The Loyalty Ladder with Zack Oates- How Digital Marketing Makes Raving Fans

Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. Oh, my God, I'm so happy. I am so happy to be blessed with having Zach Oates from Ovation up back on the podcast. What's up, me? Like, you know, how would you describe Zach? I say, you know, Zach, number one, he's. He's a. He's a good friend. Number two, he's a brilliant businessman. Number three, he is an incredible family man. And that's, you know, it's hard to find someone who can blend everything together. And, you know, Zach, I tell you, man, hats off to you. You do all three perfectly, my friend.

Well, I don't know if my wife or co founder would agree with you, but, you know, I think we're doing it. That's doing it, man.

I'm doing it, baby. I'm doing it.

So, dude, before we jump into things, though, I'd love to ask you a quick question, if that's okay.

Can we flip.

Can we flip the mic around?

Yeah, we can flip it around.

So. So I got a guy. I know a guy. I know a guy. Got a guy, one of my clients.

He's.

He's doing really well. He's got seven restaurants looking for his. Next thing, you know, does he want to sell them? Does he want to hire someone to. To run them for him and just take residuals? He's. Financials are looking really good. Guests are really happy. Is that. Is that the kind of person that you like that Donald Burns can help or.

Yeah, yeah, that's something definitely I help with because I find a lot of restaurateurs, they get. They stagnate because they don't have an exit plan. And the next plan is not necessarily just exiting, leaving the, you know, the business, but, like, what's the next step? What's the next phase of your growth as a restaurateur? It could be he might be bored, and maybe he just needs some new projects. Maybe he wants to maybe sell some equity. I mean, he's doing really well. Maybe he wants to sell some equity to some of his team members, give them an opportunity for ownership, and he can still get, you know, residual income. Maybe he just wants to, like, you know, pick up and start over somewhere else and do something new. But having that solid vision, that's what we call is having a why statement. Like, what's your vision for this thing? Where. What's the next level for him? I'd be. I'd be happy to talk to him and help him figure out what's the next kind of best play for him based on what his goals are and what's his desire. So, okay, yeah.

All right. When I chat with him next, because when he was telling me about this, I was like, I know. I know someone that he should talk to. But then I was like, I. Because I know, you know, I. I've met a lot of the people that you work with. And, and anyway. And I've heard so many awesome things from going to your seminars and talking to people that you've worked with. And so anyway, you were the first person to come to my mind when he was awesome talking about, like, what do I do next? And I was like, I got a coach for you. I got a restaurant coach for you. I got the restaurant coach for you.

That's it. You know, the same thing with you when people say, like, hey, man, I really want to take my digital game up to the next level. Have you talked to Zach at Ovation? No, you gotta talk to Zach because, I mean, if you want to talk about next level, taking your, you know, if you want to start taking your marketing up to the next level and especially want to enhance that guest experience, if, if you want to do anything as, you know, the digital table touch, you know, converting people from third party to first party, getting loyalty programs, just actually getting in touch with people at a better level, Zach is the man at Ovation, dude.

Because, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot about at Ovation, you know, I go around and I. I do a lot of these speeches around the country. In fact, I just did one for a giant client last weekend. I'm flying out this weekend to another big client. And, and what we, what, what I talk about is hospitality. Yeah, right. Because now, yeah, I got my start in the restaurants and, and you know, you got, you. You cut your teeth with Wolf, and, and you've had all these great experiences there. And. But one of the thing is that with me right now, I've worked with over 5,000 restaurants about their guest experience and talking about what are they doing to improve their guest experience and talking about how to measure that. And so I've seen a thing or two when it comes to the guest experience. You want to talk about how to optimize, you know, your P. Ls and get better pricing on potatoes. Like, I'm not your guy. But if you want to talk about how do you create a great guest experience, I've seen millions of points of data on this, and in fact, Ovation, we collect millions of points of data every month about this. Awesome. And we've come down to this, what I call the ladder of loyalty. On the first rung, the bottom rung, to get up to the top of the ladder of loyalty is convenience.

Yes.

You've got to have the expectations of the experience exceed the effort. Right. And the higher the effort to go, the, the better the expectations of the experience should be. And that'll get somebody in a first time. And we're talking about online reviews here. We're talking about word of mouth, we're talking about, Donald, you got to check out this restaurant I went to. It's so amazing. And you're like, zach, it's an hour drive and it's $100 a plate. And I'm like, donald, it could be around the world and $1,000 a plate, it'll still be worth it. Are you going to go if I explain a restaurant like that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Now if I say, if I say, oh, there's a restaurant, it's right around the corner from you. It's not very good, but look, they get, they had like really good dollar tacos.

It's super close. It's like, it's super close.

And it's a dollar tacos. And you're like, okay, like, I'll. Sure, I'll try it. Like, whatever.

I might.

You might, I might. But yeah, maybe, maybe not tacos, but, you know, McDonald's. Look at McDonald's Dollar Soda. Right? The value menu. Why does McDonald's stay in business is because of their, like, you know, because they have the best burgers in the world. No, no. Now I will, I will say though, I will say though, their burgers, their quarter pounder with cheese is not a bad burger. And anyone who says otherwise, I think is just like get into preconceived notion. So anyway, but, but that'll get somebody in the first time, right, Donald? Yes, but then you, you don't want to stay at that bottom rung. There have been millions of restaurants that have died at that bottom rung.

Exactly.

Because that second level, which is really what it comes down to, the reason that you hire really good coaches, the reason that you get bring on trainers, the reason that you want to track what's going on is consistency, Right? So on the bottom level, you have convenience. In the middle, you have consistency. And that'll get somebody in a few times, right?

Definitely.

Let's, let's say that you go to this, you go to a good restaurant, it's, you know, you go the first time you're like, okay, yeah, sure. That was, that was a good experience. My expectations were met. And now you go back a second time and the service is horrible and the, the, the bun is dry and the flavor is missing out on the brie that goes on your burger. Because, by the way, that's exactly what happened to me today for lunch. No way. Yeah. There's a place I've been to one other time before since they got new ownership, and it was like, it was okay, but then this time I was like, all right, let's give it one more shot. And like, everything was bad about it, and so it was inconsistent. I got the same thing both times. It was two very different experiences. So what's the likelihood of me going back?

Pretty slim.

Pretty slim.

Yeah.

But if you can get to that highest level on the ladder of loyalty, then you have got someone who is a raving fan, you've got someone who is a five star review leaving. You know, it's my birthday catering, ordering, when there's a party at the office we need to go to, that is about connection. So it's. You've got your convenience, you've got your consistency, and then you've got your connection. And when you can connect with the guest to help them feel important, that is when they could forgive mistakes, that is when they let you know when something goes wrong, that is when they'll go to leave you five star reviews without you asking. And like, these are the types of things that you need to do. And if you haven't read, you know, setting the Table, or if you haven't read Will Guidera's, you know, Unreasonable Hospitality, there's some great, great insights in there on how do you create that connection. And at the end of the day, it's like, why are we friends, Donald? Like, like, from a personal standpoint, why are we friends? It's. It's because we've met each other.

Yeah. We have got a connection.

We've got a connection. And when I. Every time I see you, I'm happy to see you and you're happy to see me, and every conversation I have with you adds value to my life. And, you know, I enjoy hanging out with you and your people and like. And so if you came to me today and you hopped on this podcast and you said, man, Zach, like, your hair looks ugly today. And I'm gonna be like, okay, but let's look at all the, all the experiences that Donald and I have had, all these thousands of experiences that we've had together. And I'M like, that doesn't true up with everything else. Are you okay, Donald? And you're gonna be like, oh, I'm, I'm sorry, Zach. I'm just, I'm just cranky.

I got a bad haircut last week.

And, and my wife met my girlfriend yesterday.

And like my wife met my girlfriend. Right.

Oh, man, I'm so sorry. And we wouldn't have done the podcast and we would have chatted and like had like a good conversation. Right. It's because that we have that connection, that human connection. And as, as digital as you make the restaurant, you still have to have connection.

You have to, have to. Not a should have, it's a must have.

With every channel too. Right?

Every channel. Exactly. As many channels as you can.

And with Ovation, that's one of the things that we talk about all the time with our guests, with our customers, is that look, your drive thru guest is just as important as your phone in guest is just as important as your online order guest, as your third party guest, as your dine in guest. And yet what happens, Donald, we, we spend 90% of our hospitality training on the dine in guest.

Yes.

And then we say, well, the rest of the rest of them will kind of figure it out. Right?

Okay.

It's like that's, that's 40% of your business that you're saying, oh, their opinions don't matter, like, they don't need.

Like the same thing is like looking at your menu and just say, I'm just going to focus on the entrees. I don't care about the appetizers, desserts, or the beverages.

It makes no sense, no sense at all.

Where the profit margins are really in like the beverages and desserts, you know. Exactly, exactly. And look at like, look at like the dining guests compared to the drive in guest. I mean, I mean the profit margins are so much more because you have less, you don't have as much into them as far as time. You know, the experience is so much escalate as far as convenience, that is so much faster. But, but we tend to, again, we prioritize the wrong things sometimes.

Exactly. Or, or we, we segment the wrong things and we say we look at a digital guest as a digital guest. They're not a digital guest, they're a digital guest. Right. And like they're the same thing as any other kind of guest. And just because you can't see the whites of their eyes when they're taking that first bite doesn't mean they're not taking that first Bite, Right?

That makes such sense. You know, and when people think about that. Yeah, I've seen so many restaurants do that. You know, if you're a dine in, they treat you like, you know, oh my, I'm so happy you're here. But like people call and I've been right there at the restaurant at the host stand and I'm standing there in front of, in a treat like, oh my God, so happy heavy. Or you have a reservation and then the phone will ring. Yeah, can you hold, please? And they like to act like, you know, like they're second class citizens, you know.

Oh my gosh. Let's talk about phones for a second, shall we, Donald?

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it. Okay, so that's one of the things, by the way, for, for listeners who don't know what Ovation does. We, we do guest feedback for restaurants. Right. And we're, we're all about, you know, the, the modern guest has changed. They don't want to tell you face to face what's wrong. They don't want to take your long dumb survey. They, they just want to either have a good experience or like move on to another restaurant if you can't provide them a good experience. But we found that if you get them to answer two question survey, and we found 67% more likely to answer a two question survey than just if you ask them to answer a survey, like take a survey versus take a two question survey, 67% more likely. So if you want to get a lot more feedback, make your survey two questions. And so that's, that's the whole premise that we started with.

Yep.

And then if they love it, which 70 on average, 70 to 75% of guests who take the Ovation survey have a great experience, we push them to leave five star reviews, we push them to catering orders, we push them to join your loyalty platform, things that are going to drive revenue for you. And if they don't love it, we ask them why. And then we have a powerful AI powered app where in two clicks you can respond to that guest with the perfect guest resolution, guest recovery, you know, template and addressing their exact concerns and make sure that they're coming back. Now in this whole process of doing this, thousands of restaurants we work with, millions of people have taken the Ovation survey. We realized that there's a big gap in phones. For example, we were working with this large, large chain and started doing an audit on their phones because they got a couple of negative reviews about, not about phones. Not working. You know, they. They have it. They paid. They paid for these great tools like marquee, to put their phone number all over, everywhere, everywhere. And then when people would call, you know what they found out? They found out that in over 30% of their stores, the employees had unplugged the phone. Oh, my God. You talk about a real middle finger to the guest.

That's a real.

Imagine. Imagine someone coming to the door, going to open your front door. Door's locked, and the door's locked, and your employee is standing inside looking at you being like, sorry. It's like, wait, what? But that's what's happening on the phones. Over. Over 30% of their phones were unplugged. And. And data shows that over 30% of restaurant phone calls go unanswered. Donald, why are people calling restaurants? This is. This is a.

They want to do business with you. Yeah.

Wait a second. You mean that someone is calling because they want to spend their money?

They want to spend money with you.

Man, 30% of the time, no one answers the call.

No one wants money.

No one wants the money. Right. And so what do they do? They call someplace else, and they spend their money elsewhere, and they have a good experience. And so what's the likelihood of them coming back to you versus them?

None.

And. And, you know, there's only one thing worse, Donald, than a phone call that goes unanswered, a phone call that gets answered. And I'll tell you.

I'll tell you rudely, or get to.

Answer it at all. Because what happens? I. I go up to the front of Donald Burns Burgers, and Donald Burns is up at the. Working the register, and I just waited in this line, and I get up to the front, and I'm like, can I get. Sorry, hold. Yeah. Hey, what can I get for you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Huh. And now I'm sitting there feeling like a schmuck, being like, hey, hello. I'm like, right here.

Right?

And so that's why we created Ovation Call to Text. And what Ovation Call to Text does is when you call a restaurant, you're presented with a. With a series of options. Hey, press one for this, press two for this, press three for this. And if I press one for hours of operation, guess what happens? I get a text message with the information. Why? Because do I need to, like, sit there with a pen and paper and write down your hours of operation? No. Now I have a text message, and guess what? I could even respond to you on that text message. Are you guys open Next week for the holiday. Right. I could press 2 to get a link to place an order. I could press 3 with a link to give feedback about my order. I could press 4 if I have a question about my order. And every single one of those options is going to push me a text message. And so I could engage in this one to one dialogue, leveraging the Ovation backend system, which is a many to one conversation. So if Donald's available, Donald can answer Zach. If Tim's available, Tim could answer. If Jamie's available, Jamie Cancer. But to Zach, it's just a simple text conversation. And now you can still have an option number, 5, 6, 7, whatever, as talk to someone. But the benefit is, is that you're reducing the number of people that are calling your store by getting their, getting their questions solved quickly, getting them a channel they can talk in real time. And you can either choose to, like I said, have this be the first filter before they get to someone. And so that way you tell your staff, plug the phones back in because we're going to reduce the call volume by 60 to 70% and the people that are calling actually need to talk to you. Or you can do what, you know, another client that we have ripped the phones all out of the store, stopped paying a phone bill and now everything is done through text.

Everything.

And how beautiful is that? Because, you know, they're getting these, these responses out because, you know, you need one person to respond to all of, you know, they have 32 stores and they have one person responding to all of their phone calls, all of their feedback and it takes a few minutes a day. And so that's the beauty is that phones are such a powerful way to connect. And everything communicates Donald. And what does it communicate to me when I call Donald's Burgers and he doesn't answer? What does it communicate to me when I wait in line for Donald's Burgers and he makes me hold so that he can answer a phone call? Like, you're darned if you do and you're darned if you don't. When you have a system like Ovation, it simplifies the whole process and makes it a better experience for dine in and, and for phone in guests.

I think that's the key right? There is. And, and you know, I talk a lot about with my clients is that you want to do things that reduce friction. Yes, you got to reduce the friction. The, you know, multiple. Like, I mean, I hate it when people go, I go to like their website and there's like, you know, I got to click through five different pages to find the freaking menu. You know, I mean, I reduce friction. Make it easy for me to do business with you.

And let me ask you to follow up question. Why. Why do you tell people to reduce that friction?

Because we're impatient. We don't have the patience. Human beings just don't have patience anyway. We just like totally lost it.

Right? And because we live in a world of immediacy and optionality, immediate. And when you.

Yeah, that's the two right there.

When you combine immediacy and optionality, you. That means I'm impatient because I don't have to be patient.

Exactly. Because I got options.

I got options. And I got options really quickly. I no longer have to drive to the next town over to try, you know, Jim's Burgers. I. All I have to do is make one little swipe and I'm ordering from Jim's Burgers. Right? And so the restaurant consumer is the most fickle consumer, the most, the, the most promiscuous consumer that there is in the market.

That's true.

And we need to be okay with that. And, but the way that you combat promiscuity is with connection, you know, and while, while they may go off and do other things, I think at the end of the day, at the end of the day, what we need to be is we need to be connected and we need to, like, here's the secret ingredient. You want, you want to hear the one word? The one word that will change your restaurant, will change your life, and shoot, man, this will even change the world. You ready for the one word?

I got a pen. I'm ready to write it down. I always say hashtag, hashtag, write this down.

Hashtag. Right? This is a, this is a four letter word.

Care.

You have to care. You have to care about your employees. Your employees have to care about the guests. And the guests have to know that they are cared about. And if you can, if you can. I love. How will Gudera put it in. In unreasonable hospitality is like, make it cool to care, right? Yeah. When, when you do that, when you have that kind of culture in your restaurant that people are looking for ways to care and to make someone's day special. Like, that's magic.

That is magic.

Can I tell you one quick story? I know I've been talking so much here, but like, this is, this is like, you know what I think about every morning as I blow dry my hair, right? It's just like, how do we.

And Hey, I want to. I want to sidetrack here real quick. You said earlier, like, if Donald should have had bad hair. Zach, I admire. I wish I had your hair.

Okay, Donald, you have great hair. I wish I had your teeth. I wish. I wish I looked five years older than you right now. I don't even look close to that man. You look. You're looking good.

So I feel good.

You should. I mean, so. So I was talking with this. With. With one of our customers, and she's 82 years old, okay? And she's got this restaurant. It's a. It's a fast casual restaurant, but they do quite a bit of dine in. And what she does is she bakes lemon cookies. So she's got, like, this, you know, her famous grandma lemon cookie recipe that she's perfected through the years. So she makes these lemon cookies, and whenever she sees a kid, she goes up to that kid and says, what's your name? And they say, oh, my name's Donald. Your name's Donald? No way. Because, you know, the Cookie monster came last night and ate every single cookie except for one. And they wrote your name on it. They wrote Donald on the box. And. But. But I know. I know that you don't like cookies, right? Oh, no, I like cookies. And would your mom. Would your dad let you have a cookie? Mom and dad? Yeah. Yeah. Let me go in the back and get this box. And she gets a little box and she puts the cookie in it, and she writes Donald on it, and she brings it out for them, and they see, this is for you. Now, look, I. That whole engagement takes about maybe a minute of her time.

Nothing. Yeah, it's nothing.

What? And it's 25, you know, 35, 40 cents for the cookie in the box, whatever the case is, right?

Yeah.

Not very much. What does that do? Holy cow.

Huge, huge connection and can. And caring.

Right? And. And so many people, I think, miss out on the fact that it's not about spending a lot of money. No, it's about caring. It's about cutting up that New York City street hot dog into four and getting it plated and bringing it to those people. And as. As Will talked about, like, nothing. Nothing he. He did could have been more impressive to that group of. Of four diners than bringing in a New York City hot dog just because he had overheard them saying, we've tried all the best food, but we haven't tried a hot dog. And like, those are the types of things that matter so much. And when you could empower your employees to do that and to say, hey, look, if you see. If you see a kid, go up and make a connection with them, you know, go. When you say, how was everything? Can. Can McGarrick. Oh, gosh, let me. Hold on. I know, Ken. Hold on, hold on. Oh, yeah, Ken McGarry. That's right. So Ken McGarry talks about the hot. The. The. The table touch. And, like, if you go up and you see that, like, something. And I've heard you talk about this as well, Don. Like, if you see that they're kind of. That they, oh, yeah, everything was great. And, like, their food isn't there. Like, train your staff. If it's their first time in and they don't order the best thing on the menu, bring it to them. If they say, oh, I wish I could choose between this app and this app, but I'll get this app, bring them a half portion of the other app. These things don't cost a ton of money, but when you can empower your people and make them, you know, care machines, like, that's. That's what. That's when you have a generational business. That's when whatever your exit plan is, you know that. That's when you have. Create something that can create that. That magic that is so hard to find.

And then you want to talk about empowering your people. And you said doing something that shows that you care. I always tell all my clients, two most powerful words in the English language are thank you, but, Donald, use it. We don't use it enough with our team.

But Donald, that is. Those two words are so expensive. I can't afford that. I can't afford to say, you should.

Be giving them out like lollipops at the bank, baby. I'm telling you.

But it's too much money to say, it's free, man.

You should be giving that out all the time, man. So should be making it. You should be making it rain thank yous all day.

Can I tell you something that we do at Ovation? So I. Obviously, every company is, like, is built on people. Like, people are what make the company foundation of the company. It's like everything's about people. And if people do a good job, you know, then customers are happy. If people do a bad job, customers are frustrated because at the end of the day, the product is amazing. It's just about, like, the people. So one of the things that we do at Ovation to express appreciation is we want to make sure. Yes, there's the employee of the month thing. Right. And at Ovation, we call it the standing ovation. And once a month, I give someone the standing ovation. And sometimes if there's a bunch of people who did, like, a lot of good things, I'll call it the CEO and they'll get like, you know, something for that too. But here's one. Here's the, here's the twist on things, Donald. Every single employee at Ovation gets a bonus every month, and it's called an ovation. Everybody gets innovation, but they have to give it to someone. And so, and then in our all hands meeting once a month, I read out, you know, I take the last 15 minutes and I read out who gave whom their ovation and why. And it's the nice thing is that it's tied to the ovation values. So we have five ovation values. And so you have to select which ovation value that person exhibited and what specifically happened in that last month that they get that ovation for. And so think about that. Every single month, you get a way to thank someone at ovation and you have to pause and you have to genuinely express gratitude. And, you know, we're not talking about $1,000, we're talking about 20. Right, right. Because it's not about the dollar amount. It's about, it's about the message of we care about you and we want you to care about each other. And so let's all express gratitude. And it's a great way for me to hear what's happening and to catch people doing good because it's sometimes hard. I take, you know, 30 to 40 trips a year speaking around the country. I'm not in the day to day. We have 60% of our team is remote. I don't hear about what all the private conversations are, but when someone says, hey, thank you, Randy, you really helped out with this onboarding call. And I really appreciate that. Right. Like, it creates that moment of celebration I think is so important and a way to foster that culture of caring. And I mean, look, steal that idea for your restaurant, like, do that with your employees. It's so powerful to, to make people feel good.

That's. Yeah, that's one thing I think all restaurants need to work better on. How many times have you heard someone always say, and you know, it's a common. I always say it's a common catchphrase. You know, people are most valuable asset. How many people really back it up?

Yeah, it, it's like, if. So there was this, there's. There's this question. I don't remember the origin of this question, but somebody once said, if I. If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough proof in your life to convict you of being a Christian? Right. So let's flip it around.

Yeah.

Would there be enough proof somebody coming in, an alien comes in and looks at your restaurant, Would they be able to say, here's the proof that they actually care about their people? And. And what is the evidence? Show me the evidence that you care about your people. Do you call them when they get sick to. Or text them to be like, hey, do you need anything from us?

Yeah.

Like, do you have a plan where they can take vacation? Do you have a plan where they can take care of their family? Are you paying them a livable wage? Or do they have to go and have two other jobs? Like, what are the things that prove that you care about people? Because talk is cheap, right? People aren't.

Yes. Super cheap. Yeah. Super, super cheap. Super, super cheap. Yeah. So one of the things I. I want to talk about on the. On the podcast today, too, is like, so every October, I do this restaurant success summit. And Zach has been so great to come down. He's. He's always one of the speakers at my restaurant success summit this year. The restaurant success summit is going to be in. I mean, we. We moved to Tucson, Arizona, this year.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. We're going back. We're actually going back to where I've had my very first wrestling success summit is at a resort called Hacienda del Sol. Beautiful resort up in the Tucson foothills. It's going to be amazing. We've got 10 speakers this year. It's bigger than ever. It's gonna be 20 sessions over three days. It's October 21st. 21st, 22nd, 23rd.

And I am stoked to go.

Wait, actually, no, it's October. No, it's actually October 23rd, 24th, 25th.

Right? Yeah, yeah, I've got it. I've got it from. I'm going to show up on the 22nd, and I think I'm leaving on the 25th.

That's it. That's it. Yeah. October 23rd, 24th, 25th in Tucson, Arizona. You can head over to restaurantsuccesssummit.com right now. We actually have early bird ticket pricing available. The pricing will go up. And this thing does always sell out, by the way.

And it is. It is so awesome. I mean, as someone who I've been able to, you know, I mean, this is going to be, what, third, fourth year or something like that.

The fourth year. I think you've been there for me. Yeah.

And it has been such a great experience. Not just, you know, because I get a chance to sit in a lot of the education seminars. They are powerful and I've made some great connections and friends from the other speakers. Because you bring in some really cool people. Like, I am the most JV person you bring in. Everyone there is like first string, all pro and, and not just like the cool thing about it is this summit is something where you are able to help them think through not just very practical things of go home and do this tomorrow, but also different ways to think. And when you combine that a new way to think with a new thing to do and you can implement that in your restaurant and you could implement that in your life, like it, it has transformational powers to, to really have both ends of that. And I think that that is, that's something I just have appreciated about, about your seminars and your summits is that they do a really good job of blending that strategy and that tactical and you know, come, come with the pen and come with a paper ready to get a hole burned in it.

I usually give a, usually give a, I give like an 80 page workbook that usually goes out with it. Yeah, it's huge.

And, and it's so, and it's not like, yes, it could be. There's, there's a lot of things that you can do there, but at the end of the day what you need to do is pick out, okay, here's the 10 things I'm going to do. And, and I think that like having that star page of like, here are my rock star ideas that I'm going to implement as soon as I get back. And here are the things that I need to strategize on and think differently about. And if you can, if you can have that page and create that like line in the middle and you have 10 things to do and five things to think about. Like this is going to be worth so much more than you're going to pay for the attendance and it's beautiful and you get to meet other restaurateurs and it's not like some frou frou thing like Donald's the real deal. And thank you.

Thank you.

Genuinely mean that.

Oh, thank you. You know, and this, I love doing a summit every year just because the summit not only is, you know, a great way for me to, you know, and I usually do it, I do it mostly for my members of my, my coaching groups. But the number one thing too is like, how many times have you and I been to these like conferences and it's a really great speaker and you get tons of ideas, but then you go back to your restaurant and you can't really implement. You don't really like, know what the next step is. The one beautiful thing I always say about the restaurant success summit is it's not just a conference. You actually get coaching after you come to the conference, you get with me, you get, you get access to my restaurant mastermind group for coaching for 30 days after the conference. So we actually get you momentum going in the right direction because you and I have always been, you know, we, we travel a lot and we speak at these conferences. We see all these things and man, I see all these people get all fired up and then I know they're going to go home and then they're not going to do nothing with it, you know.

Oh yeah. And I mean, think about these conferences that we've been to where, you know, I've seen you speak, you've seen me speak, rooms of hundreds of people. And then what happens? It's like, it's so hard to figure out. The cool thing about this summit is like, well, guess what, I'm going to be at dinner and if you want to ask a question around, like, hey, this is what's happening in my restaurant, Great, let's talk about it, right? And even during the session, I like to leave quite a bit of time for questions because people will say, here's my restaurant, here's the problem I'm going through. What do you think? And we can, we can workshop it live. And I think that's part of the benefit is like in a room of 300, you know, people can raise their hand and ask a question, but you know, you're getting a, you're getting a 10 second question, you're getting the 30 second answer and it's as generic as possible. And I think that's one of the powers about this summit is it's not a conference, it's a summit.

It's a summit. It's 50 people. It's maxed at 50. I don't, I only keep it at 50 people because I want, again like you mentioned, I want people to have that interaction. Like at lunchtime there'll be lots of tables. We have a lunch set up in the room and then there's different tables. And I always tell the speaker, spread out, grab a table. And then I tell the people, come into the conference, go find the speaker you want to talk to about something and just pick their brain. They're more than happy. Everyone I have as a speaker is more than happy to sit down and have conversations with you one on one, either during lunch or even after the summit. We go from nine to five every day. But they're more than happy to sit down with you and just like, hey, because, you know, a lot of times people are embarrassed to ask questions. Nobody wants to like, look like an idiot in front of other people and they, they might think their question's not really relevant or they don't want to look embarrassed, but man, they love coming up. And I know Zach is like, like every time we have a summit, after the summit, after we get, get down to five, Zach is like always there, like just talking. Like he's got people like bending his ear asking him questions.

And, and it's great.

It's like, see, you know, look, I.

Mean, the reason that I'm, I'm here as opposed to working somewhere else is because like I, one of my passions in life is building value. And if there's something I've learned working with these thousands of restaurants that can help out, then great, let's, let's do it. Like, what's the point of me doing, I mean, you know, like you, I do a podcast. I'm at like episode 250. You've been a guest on it at least two times.

Oh yeah, I love your podcast.

And, and, but like, what's the point of me doing all this if I can't share what I'm learning? And there's, and there's so much that I'm learning from both meeting with experts, working with restaurants, seeing the data in the back end, analyzing the online reviews. There's a lot that we can see and the, and the more that you see, even though, like I said, I am very, very deep in restaurant guest experience and, but across so many different restaurants. Right. So that's the cool thing about it is I get to learn from other people who are really deep in their expertise across a lot of restaurants and something else. And so it's fun for me to learn and see how everything gets connected.

That's the beautiful thing too about like, the coaching I do is that I work with, I mean, every kind of restaurant you can think of. You know, from food trucks, food halls, bakeries, cafes, coffee shops, full service restaurants, restaurant chains, restaurant groups. It's amazing. And you realize there's common threads and you probably see the same thing. There's common threads of commonality about problems they all have that they all share, but they all think that their problems are unique.

Yeah.

Yeah. You wouldn't understand my problem, Zach. You wouldn't understand my problems.

Yeah. And it's like, okay, I. I've heard the same thing from 5,000 other people. And, And. And let me tell you how 2000 of them have solved your problem.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly the same thing. It's like what I always say. All business problems are people problems.

Yep. I think it's so, so true. Right. And I think that if you could have the right people and the right processes, it's like you are on track for greatness.

Exactly. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, personalization, and we talk about this. You know, we talked about personalization is a huge thing. Share some, like, innovative strategies that you guys have started doing to personalize marketing efforts with Ovation. And I know you just mentioned, like, the call to text thing is a huge thing. I think that's a game changer, because I'll tell you right now, when my phone rings, if I. I don't know the number, I don't answer it, but I'll definitely respond and look at a text message right away.

Exactly. Right. And then. And then it's like, even better than web chat, because when. When you go on a web chat and you. You're chatting with someone there, it's like, okay, well, what if you have to leave your computer? What if you close down the browser on your phone?

Like, you start over.

When it's a text, it's forever.

It's there.

98% of text messages are read, 95% are read within three minutes. Like, text messages get read. They get seen. Especially now you. You have Apple watches, and Apple Watch, you can't not do.

Right there.

Exactly. And I think that's so. That's so important. I think when you. When you talk about the personalization of it and you talk about the personalization of marketing.

Yes.

One of the things that we found is so. So a lot of times people come up to us and we'll be like, hey, we. We love the concept of Ovation, but you just. My restaurant's unique. I have. I have specific questions that I need to ask. And I'll say, okay, like, what do you need to know? Like, well, I need to know about order accuracy. Okay, well, there's two ways you could find out about order accuracy. You can ask a couple of people if their orders were accurate, and maybe you hit them, maybe you don't, and maybe those are the people that are going to answer, maybe they won't. Or you could ask a thousand people how was your experience? And listen for the people who are complaining about order accuracy. And so our system does that. We break down all this open ended feedback into 34 different categories so you know exactly what you need to fix where. Now if they may have some additional questions. For example, how did you hear about us? Right. If I want to test out my marketing, did you try our, you know, Cornish hen? Did you, you know, are you from out of town? Would you like to be notified about new menu items? All of these types of questions are phenomenal questions that will never come up in an open ended forum. And I totally get that. So what we did is we have something called custom questions and anywhere from five minutes to a couple days and we recommend it being no more than 24 hours, but less than a couple hours or no more than a couple hours, less than 24 hours. You send a text message, hey Donald, thanks for coming in today. Thanks for coming in yesterday. Could you answer five additional questions about your experience? And conventional wisdom is going to say, Zach, no one's going to answer those questions but because we already proven to them that, that the first survey was so short, it was a two question survey. The second time, people are so much more likely to do it. In fact, we found that we're able to get anywhere between four to six times more people to complete a long survey by doing it our way than by starting with a long survey.

Yep, yep.

So by doing that you're able to get this really great data and then you could start to create these buckets of people where I know that Donald is a local, I know that he heard about us through TikTok and I know that he's interested in hearing about new menu items. And so I go and I could create a Ovation also has a text marketing platform to it because now that we're collecting all of this data, let's segment it and use it. So I know that if I that Donald's interested in new menu items and if I want to create a new menu item, I could send Donald and see how it's going to do and get feedback on it. I could send Donald a text message being like, hey, this Thursday we have this new menu Item here is $7 off your order if you come in and order it. Because I would love for you to try it. Donald, you said that you would like to be notified of new menu items. And so now I'm segmenting out my text database to make sure that Donald is getting the text message that's pertinent to him, that's interesting to him, that that's helpful for me, that's driving revenue, that's driving connection. That's helping Donald feel like he's known, heard, and cared about. And that's the beauty of the marketing personalization, is it drives that at the end of the day connection. And with custom questions that we have, you're able to learn more about Donald, to send Donald the right message at the right time. And those are some things that we found to be extremely successful. And we found people are getting. Now this sounds a little bit crazy, but they're getting double digit percentage redemption rates.

Wow, that's awesome.

On text marketing campaigns. Now imagine if you had a magic button, Donald, that you can click a button and increase your spend by $3,000 on a Friday. Yeah, that'd be helpful.

That'd be really helpful.

And what if that cost you $50 to send that out? Like, would that be worth it to you?

I'm in. I mean, I'm in all day on that. That deal.

And that's the beauty of text marketing, especially when you can personalize it, is you could drive the right people in with the right message at the right time, and it works. And that's another thing that we talk about at your summit, is I give, like, here's some strategies on text marketing, but then here's a specific text message that you can send and I'll show.

You give them the exact script they need. Right, right.

Because guess what?

It's been proven to work with thousands and thousands of restaurants.

It worked in California, it worked in New York, it worked in Texas. I promise you it'll work in Sheboygan. Like, it will work.

You've been to Sheboygan.

I haven't, but I've seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Isn't that where they have like the Sheboygan Marching Band? Is that it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And.

And anyway, and I love John Candy and I, I always use Sheboygan as like my, my random city is. Is that. Was that right? Sheboygan was in Wisconsin for the plane. Trains and Automobiles or my rival.

I think it's Sheboygan.

Yeah, yeah, it is Sheboygan. Yeah. The poker Sheboygan. Oh, no. Home alone. That's what that. Right.

Home was in Sheboygan.

No. What. Where was it in the airport that they were like. It did like the Sheboygan Marching Band or something like poker. It was some movie with John Candy and it was great.

It Sounds like a good place to go. But you know what, you're so right about making things simple. I think we tend to, as restaurant owners too. We tend to try to, we tend to make complexity the thing that we look for where. And there's a great quote out there. I think it says like something that complexity is the enemy of greatness. Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you right now, you, you actually got me on that path last year when you talked about this two question thing at the summit last year. For a long time I have like an application on my website. People can go and apply to talk to me. It was 15 questions and I was like, man, like, no one's applying, you know, or, you know, the stop rate. They start the questionnaire and then they stop. I file a lot of drop offs. So I'm working it down. I'm down to five questions now. And now my, you know, of course the completion rate is so much higher. I'm getting a lot more people talking to me about coaching and stuff like that was great. I gotta narrow it down even tighter. I gotta get down to the two questions. I gotta get down to two questions.

It's. Well, in that case it could be so. Okay, I'll tell you a secret.

All right, tell me a secret.

So the Ovation survey is two questions, but when you actually take it, there's a couple more questions that aren't actually questions.

Ah, that's the trick.

So we say enter your phone number. Not it's not a question we're telling.

Them to, but you're getting data.

We just say phone number and then they type in their phone number. And now until they complete that phone number phase, they don't know that there's two more fields, one being name and one being email. But those fields don't pop up until they type in the phone number. And what we found is that. So the first, the first screen is how was your experience? And it's a one to five question. And so you click it and the second screen pops up. If they loved it, we ask them why. If they didn't love it, you know, if they didn't love it, we ask them why. If they loved it, then we ask them to go and do things that are going to drive revenue for you. But it's that second screen is that second question. And then the third screen just says phone. You know, what's the best way to reach out to you? Phone number. And that's all it is, just one field and says phone number. And the second they Type out, you know, fill the last number in of their phone number.

Boom.

The second two fields pop up. They're already committed. They're already committed. And people who type in their phone number will type in their name. But if I show them name, email, phone number, they're a lot less likely to do it. So we just show them the one thing, and then the other fields pop up after they type that in, and then they can click send to management or submit. So. So it's more. So there's two questions of how did we do and why, basically. But then the contact data is separate from the questions, and we don't ask the questions. We just say, phone number, email, name.

Nice.

I mean, like I said, we do. We have tested and iterated and tweaked.

Oh, that's what you guys do. You got guys, programmers who, like, analyze all this stuff and realize. And they run the numbers. And then.

And we run constantly. We're running experiments and we're. We're tweaking, we're improving, and things change. And what's the right verbiage and what's the right design? And to your point of, like, complexity and simplicity, the thing I tell people is, like, try it the way that it works. Try it the way that it's been proved. Because everyone tells me, oh, in my restaurant, I don't want to do this, or I don't want to do that. And I always say, Mr. Mrs. Restaurant Owner, do you trust me? And they'll say, I don't know. And I'll say, let me earn your trust. Try it my way. And if. And if it's not working, then we'll try it your way. And after we try your way, you'll realize that it's really about trying it my way. Like, the right way.

Exact same thing. I have a. I have a framework. I teach all my clients. It's called the 3P framework. It is the guiding principle of all my coaching programs. It's people, product, process. And I tell them all the same. I will say, I will show you the model. I will show you all the different things that go in the model. And I'll tell you right now, you will try to change the model around. It is always people, product, process, always in that order. And I say, you will try to change it around. And then when you realize it doesn't work, you're going to come back and say, all right, Donald, we'll do it your way. And when you do it my way, it works.

It's like, you know, it's so funny. I love when I talk to a client and they're like, you know, ovation just isn't working for me. Okay, tell me about that. Ovation isn't working for you. Like, well, all right. How did you set up your integration? Well, I don't want to text my guests after the order. Okay, well, like, how are they getting the QR code? Are you using our flyer? Well, I got your flyer, but I didn't like the layout of it, so I created this full page flyer on which there's six different QR codes that they can scan for an event or for this or for email, or for that or for Ovation. And look, no one's doing it, so it's just not working. I'm like, too much.

Too complex.

Yeah, it's too complex. Just like, just try it our way. I promise you, it's. I have yet to come across a restaurant who has guests where Ovation doesn't work. Right.

When people do that, when they don't give people too many options, it'd be like going on a date, first date, and ask him, oh, my God, I want to marry you, and I want to have four kids and I want to move to. You know, it'd be like, it's too much. It's too much.

Whoa, slow down there.

Slow down there, man. I don't even know if I like you yet.

Ask me how I'm doing. Like, you know what?

Hey, start with my name. Yeah, Remember it? What's my name?

And I think. And that's. That's what it comes out with, with the simplicity, the complexity. And especially if you've got. If you're in like a franchise location, trust the franchise process. Right. They've built so many, you know, a lot of these, A lot of these brands, I see it over and over and over again, is you look at the lowest performing stores and franchise groups, and they're the ones always trying to do their own thing exactly the way they are. They're the ones saving a nickel to go down and buy chicken at Restaurant Depot. They're the ones. And I'm like, you know, take that three hours and put it into marketing. Take that time and go and do some catering drops and drop off samples at the offices nearby. You don't try to save a nickel. You know, like, just follow the process and then things work out. You have such. You have a much higher likelihood of success when you follow the process as opposed to trying to reinvent the wheel every single time. Because the wheel will works.

Yeah, it's funny. I have a poster. I give to clients. I have a poster and they put on their walls and it says, if at first you don't succeed, try going back and doing it the way your coach told you. And I give it to him.

I should get one of those, except with my wife on it. Go back and do it the way that your wife told you.

Do what your wife told you. Right? Yeah.

That's awesome.

Beautiful thing. Yeah. You just. It automatically meant I'm wrong. What did I do? Just what I do. What. What I have to do to make amends. That's all I have to do. Talk to my girlfriend. All right. What did I do? All right, I know I'm wrong. So just tell me what I need to do to make. That's awesome. So at the restaurant success summit, you're, you know, normally I always, just so you know, if you've never seen Zach speak in person, he is probably one of the most dynamic speakers I've ever seen. He has a really amazing speaking style. He really gets the. He really gets everyone engaged. So I always have him as my closer. He usually closes on my Tuesday session, and he always closes the. The Wednesday session. So he's always my closer. Because I want to leave people on a high note and I want people, like, really, like, really. Oh, my God.

Because you know that I need time to write what I'm going to say that day.

But so, like, give people a sneak peek or just kind of a, you know, a little tease about what you're gonna be speaking at the restaurant success. Some of this this year.

Oh, the three cons. We dive into the three cons this year.

Oh, do we really?

Yeah, we'll. We'll dive into the three cons and the. That ladder of loyalty. And then day two, I'll give some really, really practical advice on marketing and personalization and so come join us. Come hang out with us in Tucson.

Be awesome. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Yeah. Dot com. You can get early bird tickets right now. Early bird tickets, they're just. Honestly, they'll go up in price probably in the next two weeks. So it, it slowly starts creeping up because I know it's going to sell out. So it slowly starts creeping out and everyone is like, oh, you still have that price of this at the early bird deal. That was like, two weeks ago. You should have jumped on that.

Yeah. Get it now and tell it now.

Get it now. And if you ever want to speak to Zach or anybody on this team, just go to ovationup.com. zach has a great podcast, the Ovation of Podcast. I highly recommend it. He's is a. I mean, I can't say enough great things about Zach and about Ovation. They are definitely one of the. I mean, I don't recommend a lot of companies, but Ovation up is one of the companies I recommend, hands down. If you definitely want to get your marketing to the level it needs to be and you're not really sure how to get there, just reach out to his team. They'll give you a demo. I mean, I always say conversations free. I mean, these guys will more than happy to talk to you and to see if they can help you, and they'll tell you honestly if they can help you or not.

Yep.

You know, but I'm pretty sure they can. I'm pretty sure they can. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah, come, come check us out.

We'd love.

We'd love to chat with you. Ovationup.com we've got, you know, lots of people on the team who could. Who can walk you through what we're doing, and then I'd love to meet you in person at. At the restaurant success summit we'd love to have.

Yeah, come on down, hang out with Zach and I. We got some really great speakers, of course, coming this year. Back again, Beau Bryant. BO is amazing, amazing speaker. I got some new speakers this year. I got Ramon Dios from Madrid's coming over. He's one of my good friends. I speak with him every year at Hospitality Innovation Planet. He's coming over this year. He's going to be able to talk about some leadership and some systems and stuff like that. He's also going to be available because, you know, he's also very fluent in Spanish to talk to people in Spanish, because I have a lot of clients. You know, my new book, my first book came out in Spanish.

Okay. Bueno.

I got a lot of people now, you know, you know, hitting me up about Spanish speaking stuff and Spanish coaches. Ramon's kind of like my guy who I recommend to talk to. And then we've got, of course, Adam Lamb. He's a kind of a culinary coach. He does, uh, I think Chef Life Radio. He does a podcast, too. He's coming this year. Kyle and Cerna. You know Kyle.

I love Kyle.

Kyle's awesome. Sean Walshef. Come on.

Is he coming?

John's coming. Sean Walsh.

Sean's my boy.

Sean from Cali Media Barbecue. The man.

We were just like, emailing, and we email our text probably like almost every week. Every other week.

Yeah. I got Sean.

He's just so cool.

I got Kyle coming. I got Craig Shelton. He's a James Beard award winning chef. New York Times, you know, five star chef, too. He's coming too. Who else we got? Oh, we got Juliet Gust. She's a great. She's a kind of. She's really big about HR stuff, about, about compliance regulations. She's a really, really solid speaker, too. She spoke with me on the stage in Madrid. It's just gonna, it's gonna be a real powerhouse of people this year. Of course we got Zach coming. I'll be there.

Boom, boom, boom. I'm stoked.

If you head over to restaurantsuccesssummit.com you can see the whole list of speakers on there. I did update your profile picture. I got your new one on there. So. Yeah, I got a nice one on here for you. Yeah, Zach might show up with the beard, maybe not with it. We don't know. You never know with Zach. He might.

People tell me one guy came up to me one day, he's like, you're like a Mr. Potato Head. It's like, is that because I'm fat and tan? And I was like. He was like, no, because every time I see you, your hair is different. You got a beard, you got a mustache, you got no facial hair. You get, you know, I just, I, I get, I get very antsy with, with, with no change. I like change. You know, I mean, like, change is good.

Change is good. I love change. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Zach, I want to say thanks again for being on the show today. I really appreciate my friend. Again, if you need to reach out to Zach, just go to Ovation up here. More than happy to reach out to you. If you ever need to reach a hold of. Get a hold of me, you can always find me either at my website. You know, you can go to the Restaurant Coach.com. you can always email me Donald the Restaurant Coach. Again, I love hearing from people. And if I can help you in any way, I also have a brand new program out there I want to mention real quick. It's called the TRC Vault. It's a new online community. You can sign up for free.

Free.

It's called Just Go to the Restaurant Coach Vault. I do live trainings on the vault. I also have an experts corner where people can ask experts questions. Zach, you should sign up in there. Oh, yeah, get in the vault and then I'll make you. I'll make you one of the moderators and I'll put you in. I'll put you in the tech I'll put you in the tech channel and you can talk about anything. Tech for people. So go to the restaurantcoach vault.com Sign up if you got questions. I got. You know, a lot of the experts that are coming to the summit are moderators in the vault. We do live trainings. It's again, it's totally free right now. It's I have it in beta mode right now, so it's totally free. Building up this new thing. It's a new online community. But you can reach out to me. I put out tons of content in there. It's a fun way to kind of meet other people from around the world. So the restaurant signed up get awesome. Right. Well, if we can be of any assistance to you. Remember, Zach and I are both. We are servant leaders. We want to help you. So any way we can help you, just reach out to us. Let us know. We're always happy to help.

Amen. Thanks for having me on, Donald.

Thanks, Zach. I appreciate you, my friend.

Appreciate you.