How Restaurants Can Deal with COVID-19 with Bo Bryant

Foreign. Hey, welcome everybody. We are broadcasting live restaurant coach Facebook page. I think it's going. I'm not sure, but anyway, hey, I'm, I'm happy. Today I'm joined by a good friend and fellow consultant and restaurant genius himself, Beau Bryant. How's things in California, man? You on lockdown or what?

Crazy. Things are crazy everywhere, buddy.

Crazy.

Yeah, it's. I guess, you know, there's a handful of ebb and flow, right. There's places that, you know, talking to a client today and they're down 10%. That's pretty amazing.

Just 10%.

Just 10%.

That's pretty amazing. Yeah, but actually really amazing. The flip side is so many places are down so much more, you know. Yeah.

Or shut their doors completely.

Shut the doors completely. I saw a stat the other day, I think the National Restaurant association put out that 3% of restaurants have already closed permanently and that they're estimating another 11% in the next 30 days.

Yeah, it's a 14.

14% in the next. Just the next 30 days. Not counting the next 60, 90 days.

Yeah, I mean, I don't.

What do you think it's going to top out at?

Well, I will tell you what. I was on this, this National Restaurant association call yesterday that broke down the way that all the financial pieces of this $2.2 billion relief fund are going to be disseminated. And in front of that call, the number in my head was like 20%. Like, holy shit, this is unfathomable. After that call, I think the number probably to me looks a little bit more like 5%. It was that impactful. You know what they're doing with. Yeah, this PPP fund, which is that payroll protection plan and the IDL or EIDL piece, which is the income disaster loan, you know, when you, the PPP with that eight weeks worth of payroll forgiveness, that's pretty impressive. It'll be interesting to see how people use that product and if and how they hedge, when they place it, when they take advantage of it. The ibl, I just, I haven't unpacked it enough yet. I haven't dove into it enough. There are competing products coming from this fund. I think the IDL is designed a bit more for the long term play on this, where that ppp, like I said, it's limited to that eight week piece, but then there's some, there's some instant stimulus money out there. It's national loan, but after those two pieces kind of merge, you pick one or the other, you get to that fulcrum. And then you move forward with some other financial relief packages there. It's borrowed money. And it sucks to consider borrowed money, but it's cheap money and the term is long. So it's, I guess it's kind of a slow drip piece to me. If people choose to take advantage of it, the number's certainly going to hit that 14%, you know, but it's, it's tough. No matter how you look at it, it doesn't matter. Yeah, I wish I could have been more prepared, you know, for the call and had really dove into it more.

But, you know, my concern is that, I mean, the relief money is gonna be great, you know, and people do need it. I'm just concerned about, you know, if your restaurant wasn't running great before. I mean, is this actually, is this just prolonging the inevitable or what?

Well, I mean, that's one way to look at it, I guess. I'll tell you how I look at it, is there's a lot of people that may just not be aware of the restaurant was running better before. Good. Before, not right.

Right.

This definitely. It may not even create awareness. But what it might create is an adaptability platform that shows people there's got to be more revenue streams and more profit centers within my own business.

Exactly.

About how many people have adapted right now to delivery and online ordering takeout that didn't have it before. And so where I'm curious then is how much that goes away. Should it go away?

I don't think it'll go away a lot. I think it's not going to be as crazy as is now. But it's, it's, here's my, my take on it. It's forming new habits.

It's forming new habits. It's forming new revenue centers. There's, there, there might be some unintended consequence that, you know, a high tide raises all ships, right?

Yes.

And maybe we get to see some of that come from this. And look, you and I have been talking about this for a couple years with clients, talking to them about, you need to catch up to the generational deficit that so much of our landscape has been suffering from, which is online ordering, which is this millennial and more importantly that Gen Z demographic. That's their comfort zone, that's where they push. And I guess I'm not making light of the situation whatsoever, but I'll give you an interesting perspective. I have a 15 year old, nearly 16 year old daughter and 11 year old, almost 12 year old son. I was talking to my parents on the phone. And, you know, they were asking how you're, how the kids holding up during this time? And I said, it's a change, no change for them. They spend their life on social media, video games online. You know, it's FaceTime, it's Snapchat, it's Instagram. That's my daughter and my son. It's video games. That this has just forced them to get to do more of what they love. And while that's, you know, while it does have a little bit of humor in it, the reality is that's millennial and Gen Z is some silly number. Like 46% of discretional income is spent in those two generations. Kids don't make money, but they spend my money, and they spend my money at restaurants and through third party and through ordering online. So this is a behavior that's kind of forced our industry to have to wake up to. And unfortunately, listen to me, I'm not begrudging anybody or shaming anybody. It's just maybe we caught up to a place that we needed to be anyway. And hopefully there's sustainability in that after this piece goes, just makes the business more multifaceted, helps you reach a larger audience and maybe and hopefully we come back better and stronger for it.

Yes. Yeah, Someone just made a comment. I'm a server, but I've been an owner six times. Labor kills you. Brilliant to do takeaway.

Yeah. Well, look, here's the reality. This isn't just in the restaurant business. This is in all business right now. Oh, yeah, there's going to be a culling, and it's to sustain itself. When times get tough and people have to come up with new and innovative ways to do things, even when times get better, those new and innovative ways end up sticking around. It ends up becoming a better way than we were doing it before. So I think there's going to be some awakening and some awareness on labor efficiencies because unfortunately, people just collectively haven't been forced to have to look at every single penny like they are now. Stuff you and I have been preaching about methodology of budgeting and P and L awareness and looking at it every day, forecasting, labor metrics and matrix that tell you exactly how much to schedule when and who and how. All of this is now top of mind and it will carry through and there will be efficiencies again, not just on the restaurant business, man, everywhere. Every company right now is struggling to try to stay afloat, to try to not give haircuts and not reduce headcount. But it's not sustainable when revenue has been decimated by half. You can't burden the expectation of expense at still 100%. Right?

No, exactly.

But efficiency will be born from this and efficiency will carry over. Look at interest. Right. My mother was just talking about how she had done a viral or web based medical checkup. And then that checkup, just like what we're doing, doctor said, great, I am going to write you a prescription. Send it off. They did it like this. My mother in law didn't have to get up and go to the doctor. She's a little bit up in her years. That probably makes sense forever moving forward. Right. Think about the efficiencies that healthcare is dealing with right now. That as an example, too much burden. I can't have 100 people that I don't know what their infection level or compromised immunity system looks like. I don't just want you walking into my office so I can write you a prescription. Jump on FaceTime with me. I'm going to look at you, I'm going to hear about your symptoms.

Boom.

That doctor can see 10 times more patients. I mean that's the industry my father's in. I'm hearing some of those efficiencies spread throughout everywhere. And we didn't really have a script or anything to necessarily talk about. Sorry if I'm just going down these bunny.

I like the bunny hole. I love the bunny. I love the bunny holes, man. Let's go.

Yeah, well, net. Net is there's going to be some better efficiencies. Look, I have a buddy and him and I like to play the unintended consequence game. Right. What's the craziest upside you could see coming out of this? Right. Or what's the craziest downside nobody's talking about right now. Right?

Right.

It's good just to let your mind go that way sometimes and try to think. Not Nostradamus or anything. I'm not trying to read tea leaves.

But follow up on that. What's the craziest upside?

I'm not going to give you the craziest, but I'll give you a crazy upside.

Give me a good one.

All of a sudden, human behavior has adopted this incredible awareness of sanitation, cleanliness, cross contamination, germ spreading. Okay. This will run a course, right? What won't run a course is what we can predict next year and every year for the rest of our lives is the flu will continue to be an active virus that affects people. So here's what's curious how Much of this current behavior that we've been hardwired for right now carries over. Imagine next year a drug like Tamiflu, right? Two years ago you couldn't get it. There was a run on it, and they just didn't have production up to where it had to be. Maybe two, three years ago, it doesn't matter. But now imagine you're investing in Tamiflu and next year, Tamiflu, their drug, is half of the sales that they did this year. Because all of a sudden you've got better citizens that are so much more aware of washing their hands and cross contamination, let's say those behaviors carry over a year. Hospitals will be staffing up, waiting to see flu patients that don't come. Tamiflu will be building up its bulk and its supply, and it doesn't come, people will be thinking, what the hell happened? Well, what the hell happened is we all got a little bit smarter, hopefully. And I pray God this type of behavioral stuff does really resonate with people and stick around because we all stand to be the benefactor for that long term, right? I think about restaurants now. I narrow that down to a very, very small funnel and drip that system into the restaurant business. And just think about this awareness and what it might do as the unintended consequence when it comes to foodborne illness. And the Chipotle's and the Jimmy John's of the world facing these challenges that they've had over the last five years. And imagine how much impact it could have positively on that going away, all born from the behavior from this catastrophe. So I'm, I'm not trying to be optimistic or pessimistic. I'm trying to be realistic. But it is fun. Look, in a time like this, it's a welcome relief to just kind of close your eyes and lay back and fantasize about the future, about and hopefully what could be better. I find myself drifting that way. And I think it's healthy for me because I can't watch any more news. I can't, I can't continue to ingest this stuff.

It's just, news is toxic. I, you know, and I, I tell everybody, you stay with reputable sites, you know, you know, nation's restaurant news, restaurant dive, restaurant business, online food bowl tv, stay with those kind of four places that kind of give you straight up, you know, input.

I mean, the CDC website and who for any health and medical and virus related information. Everything else is, look, we're all aware of what the news cycle does, especially when the news cycle doesn't have news to report, they just recycle and reimagine the same shit that's already been said. And they say with more infliction and enunciation and maybe they might even make more shit that's not even there just to make the old news feel like new news because they don't have anything new to report on. Right way. This hap. This has been ongoing long before COVID 19. This, this 24 hour news cycle that we've lived on in our lifetime. This, this isn't what it used to be.

Oh, no, no, it's, it's crazy. You know, manufacturer news all the time. So all they're doing is just basically rehashing it and spreading fear. That's, that's what I hate.

Particularly problematic right now because everything changes daily, hourly. And recycling old stories become irrelevant, but can also create hysteria. There was this news story that had gotten recycled for the course of a week about all these spring breakers going to these beaches. And they were still telling that same story on Friday from news that happened the weekend before. And, and so then you have the public getting pissed off thinking these people aren't listening. But if you track the origin of the story and when it was originally released, it was March 18, March 19, and it was still being recycled and retold on March 25. And that's problematic, right? So, man, I don't know. And then there's news that doesn't get out or there's math that people don't do in this situation. I'll give you an example. My wife's an rn and so she is all over this all day, every day, you know, watching and on the WHO website and CDC website. But I think what a lot of people haven't looked at is when you see the line of what this thing is doing, right? Just going up, up, up, up, up. And we've all been in our houses for two weeks, so how is this line still going up? And that's what where the news has failed to report it is that you've got an influx of results that are coming from tests that they gave between two weeks and eight days ago. Right? So it's line. It's not daily, it's not in line. These numbers as they increase aren't in line with our behavior and what we've been doing for the last two weeks. So reality is we're not going to see this thing. And I'm not sitting here advising or talking like I'm an expert on the subject by any means, but in my Opinion. I don't think you're going to see a flattening of that curve until two weeks after we've been doing this containment piece. Because it takes the data that long from testing that old to get reported up and reported on. It looks like a lot of doom and gloom. But hopefully I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic that people continue to do the right thing and we start to see some. Some turning results.

Exactly. So right now you're a restaurant owner. What would you say, what is like your top three actions that a restaurant owner should take right now?

Number one, without a doubt, is if you don't have online ordering.

Mm.

Build an online ordering platform. There is a website and by the way, I do not get paid. I don't even know if they're aware of who I am or that I exist.

You did a video, didn't you?

I did a video. Go to YouTube and type in Beau Bryant and you'll find the video.

Go to YouTube and type in Beau Bryant. He's got tons of videos. I mean, a great resource. I'm telling everyone right now, I'll find his link right now and I'll put it up on the page.

All right. So there's this company called gloriafood.com and they offer a free online ordering platform. So the video that I did was I went to one of my old restaurant websites. I brought it back to life and I literally went step by step through their website. That shows you how to build this. And built it, plugged it into my website, showed everybody exactly what it looks like, updated all the content on my website so that it looked like a current restaurant today. And it's kind of a recommendation. Not just the online ordering, but also the slide. The information that I have on my sizzle reel going through the website, it's all current, relevant stuff that people should be paying attention to and modeling their website to look like right now. So update your website. Definitely. And think about.

Here's.

Here's a big disconnect. Oh, good, nice. There it is here. Where's the camera? So there was. I got some interesting data, a data report that somebody had sent me and it was. It was pretty interesting. On online ordering, the customer through rate was 66%. This is an interesting statistic. Now, I came up with my own conclusion or assumption. But the data basically said of people who started a shopping cart with an online ordering through restaurant application, 33% of them abandoned their shopping cart. And to me, my assumption is because they don't know what the process is after they Place the order. They don't know what it's going to look like when I get there. Are they just going to hand it to me with a glove on? And is that. I don't know if that makes people comfortable enough. That's not practicing the social distancing at six feet. So it's not. It doesn't matter whether you have a plan or not, but it absolutely. Well, yes, it does matter if you have a plan, but it's not helpful to just have a plan. If you're not communicating the plan, if you're not putting it online and letting people know what does the experience look like, then the customer doesn't have that confidence. Right. Because they're afraid. They want to place the order, pay over the phone so they don't have to do any kind of hand to hand transaction with cash or credit card. They want to pull up in the parking lot in their car. They want to be alerted when the product is there. They want to go to a neutral place that's socially distanced so they can pick up the food with their name on it and grab it. So if you're doing that, great, capture it and tell your audience you're doing it. So I guess those are a couple things. Now another thing that. So three parts you asked. What are the top three things I would have people doing if you're not doing online ordering? Do it. Go check out that Glory of food. And I will say this. You could have Toast as a program. Great program. There's a lot of great POS systems out there that already offer online ordering. And if you don't have it, you could use them. But understand the reason why I'm stumping for this glory of food.com thing is because I built it, it was up, it was active and my customers could go on and order for me online within two hours.

Yeah, fast.

I love Toast. I love all these other products out there that offer it, but they can't get it up in two hours, maybe two days if you're lucky, likely longer. But it's that simple. So number one, build the online ordering platform. Number two, make sure that not just on your website, but across all social media channels and the like. Not just social media channels, I would say website, social media and peer review. What is on your Yelp page right now? What is on Google right now? What is on TripAdvisor right now? Go and update that and make sure that people understand what you're doing to keep them safe across all platforms. And then the third one and this Might seem kind of silly is. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of just grassroots marketing, right? There's that old crazy stuff that guys like you and I used to do 20 years ago, before the whole social environment existed over the interweb, right. We actually went and put menus on doors and did kind of guerrilla marketing tactics. Look, my next door neighbor has a sign company like he owns a fast signs franchise. And my wife and I were out walking the dogs last night and we walked by, they had their garage open. They're playing some pool in the garage and you know, kept my distance and said, hey Scott, are you guys still open? Are you still printing signs? Because I have a lot of customers that are changing the way they're doing business right now and they need some big banner ad advertisement that is out there that they can let people know. Open for delivery, open for pickup orders. That's tactical, grassroots type of stuff. Look, our audience has not just gotten smaller, but so too has the proximity. People aren't traveling the normal distance away from their home to go get the food that they used to get. The bubble has gotten smaller. So if you're an independent restaurant, you can feel pretty confident. If you're within any kind of residential area, people are walking by. That's your chance to put information out on the street banner ad above your restaurant that lets them know currently you're open. And even my sign buddy was like, look, I had to lay off some people, but the machines are sitting there idle. He said, I'm not violating any laws by sending a sign to the print printer. Have it print, leave my house, go grab it, roll it up, boom. Throw it like a football at the restaurant that just ordered it and we're all clean and safe and good and they can let people know they're there. And by the way, he's highly motivated at an extreme discounted rate to do this type of stuff on the fly for people. So I guess those are kind of my three things I'd be looking at. If there was a fourth thing I would say scrutinize your offering right now. It's, you know, in the restaurant business we come from customer to restaurant day part transaction, right? Three people coming in. I assume I'm going to sell three meals. That assumption is funky right now. Why would I assume that? If I see three people coming in, I should assume they want 30 meals that they hot one to take home tonight and then I'm going to send them home with an assembly kit that's either pre cooked and reheat Or a full family meal, that's taken. Bake. Sky's the limit, man. If you're selling pizza, every time somebody calls and orders a pizza, ask them if they want 3 or 4 extra take and bakes at a 50% discount. Make them at home. I'll give them to you cheaper because I'm not putting the labor into cooking them, cutting them, boxing them, right? I mean, we got really think outside of the box. We got to get creative. I've seen cool stuff, man. I've seen restaurants kind of create this bodega type of deal where, you know, they're taking the produce and stuff that they're getting from their distributors and they're putting them out in apple baskets out in the front of the restaurant with bags. And customers can shop and grab that type of stuff, throw in a bag, tell them how much they got, pay for it, you know, gallons of milk, right? Restaurants buy 612 half gallons of milk. 6,1 gallons of milk. Literally creating this bodega effect and updating their website to say, here's the home ingredients that we have that when you come pick up your food. You can also order these online right now too. On the retail side, we'll package that up and send it home with you as well. Toilet paper. Restaurant distribution supply chain, the Toilet Paper Channel has not been disrupted. Restaurants buy a 96 pack of toilet paper, all done every day, and they can keep that stuff coming in the door. That seems silly. It seems so crazy, but, man, whatever. We just got to get outside of the box. We got to look at our business as an e commerce business, and we have to expand our width and depth and breadth on what we offer, especially relative to what people need. Look, I'll tell you, it's fascinating. You go to the grocery store, talking about the grocery store. It's interesting. Grocery store is not out of food. It's out of popular stuff. And there's a shit ton of other stuff on the shelf. To me, I remember when we first went in the grocery store after this whole thing, and I saw all the pasta shelves are empty and all the canned goods shelves, the pasta sauces are empty. I was thinking, of course they are. Millennials don't know how to cook. This is the only shit they know how to make, right? So the masses ran to the store and grabbed the easy stuff. I'm not just picking up millennials, actually, because there's a lot of people who just don't know how to cook because they've been eating away from home more and more every year. And so they're just grabbing the simple stuff. But, man, you can find stuff if you know how to make stuff. And look, dude, I've seen some really, really cool, cool ideas. I think it was one that you shared with me. And I actually unpacked it and got into quite a bit of detail on it I thought was an awesome idea. It was a home meal kit, right? The home meal kit had a sticker with a QR code on it. No different than what I promoted with my menu thing on my site. When people look at that video, they'll see it, but this was in a different way. Took a QR code, put it on the lid of the foil pan that had all the raw ingredients in it. When you put your phone over the QR code, that chef pops up on a YouTube video with a how to tutorial to build to cook this dish. All right, first, grab that chicken. Start the chicken in the pan, right? Get the pan hot. First put the oil in, then turn it down. Put the chicken in the pan, let it cook. Now move over to your vegetables. Put these vegetables in the pan. Him with a little white wine, start sauteing them. So it goes through this really cool, like, tutorial video. And I was like, man, that's genius. Everybody who buys the product gets a cook along. Lesson with the chef. Yeah, genius. Absolutely.

Yeah.

So we're seeing a lot of kick ass innovation. And this is what I love about our industry. It's resilient, it's creative, it's innovative. And so there are as much as there's a lot of doom and gloom, there's also a ton of cool bright spots right now that are just make me proud of the industry that I'm in.

You know Pagosa? Pagosa Brewing, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You know Tony up there. Pagosa Brewing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's been pushing this online ordering, you know, because all you can do is online ordering up in Colorado. So he's been pushing these prime rib dinners on Friday nights and really pushing it. And he's been selling out. I mean, he's never sold as much prime rib as he has recently. Just promoting it and just saying, hey, I got four left, who wants one? I got four left, who wants 1? And he's been selling like 40, 50 prime rib dinners, and it's been awesome. And now they're going to take that and they're going to expand it into doing probably ribs one night and then probably doing a family style fried chicken dinner too on Sunday nights.

It's Nice. Well, and so some other, some of the other data that we're seeing, which probably makes sense to everybody, is that the day part head count has as a ratio has obviously drifted heavily towards dinner, right?

Yeah. No, his lunch is dead. Yeah, for him, but lunch is dead, everybody.

I think that's a lot of people, right? And look, breakfast doesn't travel well, so that one was predictable.

Oh, McDonald's killed all day their all day breakfast menu.

Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. And a lot of their 24 hour locations killed their hours down to, you know, from six or something to nine or ten, whatever it is.

The biggest thing that shows me is that you got to be able to adapt.

You got to be able to adapt and look like working with a client last night. He had shut down last week and decided he wanted to reopen. So we talked about the online ordering piece, right? About building his offer. The comment that I had made to him was people aren't eating one for one anymore, right? You got to stop that relationship or that expectation piece where they come in the restaurant and it's one person ordering one thing. So we built a menu or we started building a menu. We'll see what he comes up with through the weekend. But to build everything that they offer for pickup as a two pack or a four pack, right? Just those two options. Not a 1, 2, 3 or 4, but just for 2, 4, right. Think of the day, right? Just take the same modeling and it's built for two people or four people. And that's all you offer. A family size and a couple size or whatever you want to call it. So, yeah, just getting out, getting outside of the box.

That's it. Yeah. My friend Joe, who's watching, he lives in New York and he mentioned there's a local place. I was on a, on a podcast with him the other day. He runs a podcast called ecrm. Great podcast, by the way. You should go check it out. I'll put a link in there for you.

I haven't seen that. I want to check it out.

Yeah, it's a good, it's a good, it's a great podcast. But Joe was talking about one of his local places in his market. Basically they, they, it was a fine dining, you know, Italian place and they converted almost over overnight into like a retail, like grocery store stuff, selling bulk pasta, selling their marinara sauce. And you know, it, it helped save them because it turned around, you know, because people weren't gonna go to a restaurant and order, you know, an Italian meal, but man, they'll come down and get all the ingredients they need to cook at home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. First of all, Donald, thanks for doing this podcast. It's great that you're doing it, and I know you committed to kind of doing it, at least for a whole week. And I know you've got some great friends of ours coming on. This is what's so critical. I'll tell you, it wasn't lost on me yesterday in that NRA meeting, that conference call. How so? Just in case anybody doesn't know, we are the largest private employer in the United States. We are the largest employer of employees, too. So it's not just dollars, it's headcount. And when you hear numbers like that, you would think that you belong to a community that's highly organized. And being on that NRA call yesterday showed me what the top of that organizational part looks like. But being boots on the ground every day shows me how vast the disconnect is in between. Right. We don't have a lot of good channels for sharing and bifurcating the system and, you know, sharing those ideas. And I can't believe how many people weren't aware of that call yesterday. That call was the best news and some of the best information I've gotten in over a month. And I literally. It was viral. I took a copy of the link, sent it to everybody I knew, said, hey, if you didn't hear this, listen to it. It's so powerful.

I put a link in the notes, by the way, for people that want to check out that show that you mentioned. Good.

Yeah. I mean, listen, it was. It helped me breathe a sigh of relief. But it does talk about how disjointed our industry is because it's a conglomeration of all these independents that really make up that largest private employer in the United States. But in between the gap, in between the organizational excellence that happens at the NRA level and the disconnected absence of that that happens at the independent I own one restaurant level. Right. And, you know, I mean, look, man, owning restaurants every day, even if you were aware of all that stuff and knew where to go find it. Good luck coming up for air, man. I mean, you can't see the forest for the trees when you're in it. This is. Fire drills aren't new to us. This just one of the bigger and worst ones we've ever battled.

But contingency plans, I'll tell you, man, I always tell people, contingency is the biggest thing that we learned in the military. It's been Special ops contingency planning is the biggest thing you can do well.

And like I said at the beginning, I think that'll be the carryover. I think there'll be a lot of built in contingency plans that come after this and a lot of it'll be real life experience. Right. Even if people stop some of the stuff they're doing now, hopefully they're capturing it and putting it in a book and making sure that they know exactly how to go back to all the functional blocking and tackling and steps to set this up.

You're my, you're my. My lawn guy's outside, man.

I cut all my soft expenses. Holy cow. Good for you.

You know, hey, I'm trying to support the local guy. We just did social distancing. I put the money in an envelope and put it outside the door and he just grabs it and goes.

Good for you.

Gotta practice that social distancing. You know, I have to, you know, you have to support you. Here's another thing too. You gotta support your community, support your local economy and do what you can.

So yeah, I kept my corporate, I kept my corporate overhead. You know, my, my subscriptions to things that I can't use right now. There's kind of hit the wayside. Yeah. At 40 different websites on GoDaddy. I, I didn't need to renew 20 of them. I probably didn't need to renew 40.

I should probably, I should probably cut down my list of GoDaddy names. I'm like you, I'm a GoDaddy domain name hoarder man. I take every time I get an idea. I'm like you. Every time we get an idea, first thing we do is we buy the domain name. Right.

Buy the dot com. Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I let some of those go. Yeah, you have to farm some creative ideas.

So let me just throw this out there and you know, just best guess. What do you think? How long this thing gonna last when you think things would start getting back to kind of a little more traffic out there? 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

You're right, it's. It's a best guess. Right. I look at the numbers and I try to figure out it has to be a relative saturation value. Right. So. And there's some interesting numbers too that I don't think people are considering or looking at. And I think as testing, especially as rapid testing becomes more pervasive. So understand first, there is a need still for this rapid testing. Right. And that's not based on people who are showing signs. I Think they really want to try to figure out what this number is of these asymptomatic people that are carriers and passers, but not displaying, you know, any visual sign or effect. Now, the numbers that we're hearing right now about what they suspect as far as a percentage of passive carriers are or asymptomatic carriers is between 20 and 50%. That number has a tremendous amount of implication. And that's the reason why testing at some point, and the sooner the better, right? The sooner the government says, through independent parties and whatever that, hey, we've got enough testing. We encourage everybody to go get a test. What they're going to find from that data, especially if they're rapid tests. I think they're. There was a guy in Orange county yesterday that just made an announcement. Get results in 15 minutes. That's the fastest one I know of right now. If they can catch up with production. Follow me on this journey for a second. And I'm sorry for going down this bunny hole, but I like it, man. If 20 to 50%, if we can isolate what that number is by giving tests to people whether they're showing symptoms or not, because there becomes enough testing on the market and it becomes rapidly, you know, resolved fast enough, that will tell an interesting story. If that. Let's say that number rests at 50%. Holy shit. Could you imagine 50% of the population could be infected and not know it because they're asymptomatic?

Right, Right.

That would change the numbers, but it would also move us towards a tipping point. There's a tipping point when enough of the people socialize the disease and have it, and I don't know what that number is, I'd be curious to know the math is 25%. The tipping point is it 30, 40% of the population, once they get it right, natural immunity, antibodies, stuff that start building up collectively in us as a whole of society. More importantly, I think another reason why they're going to want to have everybody taking a test is because those asymptomatic people have a higher likelihood of creating or having a stronger immunity with antibodies already in their system. And right now they're looking at treatment, not a cure, but they're looking at treatment relative to those antibodies. And can they distill that through blood extraction plasma. Right. And take those antibodies and turn it into a form of treatment, medication that helps jumpstart somebody else who gets it. Because here's what we're really trying to prevent. We're trying to prevent the influx of people that are Going to hospitals need respirators and we're trying to prevent the outcome of death. Right. So if we can, if we can start finding a way to treat it to minimize the mortality rate down to, you know, a negligible amount, then all of a sudden it's easy to open things back up with, with still having an abundance of caution towards those that are immune, vulnerable and of a certain age. Right. But I don't think that has to limit the rest of the world from being able to try to get back to some type of normal activity. It's, it's interesting. I don't care what your politics are, but there is, there is a tipping point to when this thing starts to be more destructive holding people in than it would be letting people out.

Yes.

Right. And I don't know what those numbers are. I just have curiosity about it. I certainly explore it and I'm sure there's people way, way smarter than me that are doing the same thing right now and probably know some of those answers and we'll see. So that's a terribly long answer when you just asked if I had to guess. So my guess is kind of right now, beginning of May, middle of May is when I think that they're probably.

Just actually that's my guess too. I'm thinking beginning of May.

Yeah, yeah. Now. But understand it's gonna, it's going to, it's going to be an echo chamber. It's not just going to be a floodgate.

It's not going to be like it's shut down. It's going to be a slow recovery back.

But release of restrictions too.

Exactly.

Because you're still going to want to pay attention, like I said, to the, to the community vulnerable to the elderly people and maybe even to some border crossing type stuff. Right. Like I don't know how soon they'll open borders and you know, transcontinental flying, stuff like that. So it might happen at the same time. I don't know. But I'm just assuming like any. Look, I do a whole lot of scientific study when it comes to restaurants. So I understand the value of measuring in a controlled environment. Right. And so a controlled environment in the situation that we're in is you have to take the shackles off one wrist at a time and see how the body reacts and then the next wrist and then the foot and then the other foot. Right. But you gotta do it, measure and then figure out what the recourse is or do you keep moving forward. Right. It's the same that's that echo chamber I'm talking about. Right? You just unleash it and it gets as bad as it was or worse. You don't know where it came from still. So that's. I guess that's my guess.

Yeah. Good guess.

So things your people have. I'm sure you lost like half your audience already. They probably.

Oh, no, there's still people on there. There's still people on. They're still tuned in. Mandor.

Cooped up in the house and in my head for too long, you know.

Hey, you know what, man? You know, that's one thing about being cooped up. You start like just riffing on things. I've heard so much more content in this last week than I ever have.

You know, I have been content generating fool over the last two weeks, man. It's been crazy. It's my brain.

Yeah. So I want to make a mention real quick if you haven't been to my. I have a free webinar out there. It's called the Coronavirus Action Plan for restaurants. It's free. You can easily go and get a hold of it. I think I have the links right there. The links are in the show notes. The free Coronavirus webinar. Actually there's some great stuff on there. Bo contributed some stuff. We upload some stuff that he did. There's also that link that he mentioned about his video about online ordering. You want to make sure you check that out because that's huge also too. And there is a link in the show for that replay from. It was from the National Restaurant Association. Right.

Okay.

The link's right there. Make sure you get a hold. Watch that. What did you say? It made you feel a lot better, right?

Seriously, it was kind of like the weight of the world lifted off my shoulders. It gave me hope. It told me these 5 million people unemployed in our industry will get back to work within probably the next four to six weeks just with this PPP fund. Right. That's regardless of whether or not the economy comes back or the sanctions are lifted or whatever it is. It just in order for owner operators take advantage of this forgiven debt structure that they've put in. Here's eight weeks worth of free income. The only stipulation is you've got to show us previous payroll and a previous what's called fte full time employee. Right. Show us what the count was on that. Historically we'll use that number to generate your eight weeks worth of free income. With the caveat that number is proportionate to your full time employees. So that gives restaurants the incentive to hire back the full time employees and know that they'll be paid through this fund and the money will be, the loan will be forgiven. It's really more of a, it's more of a grant than it is a loan given if you hire that headcount back to what it was based on the baseline we created. So that's encouraging. And that wasn't the only part. All the different elements of this, of this relief and the financial structure in the loans were what kind of gave me that, oh, thank goodness. There is some, some bright spot. And that's why I would encourage everybody listen to it. It's a little heady, don't get me wrong. I mean, it's.

No, it's heavy. It's good though. So here Titus asked a question to us. What are you doing to retain your top talent or bring on new talent? What would you recommend for people?

So this, now we're talking, you know, tough questions. That's a good question. Whoever asked it, it's a good question. And here's. Oh, I thought you were reading something from somebody.

Oh, no, it was here. Here's. Here's a question.

I, I hate to give every. Every human being matters. Everybody's family and income and ability to make income matters. So I'm not trying to minimize that. But here's kind of a reality. There's been a small percentage. There's always a small percentage that exists in every business that shouldn't be there.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, this unfortunately gives some people an excuse to get rid of them. But moving forward as leaders, I would start questioning our go forward strategy and say, in the future, I don't want to have 3 or 5% of my staff that I know I could get rid of. And I'm waiting for a rainy day type of thing like this to happen because here's where that's really negative. Let's say that you had a bad employee and you've been waiting to get rid of them and this forced your hand and it didn't make all the cuts easy, but it made some of the cuts easy. Here's where I take exception to that. If you've been a good leader and people knew where they stood and they knew what was expected of them, they knew what great looks like and they knew they weren't performing. Hire slow and fire fast. Give that person an opportunity before something like this happens to go to try to find some gainful employment somewhere else where they might still have a job. Maybe they would have left the restaurant industry and gone to work at a grocery store or Amazon, and guess what? They'd still be gainfully employed. So I try to look introspectively and think how much of what we did might have hurt people, especially in that vertical. Right. So the answer is, first of all, it's going to put an abundance of employee inventory out there. I think that's, that's good for our industry. Right. People will fight harder to get a job. People will be more grateful to have a job. We've seen the hospitality level really kind of nosedive, honestly. We've all talked about it. We've all talked about we're held hostage by employees to a certain extent because we've been running in a really robust economy where there are more jobs than there are employees to fill them for the first time in 50 plus years. That's been the environment right up until this.

Yes.

Yeah. It brings the pendulum back the other way. So forces accountability on both sides. We need to come out of this being better operators and better leaders. And I think employees also understand they need to come back out of this being more grateful and being better employees. Again, unintended consequence. Imagine that. Imagine if our industry got better because we all have been woke right now.

Right, Exactly.

So I would say it's. It's a combination. Don't you hire great people? And if you let go of great people, you bring them back and if there's still room, find more great people. Because there's going to be a surplus of them out there. But there already is a surplus of them out there.

Yeah.

Now here, I guess I would like to state one more thing. We have been so in the moment and I had this conversation with a great consulting friend of mine up in Colorado this week named Jim, and he really called this out. I want to give him all the credit for it. And I've been thinking in this direction, but I hadn't probably solidified the thought, but the thought was this. We're. We're all very in the minute right now. That's how we're living. It's how we're reacting. But here's the reality. This will get better, right? This, we will come out of this. The world's not going to end.

No.

So knowing that we're going to come out of this, when we have a few of those free minutes in our day that we're actually not responding to disaster, catastrophe, what are we doing collectively to plan for the rebirth, the reopening, the. Right. Like, what are the lessons we took Away. What are the systems we need to implement? What is being busy going to look like in the future? Maybe I never took the time before to do food cost and figure out, you know, what my food cost should be. Maybe I never took the time before to consider what my inventory value on hand needs to be by managing, you know, purchasing relative to throughput and sales. Right. I mean, you should only have one day's excess inventory on hand. Right. If you get orders three times a week from your distributor, then you should never have more than three days worth of inventory on hand. Right. So maybe we'll start looking at things like that. Planning better, being more thoughtful and aware. We'll all be better for it. Sorry. My dog, I guess, wants to go outside. I don't know if you can hear him.

Your dog? My lawnmower guy. My lawn guy.

But I do think that we need to not just keep living in the now, but also start applying some of, some of the free time. I know there's a lot of people who don't have it, but if you're not sleeping at night and you're paranoid, don't sit and wallow in your thoughts. Grab a journal and start writing some future planning, process, development stuff that you're going to need once this thing does come back. Right. So I guess that would be my thought.

And I wrote a little note there. You know, if you're not using this time to reflect on how to become a better operator, shame on you.

Yeah, I think so.

Definitely.

I think so. I didn't want to minimize the fact that there's a lot of mental health stuff right now. Right. There's. There's people who are sick and stressed and depressed and freaking out, and I get that. But boy, the best way to get out of a dark place, actually think.

About the future, taking action, building. Building a. Picturing and building a compelling future.

Right?

Yeah, something that's compelling. Hey, you know, when we open up, it's going to be better. We're going to do this and this and this. We're not going to limit ourselves. We're going to have multiple streams of revenue. You know, maybe we're going to like have a designated, you know, curbside pickup and make really cool signs for them. You mentioned that in one of your presentations. Yeah, yeah, that's the way to do it. So I also want to do a shout out to. Bruce Irving is hosting this really a great event called the Pizza Summit 2020. It's going to be awesome. We, there are like, there's like, I think 26 speakers lined up for this thing. 26 speakers, 36 sessions. If you want to get a free ticket, all you got to do is go to the link in the notes and then type in Pizza Summit DB and you get your ticket for free. It starts April 6th, 7th and 8th. It's three days. Speakers from all around the place. Now, even though it's called the Pizza Summit, there are some great speakers from around the world. Lee Cockrell, who's a former, you know, former president of the Disney Corporation, is going to be one of the speakers talking about leadership in crisis. It's going to be great. Don't miss it. And if you want to connect with Bo again, I would recommend going to his YouTube. I'm also going to put up his link for his website. So if you want to connect with Bo's like me, we are. We believe in servant leadership. We like to give to people. So if you want to reach out to somebody, you know, reach out to us. We've got a little time right now, so this is a great time to, you know, reach out to us. Right?

Yeah. Hey, look, I'm gonna plug too. Shamelessly. Look@the hellaburger.com.

Oh, yeah, that's your place, right?

Yeah, it's my fictitious restaurant, but I'm constantly updating that by the day, by the hour to use it as a platform to show people ideas that I hope that they will steal. Steal them all. Everything that's up there, everything that you know, the slideshow, even all the way down to the design. The design is very intentional. It's based on a best in class model of web design that was voted by, you know, millennial and Gen Z is what captures their attention. The best. And each picture has a call to action or information. I don't put that stuff up there because I'm selling burgers right now. I'm not.

It's a definitely, it's a model that you want to look at. So the links in the, the notes right there, you can see it on the, on the screen right there. The hellaburger.com. it's a really cool. He's got, you know, the menu and he's got some really cool. It means some great stuff. And like Bo says, go and knock it off, you know, and model it. Modeling the most effective way to get success. Yeah, we teach it in nlp, right?

Steal it. And by the way, the only price for theft is replacement. Right? So steal anything you want, but just contribute. Donate an idea. Right. You could take anything as long as There's a donation. So donate an idea. Share something that is working with your community.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, we're all too. We're all too. We're all in too much pain right now to worry about hoarding ideas. This is the last time for that. Your bubble is coming from within a mile of your restaurant. So the guy who is two miles, three miles away, that used to be your competitor, he's not your competitor anymore. If you got ideas, share ideas. If something's winning and working, share it. That's the way that this community is going to get more organized and more intelligent. There's plenty for all of us out there, especially if we all raise the bar and get better. Customers have more confidence, they'll spend more, we all win.

Somebody put up a question. How much for the fridge?

What fridge?

I don't know. Did you have a fridge on there?

Oh, I might be talking about one of the demos or, you know, I had a 4 on slide 2 of the website. You can click on the little doc down there on the second slide, it shows step one, step two, step three, step four. So that the tabletop that the bag is sitting on, right. It wasn't a fridge. It was literally just a tabletop blocking the front door.

I gotcha.

That you put the bag on and tell the customer orders there. I don't know. Maybe that's what they're talking about. I have no idea.

So anyway, and during this time right now, you know, I'm working from home like a lot of people. If you want to. If you want to schedule a one on one call with me, just go to my website. There's buttons all over the places. Schedule a call and make it pretty easy. Okay.

Relative to mental health, too.

And mental health too.

Don't forget to take some time in your day. If you look over my shoulder, there's guitar. Look, man, that's my. That's my little glimpse of abandoning the world for 30 minutes a day and just playing guitar. Taking some lessons online.

And I got these new things I love. It's silent mode. Have you seen these things? No, It's a blackout. It's a blackout meditation thing. And it has a breathing app and a meditation app. I've been using that, man. I love it. Amped up my stuff. So.

Yeah. Very nice.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, look, you get. Take care of yourselves out there too, right? If you don't take care of yourself, then there's no one to take care of everyone else.

So actually, yeah. So, Bo, I want to say thanks again. Thanks for joining me on short notice today. I mean, I literally sent you a message like, two hours ago, and you said you were driving. I'm like, hey, what time you home? And let's do this. So thanks. Thanks for being on the live broadcast today. I really appreciate it. If you have any questions, we will be monitoring the feed on the restaurant Coach Facebook page. Please, if you have any questions, reach out to us. If I don't get to them, Bo will look at them, too. We'll make sure you get some answers. But again, how much you know, you need to stay focused and stay centered and focus on helping each other out. Yeah.

Donald. Hey, thanks for having me, buddy. And more importantly, thanks for hosting this for our community, and good luck with the rest of them. I will keep an eye on the page and I'll answer back as many questions as I can see, too. So the work, we all need to do it together, man. So good job. Thanks, buddy.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Have a fantastic day. Everyone be safe out there. Practice social distancing, and, you know, be positive this thing will end. And when it does, the restaurant industry is going to bounce back strong, so be ready for it. Awesome.