Building a $3,500,000 Business for Two Strangers in 52 Minutes

This is Calvin and Air, a husband and wife duo that run a Thai restaurant that does $3.5 million a year and has lines out the door. But they're opening up their second location next month and they're not ready. If they mess this up, they could lose their savings and the reputation they spent years building. I'm Alex Shamozi. I own acquisition.com a portfolio of companies that generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Earlier in my career, I sold a service business for $46.2 million that helped brick and mortar businesses like theirs scale. So I'm excited to help Calvin and Air open their second location, get one time customers back more frequently. Supercharge the reviews and a whole lot more.

Hi, Alex, how you doing? My name is Calvin and this is my wife Air.

Hi, welcome.

We're the owners of Basil and co Thai cuisine and Diamond Bar 2024. Our revenue was 3.5 million. Gross profit was 670,000. Our net margins was 19% and served over 100,000 guests last year.

First impressions. Restaurants have the highest failure rate of all businesses. So the fact that they're at, you know, 19% margins, I would say that's good. I would love to see if we expand it now. Some people might hear that and be like, I thought the average restaurant margins are smaller. Yeah, they sure are. And that also doesn't mean that we need to be constrained by that. So what is the goal?

So our goal is to open 20 restaurant locations in the next five to 10 years. And we want to bring in over $80 million in revenues.

All right.

And we want to get there by providing nice and comfortable space for friends and family to gather over a delicious meal. Another mission that we have personally is really is to create environments for staff to showcase their talent and also receive competitive pay.

How'd you start the business?

Maybe 15 years ago. And that is when Calvin and I met in a Thai restaurant in Santa Monica. He was a busser and I was a server. So naturally, you know, we talk, right? And then we talk about our big goal. Wanting to become an entrepreneur and own a restaurant in the future. Well, that plan goes so well that I end up marrying him. In 2019, we opened our first restaurant, Bae Su & Co in Diamondbar, California. Within the first three years, we maxed out our capacity. We actually leased the next unit and we able to meet the demands. But we are starting to max out again. So a sneak peek is our Re Thai eatery in Azusa, California coming up.

Soon. Okay, so who do you serve.

So we serve our local communities, businesses and families in Diamondbar. Now, people who walk into the door, we see an age range between 25 to maybe 60. And we're in a very situated mid to high income.

Neighborhood. Awesome. Well, how do you make money? Let's go through the.

Numbers. So our average food item is.

$16.

Okay. Our most expensive one is $68. The Crying Tiger. Average ticket size is 60 to $80. 80 on the weekends. Takeout is 30%, dine in is 70%. And our most popular dishes would be the pad thai, pad siyu and drunken noodles. And we also do beer and wine, but it's only 1% of our.

Sales. Ding a ling a ling here. So right off the bat they have beer and wine. And the fact that they have 1% of sales from arguably the highest margin it sell, there's probably more we can find out and some big opportunities there. How do you get customers? How do they find out about.

You? So we have organic page. It's about 50% of our business. We think 1300 reviews, 4.6 stars. Google is 460 reviews at 4.7 stars. Instagram, Facebook, word of mouth. Our customers like to spread the word of mouth a lot. Paid ads. We do Yelp, $1,200 a month. We do affiliates, foodie collaborations on.

Instagram. But word of mouth is really through our server talking to our customer. And when we are at the restaurant, we talk to our.

Customer. Right. And you'd say about half them come from they saw, hey, I saw your.

Food. Yeah, my mom was here yesterday. She said I need to come try. And they come try. And then they said, I'm gonna go tell my friend to come.

Try. Got.

It. That's why I think word of mouth is a big thing for us as.

Well. I would say almost for food, more than almost any other business, word of mouth is just.

Huge. I really believe that the food sell.

Itself. Yeah, no, that's great. On a long enough time horizon, the product of the business is the only thing that matters. Marketing just pulls up your timeline for it. It gets more people introduced to your product faster. And so marketing can accelerate growth, but it cannot create a good business. And so I think this is one of the big things a lot of marketers don't understand. And this is something that took me years to figure out, which is that being good at marketing sales can absolutely make you money, but it just accelerates how quickly you decline if you don't actually have a good product. But if you take the other natural extreme, which Is that even if you had zero marketing and one person eats, but it's so good they tell five people and then those five people come and it's so good they tell five people. You can quickly get to capacity if the product is good. And that works for services, that works for SaaS or for anything. Okay, so how many customers do you help? What's the sales velocity of the.

Business? Average day we do 340 guests. Two to three on the weekdays and four to 500 on the.

Weekends. Okay, so weekends are significantly bigger. When you said the Average order was $80 on the weekend, $60 during the.

Week.

Yes. Is that off the same menu? Just people are ordering.

More? We only have one.

Menu. Right, Got.

It. I would think that maybe the weekday because a lot business. So like when they come in, they just order one plate of Pad Thai. Right. That's 16. But during the weekend it's more like a family. So it's like a bigger.

Ticket. What's holding you.

Back? So we actually have a few problems that we want to talk about. Like the first one, first is to increase the sales during a non peak hour. During the peak hour we're good. We actually have light out the door. But during a non peak hour, we still find a way to better fill the house. We also want to improve the on the takeout sales and also alcohol sales. Because we are opening our second restaurant. We really want to get Alex help and also guidance because we opened our first restaurant and we kind of like just roll with it. Right. And we're just like, oh, it turned out great, perfect. But now that we're thinking about scaling, we don't want to just roll with it anymore. Right. The stake is higher. We're not open up with a small hole in the wall. We want to make it right at the get go. So having Alex on board or guidance us, that's tremendously helpful. And then also the other reason why this is so important to me, especially with our like second venture is because I just quit my full time job and I am going to be committed and fully focused on this.

Restaurant. So increase alcohol sales, increase takeout sales. Attribution for sure. I think with this business particularly, it'll be more difficult to do attribution than maybe a traditional business. That's okay. I'm not, I'm not as concerned about that. I'll introduce a couple things that I think might be able to help us out. So looking at the problems that they presented, I think number one, we can increase sales during non peak hours by Actually changing pricing during peak hours. Second, how can we increase alcohol sales? Well, that's going to be through recruiting, hiring and training staff, I would say. Takeout sales and attribution I would put as kind of like the third priority for me going into this. What kind of promotional offers do you run to kind of attract.

Customers? We like to give free items instead of giving percentages.

Off. Big fan. So real quick, one of my big beliefs in business in general is not to give discounts. Basically, it's either full price or it's free. I'm a big fan of that, especially for food establishments. Like, you don't want to have people who become like discount seekers. Like, that's not good. Which I do want to be clear, I separate from. You know, if you have a prepayment discount for services or you have some sort of incentive for someone to buy, like on a sales call or within 24 hours. That I see is different than like running a promotion that's like 20% off. Not a huge fan of that. I'd rather give a free item and then have a clear ascension path to how I'm gonna get that person to become a full paying.

Customer. We especially like to do that on the big holidays. Mother's Day, Valentine's Day.

Christmas. So mostly seasonal. Nothing that's standing or rotating. Do you have a process in place right now for basically what recommendations your servers recommend number one and then number two, what things they can add on to their.

Orders? No, we do not have that.

Yet. Okay. There's gonna be a really big opportunity there. Okay. And then in terms of encouraging people to come for that second visit, is there anything that you do special for first time.

Customers? I think we just treat everyone the.

Same. Yeah, no, it's okay. I have ideas. I have.

Ideas. Yeah, no, we don't do anything.

Special. No, you're good. You're totally fine. I know you want to increase your weekday volume, Right? What have you done or tried so.

Far? We're thinking about doing a happy hour on the.

Weekday. Okay. And you haven't done that yet. You just. It's an idea that you.

Have. No, I think currently what we do is for the weekend, like our entree, for example, like the, the stir fry, you have to order rice on the side. But for the weekday, it's actually come as a set. Right. So you order a stir fry, let's say you order hot basil. It already come with the.

Rice. Okay. So it's a surcharge of rice on the.

Weekend. Is that what you're Saying on a normal basis. Yes. Except for lunch. Lunch. We do that.

Together. Okay. So tell me about this new store that you guys are thinking about.

Opening. Okay. Ari's is in Azusa. It's actually a little bit bigger this time. We actually have a bigger bar with bar seats. We wanted to put bar seats in this time to make sure that when the guests are waiting outside, sometimes up to an hour, that we have something to sell at the bar. And also it's a bit bigger, so it's about 100 seater. Going from a 72 seater to 100.

Seater. Yeah, I was curious about that because, you know, one of our big things is nail it and scale it. Right. And so I know that you guys are trying to from obviously trying to hit 80 million. So if you're going to try and do multiple locations, we have to make sure that the model is super.

Dog. Exactly. Yeah. So I feel like on the paper seems like we're doing good. I mean, like, I have no complaint about it, but. But I know in terms like operational, there are lots of things that we can still tweak and do more. And that is why we want to do this between the two concepts as a test drive. And then we'll take the winning model and then we'll just go from.

There. Got it. Well, do you want to improve this location though, the main.

Location? For now? Of course.

Yes. And what's the plan for the grand opening? For the next.

One? Grand opening we actually will not want to do until like six months later. I just want to make sure that we have 100% operating.

Smoothly. You mean you're soft.

Open? We soft open, yes. So we for sure will soft open. Uh, but internal ground opening, we haven't really put any package together. Cause we think it's going to be three to six months down the.

Line. So one of our internal mottos is nail it, then scale it. And the reason for that is that a lot of times small business owners will get really aggressive and really excited and want to expand faster before they've really solidified their core model. Basically, it's like it might take you less time to get your second location, but it'll take you more time to get your 10th location. And so I want to make sure that those fundamental unit economics are right. How much does it cost to open? How quickly can we get to be profitable? How long does it take for that location to pay for itself entirely? What does our grand opening promotion look like? How do we recruit, hire and staff a new place and get the culture to be what it needs to be. And so these are a lot of the questions that happen, especially in a heavy staff business like restaurants, where there's a lot of people that work under one establishment. Okay, well, I have buckets and buckets and buckets of notes. So I have. I have lots of stuff for you guys that I think we'll be able to help with. I'm going to focus primarily on this location, and then I'll talk kind of at the end about kind of what we can do to hopefully set up the second location to succeed. Cool. All right.

Awesome. And we also bring a special gift for you.

Alex. But wait, there's.

More. Yeah, yeah. Before we get into business, we gotta feed ourselves first.

Right? It's customer. Yeah. I rushed into the.

Business. We spent lots of time thinking about what we're going to serve Alex, because we want to make sure he loves the food, right? So, well, he's like the fitness guy. He's like the training. So we thought, okay, maybe meat. It's a good choice. Packed with protein. So Crying Tiger happened to be our best seller, and it's something that we really proud of. So that is definitely a no brainer. The pineapple curry prawn, it's a little bit of a risk we want to take because it's not on the menu. It's something I tried making at home. I loved it, and I just want to see if other people will like it. So here is my guinea pig. And last but not least is the mango sticky rice. I think that is a Thai staple, and we just have to showcase who we are. Thai person, and that's what we want to bring to the.

Table. So I'm going to eat all of this and then we'll start. Thank you. Mmm. That's great. Okay, so what is.

This? River.

Prawns. Fresh river prawns. River prawns. I don't even know what that is. Really.

Good. Thank.

You. Really.

Good. That's your.

Dish. All right. I have to try.

This. All.

Right. You won't be insulted if I just don't finish everything. All right. Okay. But I am going to try all this. I can see why it's doing so well. That was delicious. That was unbelievable. This was obviously everything was good. That was.

Exceptional. Seeing Alex finish that red curry in two bites is like, oh, yeah, we might need to put that on the menu. That's why we do.

This. Fill my heart. Fill my.

Heart. Oh. The river prawns were fire. Really, really good. I mean, it was obvious why the restaurant's done well because the food is good. And this is just like the simplest thing in the entire world. And I use restaurants as a simple analogy because everybody gets. It is like a lot of people obsess about all the marketing and all the sales hacks. At the end of the day, if you have good food, people will come back and tell their friends, like, that's really what it comes down to. And they focused on the thing that mattered most. I'm happy to help with all these kind of little things that can maybe improve the business model. But they had the thing that matters because if they had bad food, it didn't matter how many taxes I was going to give them. They were just going to get people in the door and. And they were going to leave and never come back. And so they'd have to become a marketing business in order to stay alive because their product was inferior. They don't have that problem. And so I'm stoked to see what happens. The kind of four categories, actually, I'm going to split into five. So we've got pricing we'll talk about. Number two is the actual menu itself. So I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about the menu because I think this is going to dramatically affect average order value. Number three is going to be training. So this is kind of the staff stuff that we're talking about. Number four is going to be alcohol. So I'm going to split this out specifically, and then five will go to next location. Okay. So those are kind of going to be the big overarching topics. So what I want to do is kind of like, are there ways that we can immediately potentially increase the profit of the location without dramatically changing the operations? And so there's two things that we could do. One thing that you can do, and I remember seeing this at a restaurant, is that you can just add your processing fee and you just put that on your menu which says plus 3% processing fee for credit cards. Right? You can do 2.9, 3.9, whatever you want. And then that way when they get the bill, it'll just say processing fee, whatever. And it doesn't usually affect anyone's take rate from. From like what they choose to order and whatnot. But for you guys, with a 3% increase would be like a 15% increase in profit from one thing. So we don't need to do that. Just like that's. That's one consideration you can do. The second thing that you can do is I noticed that you were at 0.00 in terms of your pricing, was there a reason for that versus doing like.

1699? I felt like the 1699 or 1695 thing was kind of old school. I just want to make it simple and.

Clean. Well, I'll briefly push back just because where you're at, pricing wise, if you were, you know, I would say higher end, I think you guys are upper middle, right? You're not like here, right? Yeah, I would say yes. If you're serving, you know, $29 to $50 entrees as the primary, then I think having 0.00 could make sense. Typically with luxury brands, they don't have 99, but I think that you're in a spot where I don't think it would detract from your brand to have 1699. And the reason for this, like most people make their judgment off of that, that character in terms of pricing. Right. And so this, though it may seem really small, if your average ticket is $16, this is 6% absolute, which for you guys is plus 30% in profit margin for the business. So like if you went from 19% currently, because that's a 6% increase in total in average revenue, that would take you to 25% margins from that, which is a 30% increase in profit. So that 600 and whatever it was, $670,000 in profit would be an extra 100, 200 ish, 220,000 a year from one move. I don't think it's going to affect your sales. That's just me personally, because it's like we're not even changing any of the characters. You're already kind of like paying the fee of being at Doll. I don't think anyone buys 16 doesn't buy 1699. That's just my opinion. Yeah, so this is a monster moment. It's like, yeah. One change that probably has no effect on your sales velocity could have a dramatic effect on your profitability as a business. When we're talking 20 bucks, 10 bucks, like this is a high volume business. Those tiny little dimes and nickels and pennies, they add up in a huge way. And like I said at the beginning, restaurants are notorious for having small margins. If we can have a 30% lift from one tiny change in terms of reprinting the menu, we should do that. Let's just use simple math. If every person who walked into their restaurant last year only bought two items, that would be $2 extra per person. They served 100,000 customers last year, that would be $200,000 dropped to the bottom.

Line. I've never thought about, okay, if I just add 99 cents, how much would it translate into? Like the percentage of sales increase. It's just like a light bulb. It's just like pop. And I was just like, we're doing.

It. The next one is because you have, you're turning people away on weekends.

Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Have you considered having weekend pricing? Saturdays and Sundays or Fridays and Saturdays? The menu that you hand them is different. So you've got weekend menus and then you've got weekday menus. And so then the weekend menu can add $2 per dish. It's the search pricing. Fundamentally it's just like uber. Like if it's really busy, they charge more. If it's less busy, they charge less. And so I'd rather you just add it on the days that you have it and they won't even feel like it's being added. You're just, you're just giving them the weekend menu. Right, right. It's just like different places have like a lunch menu and a dinner menu. The dinner menu is more expensive than lunch menu. No one's offended by that. It's just kind of a standard.

Practice. How does that feel worth considering but you know, be scary to do all three at the same.

Time. No, no, I don't think you necessarily.

Should. But I want particularly like this one the most. I've thought about it, but I think it just. We never actually have that percentage breakdown on how much is going to increase. We didn't see like the whole picture and how it would impact profitability. I think this one actually resonated 30% increase. This one definitely resonate with me the most in term of processing. Yeah.

I. If you don't like it, don't worry about it. This is why I lay these out. And it's a lot about you and how you feel about your business. Right. And so if this feels light to you, you're like, I think we could just, you know, we literally the cost of this is reprinting the menu. That's it. Right. So check this out. So this is the $100 million scaling roadmap and they are at stage five product size. So they've got probably 20ish people who work for them. And if we look at the constraints of the business for them, let's look at the things that I'm talking about them with most of the scaling roadmap, I tailor more to service based businesses and the reason for that is cause 78% of businesses are Services. And so I tend to skew in my language about that, but the actual things that are happening are the.

Same.

Right. And so a CS playbook to onboard, all of that is gonna be around how are we getting customers this consistent experience. We talk heavily about training. Right. Connecting CS to product. That's getting feedback loops based on what people are eating and what they want, like spinning that make something new to sell them. I mean, they functionally had alcohol, but they weren't selling it. So now we're pushing that a little bit stronger. And from a finance perspective, like, we need to get better at their finances, which is why a lot of the improvements that I had were very pricing centric, probably because they didn't have good enough financials to be able to see, oh, wow, when we sell this, you know, this product, we're almost breaking even. But when we sell these ones, we make a ton. They didn't have that kind of information which would have help them reconfigure their menu to be the most profitable menu possible. That also brings customers back. And if you're like, man, that would be useful to know what stage of scaling I'm at. All I have to do is go to acquisition.com roadmap, put in your business information, and we have this little automated thingy that'll tell you what stage you're at, what problems you're facing, and most importantly, how to solve them. And if you want my team to take a look at the business and, you know, reaffirm those things, or you'd like to come out to our headquarters in Vegas and potentially be on the Cash Cash app on the thank you page. You can schedule a call and we'd love to help you out. So the next thing that, that we'll go over is the actual menu itself. So with the menu, how do you think about laying out what they get when, you know, when they open up the menu at your.

Establishment? The way I thought of the design of the menu is the way the customers think when they sit.

Down. Sure. Okay.

Cool. Which is order a drink, order an appetizer, and then afterwards focus on, like the big piece and then the small compliment piece to go with it. So, like, I would like drinks, appetizers, specials, like the big entrees, and then carbs at the.

End. Okay. Okay. So on the menu, do you have highlighted boxes for the key. The key.

Items? I think we have a section for the specials. Yes. And then a special section for our dessert, I.

Believe. Yes. Yeah, we have special, like, special section highlighted. Yeah, we Are working on an updated menu right now. And what we did is like when we laid it, let's say fried rice. We will highlight what we want to.

Sell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's two components to it. So let's say you've got your sides, you've got your. Your appetizers, you got your carbs, whatever, within each of those boxes. Number one is I would rate. I would rank them from gross profit top to bottom. So which of these is the most profitable? We'll put that first, because that's the first thing people are going to consider. And then the second thing is I would have your highlight box, which is the. And I put at the bottom of the menu, like, if this is your first time visiting, this is the one you can't miss. Right? That way, it's like that way, people. Because no one wants to make the decisions fundamentally, what's.

Good. What's good. Yeah.

Exactly. So that way, if you have each of the highest gross profit mar things that also happen to be the things that most people love, and those should be the same, ideally, that we want to make sure that it's really clear and it's prominent on the menu per box that they're kind of working through. So any kind of business that has a menu. And the term having a menu comes from restaurants because many people have eaten at restaurants, but you go to a mechanic shop, there's a menu, Right? And so in general, I like having a couple things to be true about my menus. One is that I prefer to start at the highest prices. And the reason for that is anchors. And they've done research studies on this in terms of how they lay out, like wine menus. If you put the most expensive on the top, it anchors the remaining prices underneath of it. And so, number one, I like having higher prices, higher. Number two, I like higher gross profit margins. Because two things could be $16, but one of them might cost the restaurant $6. One of them might cost them $1. And remember, that 99 cents that we added added 30% to the profit of the business if executed. No sales velocity drops. And so us having just get more people to buy a thing that has two or three more dollars of profit could make an enormous difference to this business. The third piece that I, that I want to hit on is what's the stuff that brings people back? Like, what's the stuff that's so good that they're like, God, I have this again. And so balancing those three priorities is how I think through laying out a Menu, whether it's a services business or it's a restaurant. So the next thing that I have for you, this is just menu. We're going to get into training stuff in a second with like, how do we increase alcohol sales? And things like that. But what I want to do is increase the likelihood that people are already thinking about it. Right. And so there's two things that I want to, I want to think about. Number one is with each of the dishes, you could put underneath of it pairs well with what drink this would go well with. And if they're reading it, they're. They're going to be thinking, oh, well, they're saying it goes well with this. You will get more than 1% of people to buy alcohol just from just adding the.

Woods. And then they just look at the.

Menus. Yes.

Yes. I love that.

Idea. Yeah. And this is all profit.

Right?

Yep. Pairs with. Does that make.

Sense?

Yeah. Okay, so this may be a wink wink from my next book that's coming out, but there are a number of ways that you can make a customer more valuable. There are eight of them. One of them is a cross sell, which is, do you want fries with that? For them it's going to be, do you want an alcoholic beverage with that? And so what I want to do is make it as easy as possible for the customer to say yes. And I want to make it easy as possible for the staff to not forget. And so both of the tactics that I'm going to lay out for them are going to mirror those things. How to make it easier for the customer, remind them to do this thing. And the thing is, Is they're getting 1% of their sales from alcohol, which is super high margin. Right. So if we can get that from like 1% to 6%. So just adding 5% to the business in terms of total revenue from this very high gross profit product line, then again, we have another 25% increase in profitability, and that's just going from 1 to 6%. If you flip the table from no one's getting an alcoholic beverage to every person buys one, the profit of that table jumps through the roof. And so we only need like 1 out of 10 tables to do.

That. We always thought that the alcohol should be better than it is and would be a huge opportunity if we could improve it. And I mean, we see industry standards being like 5 to 15%, maybe even 20. Right. And we're at less than 1. So that's a really big weak point right.

There. Do you have specials in terms of.

Drinks?

No. Okay. So I would recommend having one special that's a drink. So just say like, hey, we also just freshly made a Thai mint. My time. Whatever, you know, whatever. Whatever cocktail you want. It's made fresh here on staff. It's super refreshing for the summer or whatever months. You know, make it seasonal for, you know, whatever. Whatever time it is. And that way some people were coming back, it's like, oh, that sounds good. Like, all we want is like, that sounds good. And then it's like, great, we have the purchase. So I would include that as the first thing. So basically there's have. Hey, before we get into drinks, can I say the drink special? We make one every week and we spend a lot of time. We taste test a bunch in the back and we come up with the best one. And it's freshly made here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think people would really like that. So rotating one drink special. There we go. So tell me about the actual tabletop. Do you have anything on the table at all? Do you have like one of those little A frames or one of those spread open? You know what I'm talking about? Like where the table. Yeah. You don't do that.

Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Is that too below where you want to be in terms of vibe of the.

Dining? I'm okay with putting it. Okay. Especially if it's like, you know, a.

Special. Yeah, yeah. Like something that we.

Want. Yeah. So I would probably do that because people like the visual, so I.

Probably. So it's just a difference right now, Right. Customers, sit down. We bring our menu. So we have like a menu and like a special menu. So the special menu have like all the picture and a recommendation. Our menu is just, you know, like the list of item with ingredients, but it's not left on the table. So when you're saying, like, having like a little kind of like a placement or. Yes, it's kind of like there in their.

Face. Because also I'm thinking about the servers. Right. Like, how can we help them do their job easier? And so if they can just point and then the visual's right there and they can see it, I think that's pretty compelling. Right. And I think the way that you make that look is what will determine whether it looks cheap or whether it looks nice. Obviously, I wouldn't go lots of neon colors with the tropical background. That would probably not be there. Right. So keep the look and feel of it upscale. But we still want to have the really nice, elegant descriptor underneath of once a week, the Entire team tries five different drinks. We pick the best one, and then that's what we decide as a team to offer for the week. Because if we can get the team bought in on it, they're like, oh, my God, it was so good. Like, you guys should. You guys should try.

It. At first we're like, huh? We don't. Should we do it? Should we not do it? We don't want to be like kind of like a fast food joint. That's why that deter us. But then the fact that he said, well, it depends. You can design it in a way that is nice, presentable and high class. Like, yes, we can do it. How come I don't think about that.

Before? We really are doing something very similar. We have like wine or specials, menu that we give out with the menus. But the table tent is. It stays on the table. So no one's ever going to forget. It's always.

There. Are you talking about like, maybe just one item special? One item? Or is it like maybe like a few item on.

The. Me personally.

One. Just.

One. I want to draw. Yeah, exactly. For me, this is me as a consumer now talking. When I see like 10 things, that just is like another menu, Right. I want to draw attention to one specific thing, really clear image. You know, the benefit is underneath. And then they draw my attention to it. And to me, that's really good. Now the back of it, we're going to save for some review stuff. So I'll get to that in a second on table one item special. Okay. We good on this so far? All right, good. So let's talk about getting people to come back. Right? So we want to have a way to identify who the new customers are. Like, hey, it's your first time dining with us, right. Is there something that we can do to identify to everybody else that, like, if someone says yes to that, can we put like just, you know, a drink coaster on their table that's a certain color or a napkin that's a certain color, whatever. But the reason it's so important is because then the whole staff knows, hey, these are first timers. Right. And so obviously you want to give everyone a great experience, but just knowing it's someone's first time helps. Yeah. Right. And so one is identify first timers. And B, I would give them some sort of surprise free thing at the end since it's their first time. So that's if they have, you know, a dessert or something like that. Whatever the, you know, whatever the cheapest dessert is. Yeah. Something that would be. But people remember things, something called peak end bias. And so people remember things, two key moments of every experience. They remember the peak emotional experience, and they were how things.

Ended.

Yeah. And so if we can just really make that ending really nice, I think that would be something like surprise dessert for first timers. And what I would want to do is then give coupon of some sort. And the way that you can do this, you want to do it classy, is that you have the manager put their card and and then write free dessert on the back and then hand it to them. Okay. It's way better than a coupon. Right? Because then it feels like it's a personalized gift. Right. And so you say, hey, next time you come in, just bring this and I'll have another dessert for you in the house. And so now it's like we're creating that loop. We want to bring them back in. Does that make sense? Does that feel.

Okay?

Yeah. All right, so these are, this is for first timers. Okay. For existing customers, I think you can offer the free dessert in exchange for reviews. Now, I know you guys do something like that now.

Correct? We have.

Done. Yeah, we have done.

It. We've done it.

Before. I'm a huge fan of free drink slash free dessert for review. And the time that I found it to be most effective is really at point of sale. So basically when they get the check. Now I have a couple ways of doing this, so I want you to tell me which one feels just kind of like I said the pricing thing earlier. I'm going to give you two or three different ways of doing this and you tell me the one that feels better for you. Okay? So the first way is, hey, if you guys want, I can take care of one of the drinks. If you're just willing to leave us a review, it would mean the world to us. We're a small family owned business. And if they do that, then you say, cool, let me take the check back, I'll take it off and I'll come back with it. And so then it's like, great, every one of these. And it's at the point of sale. So you want to give the discount. Now the whole idea of like your next. If you leave review next time, you'll get. It's like no one cares. They'll just pay. No one gives. So it's like, it has to be immediate. So that's, that's the, that's the first version. So free for review is thing one. Okay. That's the first Version. The second version of this is when the check gets delivered. The manager comes after, when it's sitting there, whatever, before it gets scooped up and says, hey, by the way, you know, your server's name was Judy. And just so you know, Judy gets a small bonus if she gets over, you know, 10, 10, 5 star reviews in a month. That way it's like we're doing it for Judy, not doing so. Then you don't have to give anything away for free. But then you kind of just have the reciprocity of if Judy did a good job, you know, you can give her a $50, you know, thing. So this is the manager ask. Those are probably my two favorite ways of doing it. So either the immediate one in exchange for something, or hey, can you do it because of my. Because of the staff that you.

Liked?

Right. Either one of those feel better to you? The first one, you like the first.

Better? Yeah, that's what we kind of do from time to time, but we're not.

Consistent. Yeah. So that'll get into training, which we'll get into in a second. But because of the business that you're in, more than anything else, it's so reviews driven. Like online reviews, you know, if you took your reviews from, you know, 1300 reviews to 13,000 reviews, the amount of, you know, people that are coming through the door, and like all we have to do, you serve 100,000 people this last year.

Total. Just last.

Year. Yeah. So if we got 10% of people to leave a review, it would. I mean, it would change things for the business. It would be. And so it's like, do we think one thing is you have multiple people at the.

Table?

Yeah. And so where this gets kind of interesting. Hear me out. Is that you could say, hey, if you each leave a review, then I can get all your drinks and in one table you can get five.

Reviews.

Right. And so, mind you, you don't have to do this forever. It's just. And this is obviously thinking about the next location too. Would I be willing to give up the cost of a drink in order to get a review? For sure. Not even. Wouldn't even think about it. So. Right. And so that's. That's. You're willing to make the trade. And the thing is, it's because it's on the check right now. They're like, sure, I like this place. This was great. I'll say five bucks. Whatever. I would have. I would have done it for free. Except they wouldn't.

But.

Right. But like, that little incentive.

Helps.

Out. So for brick and mortar services or restaurants, just local Main street businesses, the vast majority of people make their decisions by searching online before they go. I mean, when you're about to go to a restaurant, what do you look at? You just look on Yelp, you look on Grubhub, whatever, and that you see the reviews. And so I don't know about you. If I'm, like, looking at a dessert place and it's got three and a half stars, I'm not going. I'm not gonna go. I'll just go to one that has four and a half stars. Like, why would I risk it? People only go out certain amount of times per month, and they're not gonna blow their one time out on a three and a half star place. They're just not gonna do it. And so we need to boost the hell out of that so that not only do we have good reviews, but we have a ton of them. And so let me give you a different example. So let's say that you've got one place that has 55 star reviews, and it's a 5.0. And there's another restaurant that's 13,000, and it's a 4.7. Where are you going? 4.7. 13,000. No question. Because, you know, this is a business. Like, 13,000 reviews are like, holy cow. Like, this place must. This is probably iconic. This is probably a destination, which, if you're a small business owner, what higher praise could you.

Want? So when I read a review, it give us just not comfort, but also encouragement. And if I feel it, I am sure anyone who come on IO page read that review will feel the same way. So to me, that is important is how we communicate with our.

Guests. I was thinking about a way to increase the average order value. And so in the e commerce world, it's like you get free gifts over a certain amount of spend, or you get free shipping. I'm trying to think of a way that we could tastefully do that within this business, which is, like, it'd probably be better for takeout than I think in dining, which is like, at $50, at $100, wherever you know, if the vast majority sitter at 60. Right? $60 or whatever it is, it's like, then we want to put the free gift at, like, 75 or 80. And so maybe on weekends, you make it 100. On the weekdays, you make it. You make it 80. So you just push that extra $20. It's like, hey, just so you know, you get an extra full whatever I just had for orders over $80 and I think that'll nudge a decent amount of people just put it right above where they're currently at. And it's like you get a full another order on top and you guys have good gross margins on the food. Because I just want to. I just want to bump it up. And you saw with the 99 cent.

Thing.

Yeah. A dollar or two in this business makes all the difference in the world. And so this is basically an aov. So average order value increase with break points above current average.

Threshold. And for this, like this particular one, do you foresee it doing as like part of our business going forward or is it supposed to be kind of like tied to special event or like certain time of the.

Year? So the reason I said takeout is because if you're on the phone or something like that, or if it's on an order page online, it doesn't feel weird to me because we have to think about obviously the servers. Right. They can only remember so many.

Things. Yeah. There's actually a lot of information.

Too. Oh, sure. Yeah. But because what we're going to think about this is from the experience of the guest. Right. So they're going to come in. Are you new? Yes. Great, Great. Cool. So they know if they're new or not. Then they're going to say, you know, can I tell you about the drink special? Yes. Then they walk them through the drink special and then we get way more people to do it. People are also going to ask questions because it says it pairs well.

With. You're Right.

Right. And so a lot of people ask questions about that and then you're going to get more upsells, which they're going to want because their tips are going to go up. So they're going to want to sell the offer. Right. So they have an incentive to learn that stuff. And then basically from that point there's really nothing different except at the very end they're going to do this. So there's not a huge amount that we're really. We just have to know, are they first time customer? We're going to make sure we do the drink special and then at the end we're doing this. Three things. Yep, that's it. So as much I know we talked about a lot, but in terms of what they have to do, it's not too.

Much. Sweet this down.

Too.

Yeah. We were worried about adding more work to our worker. Right. But then the way that Alex showed us today is not adding more work. It's just adding pure.

Profit. So simple solution, simple.

Solution. And we were complicating the whole thing and not able to get past our own.

Thoughts. So one out of three strategies actually succeed in a business. And that's a McKinsey study that they did. And some businesses have two out of three strategies succeed. And the big difference is culture, which is the reward and punishment that exists within a business, which is fundamentally like, how do people behave? How do people do stuff? And so this is a people heavy business. And so I wanted to not just give them a bunch of, you know, here's all the stuff that you can do, but I wanted to translate that into real world. How are you going to get your staff to do it? Right? Because if they don't ask people what beverage they want or ask them if they want to get dessert, Very simple lines. But if they don't do it, it's a huge cost to the business. And so we had to make sure that they went home with clear items of like, this is how I'm going to train the staff and make sure that they do this every time. Otherwise this is just a lot of fun entertainment. But nothing's going to happen to the.

Business. You think we could change this coupon card to sign up for our loyalty program? You get a few free mango cigarettes on your next visit. But you said you like the physical.

Card. I like the physical card a ton. And if you're like, hey, if you're worried about losing this, just take a picture of it and just show it to me on your phone when you come back. That way that people can bring up what if. What if they. They share it and people who came got the picture of the back of the card so they brought new.

Customers. Yeah. Oh.

No. Right. So it's okay. So you can have them take the picture of it and be like, hey, if you're. If you feel like you're going to wash your jeans and it's going to get, you know, torn to shreds, you can take a picture of it, too. And that way you have it. Little thing. The only reason I hesitate with the loyalty thing is just like, how many people are actually part of loyalty programs for.

Restaurants? Restaurants, I'm not sure, but cafes is.

Normal. Yeah. No, no. Oh, so they have like the punch card and they have all that stuff because you said you wanted to be more on the upscale side. I have a whole thing on loyalty programs. I didn't get into it because it. I didn't know. I didn't feel like it. Was necessarily the, the best feel. I can talk about it and then you guys can decide. So I know you guys right now you do three. If they, on their third one, they get, they get free sticky rice. Right. When they come back, they do.

That on their birthdays they get free sticky.

Rice.

Yeah. Probably every 200 spend they get a free Thai tea. But we can bump that.

Up. So I think you'd have to sell me on the, the, the benefit of the loyalty program. And I would, I probably wouldn't even. I just hate that. Like I. All I think of when I think loyalty program is somebody's just going to spam text me all the time. And so I never want to. Right. And so for me, the loyalty program would be like, you get three things. Is it on your birthdays we're going to send you free stuff. We're just going to give you a coupon for coming in. When you're here, you get your first alcoholic drinks free or something like that, you know, because if someone has one, sometimes they're more likely to have a second. Right. One per table or per party. And then number three, when we have a weight, which you do on weekends, we prioritize you right now, for me, that third one alone would be enough. So I like that. I mean, I think a lot of people would join for that, for that benefit alone. So I'll put fans, I'll let you guys work the specific details of what you want in there. Because also when they fill that out, you can also get what their lead source was. Like, how did you hear about us, et cetera. Big picture. I am split on loyalty programs in general. Main reason the food is the loyalty program. Your food's good. They're going to come back, right? And they're going to tell their friends. And so other businesses, I think loyalty programs can make a much bigger difference. Like if you have a med spa or something like loyalty program is like the business. Right. But for them, I was just thinking through, okay, well if this is. This clearly meant a lot to them because they brought it up a couple times. And so I wanted to give them something. If I were to do it, this is how I'd approach it. And these are just based on things that I've seen work across industries. So running starts, which is where you have, let's say you have 10 punches. If you give people two or three punches on their first go, they're like, they feel like they got free stuff, but it's really like you just make the amount of punches that you need to do free, and you just give them that start ahead of time. They've already proven this from a bunch of studies that running starts are like two or three times more likely to actually finish out their punches than people who had the same amount of punches remaining on a shorter punch card. And so it's like, well, if you're gonna do it, do that, obviously. But beyond that, I think through the same value drivers that I mentioned in the offers book over and over and over again. So this is page 56 of the offers book. Check this out. So whenever I'm trying to improve any product or service, I always say, think through the same value vectors, which is what I want to have happen. How do I make it less risky? How do I make it faster? How do I make it easier? Those are the value vectors. And so I'm thinking as a restaurant, like, how do I make it faster? And as soon as I was thinking through it, I was like, okay, well, you know, trying to say that they're going to get their food first when they walk in. Like, when they walk in the door, that's probably not going to be realistic. Like, the cook takes a certain amount of time, and some people don't want to be rushed to dinner. So, like, in that instance, speed is probably not the right variable. Right. But waiting in line and being able to have first access. Okay, well, we can make that part faster given the fact that they already have more demand. So I'm like, okay, well, that's a good one. The decreasing the perceived likelihood, the risk factor, that's what all the reviews are for, right? You know, how do we decrease effort and sacrifice? Well, we're going to make it really easy for them to buy the alcohol because it's going to be right in front of them, and we're going to pair it with the food that we think would pair best with those specific drinks so they don't have to think. I'm not sure. Like, again, this friction, I'm not sure which beverage to have. Boom, it's already solved. Right. I'm just trying to remove friction from a lot of the parts of the process. And if someone's willing to pay more or get some sort of benefit for giving us their information, then we'll happily pass those things on as a reason to do it. Good on this. Don't worry. I know you'll be able to watch the episodes, so you'll have.

It. Can I take that paper back as a.

Souvenir? Yeah. So now we're talking about. We're Going to talk about team and operations. Okay. Okay. So this is the training. What we really need to train them on is kind of the upsell process. Number one, they have the greeting. And so when I think about training people, you want to think about it as almost like skits. Because whenever you teach something, you have a condition, you have something that happens and then you have a behavior. So when this, then that. Right? So it's a rule. If this happens, then you do this. And so each of these are basically behavior rules. And so it's like we're only going to teach you four rules. And the first one is that when someone comes in, you ask if it's their first time. If they say yes, you take this thing out of your pocket, you put it on the table. Now everybody knows that's thing one. Let's practice. You sit down on the table and you go back and forth. And the next person comes up and you drill it with them. Next person goes up, you drill with them and you just keep going through. Do it for an hour. They'll have 20 reps in an hour of just doing skit one. Tomorrow we'll do skit two. And that training just gets so ingrained. If you do that on a regular basis for the. I'm sure before the shift starts, they have a 30 minute little powwow or 20 minute powwow. You just do this. And so you have the greeting for first time customers. The second is going to be the beverage, which is we're going to be practicing getting the alcohol upsell. So let me tell you about our 1 beverage of the week. So in the back we try out every week we get together and we try out five different cocktails. And the one that we say is our favorite is what we make for the week. And so it's made fresh home here. We did it just a couple hours ago. It's freshly squeezed mint, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of people love it. Would you like one of those? That's it. That's all we do. And then the next person goes up and you say, do it again. Right. And so you want them to get 5, 10 repetitions per practice session. And so it's, it's that way you can hold them accountable because if you do this on a regular basis, they'll do it. Then we have the pairings, which is when people are ordering their mains. Just reminding them that it, that goes really well with. Would you like a lot of people like it with? And just doing that little reminder. So it's Going to be sides plus alcohol. So with every one of these dishes, I mean, there's a reason McDonald's has. Do you want fries with that? Do you want to supersize your meal? Do like each one of like it's 2, 2, 3 questions after every time somebody says they want this thing. So yes, I want, I want the pad Thai. Awesome. Do you want to have extra noodles on the side? A lot of people do. No. Okay. It pairs really well with this. Do you want to go ahead and take one of those? And even the way I'm saying it, like, do you want to go ahead and take one of those? I'm telling them to say yes by how I'm asking the question. A lot of people do that. You want to go ahead and do one of those? They're like, okay, you know, I'll do it. And so we just want to practice that. So the practice piece would be I order and then you ask me question one, question two. An experienced salesperson will know those tiny little nudges. And in a rapid sales conversation, which is what a waiter or waitress has to have, let's say you have a table of five people, you're gonna have five sales interactions. And so we're talking like one sentence or one phrase that we're adding on per kind of exchange back and forth. And so we just have to get the team to practice those little nudges, which is like, would you rather have chocolate or vanilla? I like.

Chocolate.

Right. Or most people like chocolate. Or that's what a lot of people do here. And this matters more, especially with first time customers, because they're like, I don't know how it works here. And so then you're like, well, this is how it works. This is what most people do. This is, this is what get maximizes your experience while you here at this restaurant. And so what we're doing functionally from a value perspective is we're paying down risk. We're increasing the perceived life of achievement. We're saying, you want to have this amazing experience. I'm going to help you have the best experience by just helping you navigate this menu and ordering process to get the best stuff. And I'm incentivized to do that because I want you to have a good experience. So you tip me well. For every alcoholic beverage, what would you charge for the.

Drinks? Right now it's pretty affordable. I think we're at like six or seven dollars. Seven.

Dollars. Super affordable. So they're going to get about a dollar at it. So it's like when you're looking at the table, just think every question you ask, you have a dollar just sitting there and you have five people at the table and you've got $2 each one of them that's just right there. And so, okay, you get three of them. Great. You just got $3 from just taking orders. I would translate it into what it means for them. Does that make.

Sense? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. From a team perspective, I would put a little leaderboard in the back for the server that had got the most alcoholic beverage sales. And then you can give them 50 bucks or 100, whatever, or maybe they just get priority to pick what schedule they want for the next month. Just little things like that, I think work really, really well. So the last step is review slash comeback offer. So if it's a first time customer, they're going to get the comeback offer. If it's any other customer, it's going to be the review.

Offer.

Gotcha. Slash loyalty. If you want to. If you want to do your loyalty offer. And that's why we set this up so that we can do this. And if they forget, they can look down at the table and remember what napkin they put there. That's why we do this. Right. This is how we make a little system out of.

It. Yeah.

Yeah. Does that make sense? You feel like they could do.

This? Yes, yes, I want to do.

It. So I think if we just do these things that we just outlined, there's a lot of points, but not, I think it's doable is kind of my point. Right. Like we just kind of went through almost most of the things that they have to handle. The rest of it is menu, you know, moving the menu stuff around, adding the 99 to the price, like very small things that could be big differences to the business. So the last thing we'll do is I'll cover the next location and then we'll wrap it up as one list and we'll prioritize it. Cool. Okay. I think when you do your pre opening, what I would do is I would do an influencer night. And so you make it a VIP event. They can videotape it and they could share it to their stories and that you can give them the promotional offer of the free dessert, the free sticky rice or free drink, whatever that you can trace back to them. And I think that would be a great first launch. And then you can also use all of their creative. That's the deal for getting the VIP experience. So it's like you get all these influencers and they make these little videos about your restaurant and then you can basically run an ad after the fact. And people recognize them because they're influencers, but they're talking about your restaurant. All right, so check this out. So what I'm talking about is affiliates and partners, all right? And so the big key here is an affiliate is a lead getter. They're an independent business that tells their audience to buy your stuff. And so if we're going to have a full night, right, we don't just want any kind of customer in the door. We want customers that can bring us boatloads of customers. Like their normal business is one customer tells two or three people and then those people come in. But the value of an influencer or somebody who's a local celebrity or local influencer who runs a forum or whatever it is locally, or they're just another local business owner that has exposure to many other people who are walking into their shop, their auto shop every single day, then you invite them out and they can then tell 100 people on your behalf. And so it's simply that it just gives you a lot more leverage and you're willing to make a little bit of a trade. And so you might do it for free, you might do it at cost, you might give them half off because it's pre opening in exchange for them, you know, videotaping it or making a post or something like that. Those types of things are great ways to kind of launch the word of mouth from the people who have the biggest megaphones. So number one thing we're gonna do is we're gonna do plus 99 on entrees. Number two is we're going to reorder menu in order of profit. Three, you're going to add pairings alcohol with entree. Okay. Number four, drink special with table top pick. Right. So we're going to do first timers training, which is napkin plus comeback offer. And then for returning customers, we're going to do manager card for VIP treatment. And then seven, you're going to have daily training on five scenarios.

Doable.

Yes. Okay, so let me show you how this actually adds up though. So if we see no change in sales just by adding the 99 cents, we get plus 30% of profit from this. Now reordering the menu could actually have a really dramatic effect because if we just got a higher percentage of people to just buy the things that have the highest margin, that can have a really big effect on the bottom line because they're buying the stuff that costs the Least. Right. That has the most markup. And so this I would estimate might be somewhere in the neighborhood of like 10 to 20% if this succeeds. This one I feel really good about. This obviously is going to be huge for.

You.

Yes. I mean, this could be somewhere in the neighborhood of like 40 plus increases. Like, this is really big. Both of these together. First time we're training. I think this is going to be more important for the second location because you need you already. You're already at relatively full right now. So getting people to come back I think is gonna be really important for the. For the second location. But this might also help with some of the.

Weekday.

Right. Because if you just get more people to come back, especially if they come during the weekdays, then those are the ones we really want to incentivize because it's like, we'll come back again during Tuesday. Right. So this might be some. I would probably estimate this might give you like it. And again, 10 doesn't sound like a lot, but it's 300, 400,000 a.

Year.

Yeah. You know what I mean, given your revenue. So it's not. It's not nothing. Right. Manager card. This is going to be reviews. You know, I would bet this is probably a 20 lift somewhere in that neighborhood. And then this is just going to be overall the execution. But these are the three that I think will really move the needle the most. And you don't have to do a lot to implement them. How's that.

Feel? I can do it over the.

Weekend. Perfect. That's my favorite kind of implementation. Fast and easy is one thing. Slow and.

Hard. No, this is easy. I can just crank it out tonight and print it out.

Tomorrow. Good. How do you feel about this whole plan?

Great. Doable. And it's going to make a big.

Difference. Yeah, very.

Great. Okay, well, you know what we have to do now is we have to hug, and then I have to finish your.

Food. I never thought that I would do something like this. Super nervous. When he's like, are you gonna go on the filming? I'm like, nope, not doing it. Scared to death. But I'm glad that I actually get out of that mindset. I choose to do it because I found lots of. Not just a helpful tip, but also I felt like I received support and guidance, which is really important. And I'm so glad that I made decision to be.

Here. Really happy to be here. Made me feel a lot more comfortable with learning how to scale better and trying to do it the right way the first.

Time. So, Calvin and air seem like amazing people, incredibly humble, very hard working. I love the immigrant story, obviously, and it seems like they actually have a very good restaurant and so I'm very excited to see them implement some of these changes and potentially dramatically enhance the profitability of the business to hopefully set up their expansion strategy so that they can go on and dominate and the entire world can have lots of amazing Thai food. And speaking of alcohol stuff, since that's what this restaurant was all about, we actually have a bar consultant that we had a B2B business and services that we did a full breakdown on. So if you like this, you'll love.