actually convert? And then when they came into your business, if you’re using one of our digital menus, what are the things that they’re like looking at? Because that’s what they’re interested in, right? Finally, with the point of sale integration, what do they actually order? And then finally, finally, can we also collect any first party data? First name, last name, phone number, email, et cetera. So basically, what happens is over time, we eventually hopefully have all that information. But I say it’s like a detective because we’re capturing little pieces here, here, here. This integration gives us this. This integration gives us this. Our menu gave us this. And so we’re putting it all together to ultimately get like a customer profile. That gives us insights on how to market to these people. So then finally, when we want a customer segment, hey, let’s target all the people that don’t drink this. The people that love their beers, this. The people that love their beers maybe want to market the beer club to them. The people that don’t drink, obviously not, right? the people that tend to do catering orders, maybe some corporate events, totally different market. Right? So as you start first. Building the brain of your business, building the customer profiles about each customer you have, and then being able to segment people to target them through ads, through email, through SMS. That’s where the true power is. Because ultimately, some people think, I sent an email with a customer’s first name. There’s my customization. Dude, no. Like
Jeremy Julian (40:17): Yeah. Well, and and I I use this example, Brett and I I want I want to challenge all of your listeners. Go to your spouse, your significant other, your child, and go log into their laptop. Go log into their Twitter account. Go log into their Facebook account from their device and look at how different it is than yours. And I I had this experience. I was traveling with my kids. They needed to do some college application. They jumped on my laptop, they logged out of my Google. And logged into theirs and then they handed me my laptop back and I was like lost. I was like, what did you do to my laptop? Because it all of my customization had gone away. And I think all too often, hey, I customized it. I put their first name on there. That is so, I guess, infant mindset when it comes to talking to your consumer. Would you ever say that to somebody in person? No, but they think, it’s digital and I used a mail merge to be able to go pull in this. It’s like, come on, man. You want to be able to. To do the things that say every time he comes in, he gets the shrimp tacos. We’ve now got a salmon taco. We should send him the salmon taco because you we know he likes fish. If I’ve never ever ordered fish, you know, be careful about sending me fish. Or if I’ve told you I have a nut allergy, don’t give me the special of the week with the nuts in them. Like, and and again, I’m I’m I’m saying this because I want our listeners to understand this is the power of tools like what you guys have, that if you get it right, you can drive double-digit increase in top line sales. And then long term, to your point, three, five, seven visits later, you’re now a very successful restaurant because you’ve done this. And it’s not, it’s not easy, but it’s pretty simple. If you just find a tool that’s out there, I guess. You know, the find a tool, find somebody that gets it that can help walk you through this and drive that behavior is really where I want people to go.
Brett Linkletter (41:56): It’s pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah. And and and not to mention, when it comes to personalization, in the AI world that we live in today, the the more customization that the more data points you have, the more your AI agent is is the world we now are in, right? Can can serve you, right? Because I mean, again, we’re talking about doing email blasts that just customize their first name and maybe like one line. We’re we’re we’re moving towards a world where everyone can receive a custom email to them based upon their history at your business. And it’s it’s really exciting. but for a lot of people, like we talked about earlier, they’re still doing billboards. So there’s there’s a lot of work to do to just get to this point, you know? which is nuts. And exciting. Exciting for us, you know.
Jeremy Julian (42:51): It’s a good opportunity. Well, I guess in that then remind everybody where do they go? How do they get engagement? You talked a little bit earlier on the in the episode about kind of what can they expect once they ga engage with your team and kind of what you know, I g I guess just walk them through the process. How do you want them to get in touch?
How to Get Started With Dishio
Brett Linkletter (43:06): Yeah, so I mean I guess if you if you just to start, if you if you want to learn more about us, what we do, what we’re about, etc., I definitely recommend our YouTube channel all the time. Just YouTube.com and then our just search Dineline or Dineline Inc. You you’ll find this on YouTube. We post a lot of videos. I think we have like 32,000 subscribers now. a lot of people, they they follow our content almost religiously about what we’re posting about. And we’re not just posting like real basic stuff. I mean, it we’re posting Pretty insightful stuff that you could use and have success even without us, by the way. Like you can, you can literally watch a couple of videos and get some cool insights to create your very ver your very first marketing campaign on your own. That’ll that’ll be decent to start. of course, you know, if you want to take it a step further, we always recommend book a call with us. Just do a call. Like what we do on all our calls is is it’s less of a sales call and more of like a consultation call where
Jeremy Julian (43:41): That’s great.
Brett Linkletter (44:03): We go deep to understand your business. what we call your communication channels or discovery channels. How are you reaching people online? What are the revenue channels? How are you making money with them? How do we connect these things so they actually work together? and then if there’s a fit, ultimately, like we will ask you to move forward. We’ll send you a proposal. there’s no pressure, but but ultimately, we’re working with brands that that are serious about growing their business. a a lot of our brands we work with are are reporting 15 20 growth easily within the first 90 days. I mean, and that’s that’s that’s like the bottom level, you know, and it’s we’re able to do that because suddenly the first the lights are off. When it comes to marketing, now the lights are on. We can actually see what’s going on, right? a lot of brands have a lot of low hanging fruit. We we’ve worked with some brands that have told us.
Jeremy Julian (44:38): That’s awesome.
Brett Linkletter (44:58): I don’t even know if I have a customer list. We get in there, we enter to the point of sale, they’ve got like half a million contacts. That’s that’s just I call them uncashed checks. I I mean it’s just it’s crazy the opportunity a lot of brands already have but have never touched, to be honest with you.
Jeremy Julian (45:13): Well, and I and I and I part I remind our listeners a lot of times they they got into the business not necessarily to be in marketing. So go find somebody that can help you do this, that can get you tools that are going to drive this behavior. Do what you do well, create hospitality, create good food, create a good experience in your brand, and partner with people like you guys to help drive the top line growth. Because at the end of the day, to your point, they’re not doing it well. And unfortunately, if they’re Next to somebody in a strip mall that is doing it, they’re going to take those consumers from you. And there’s only so many dining out experiences. So you got to make sure that you’re doing it right.
Brett Linkletter (45:48): Hundred percent. Hundred percent. Yeah.
Jeremy Julian (45:50): Awesome. Well, thank you for educating our listeners. I I genuinely am passionate about this subject, obviously, and and I love talking about these things. And thank you for creating the tool. To our listeners, guys, as I said at the onset, if you haven’t already subscribed, please do so and make it a great day.
Listen or watch the full episode: Restaurant Marketing You Can Track — Brett Linkletter, Dishio | RTG Ep. 354, where you will also find show notes, key takeaways and the YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify players.
