3 Tech-driven Ways to Impact Your P&L

Alan Little (00:02):

Hello and welcome to today's Restaurant Business webinar, three Tech-Driven Ways to Impact Your p and L. This program is being sponsored and presented by Workstream and Broadcast by Restaurant Business Parent Informa. I'm Alan Little and I'll be your Informa host for the session. Before we move to our main event, let's handle some housekeeping. This webinar is designed to be interactive and to help you with that, you'll notice a toolbar at the bottom of your webinar console. The buttons in that toolbar allow you to open and close widgets on your screen. For instance, check out the reaction widget on the right side of the toolbar and feel free to share your reactions to the presentation in real time. If at any point you experience difficulties with the audio or the slides, do not advance. Refresh your webinar console by pressing the F five key on a Windows PC or command in our keys on a Mac Apple system.

(00:44):

If you experience any other issues, click on the question mark button to receive assistance. To submit questions for the speakers, use the q and a widget. We'll address as many as we can later as time permits. Now, please let me introduce today's subject matter experts. Daniel Blazer is an hourly business specialist and host of Work Streams on the Clock podcast. Jeff Weinstein is the operator and residence at Work Stream and a veteran of executive leadership roles at such multi-unit food and beverage operators as Wise sons, Jewish Delicatessen, Jamba Juice, CINON, and franchisee vital and sizzling platter. That upfront business is out of the way. So let's hear from Daniel and Jeff about three deck driven ways to impact your p and l gentlemen.

Daniel Blaser (01:23):

Awesome. Thank you so much for that introduction, Alan. Like Alan said, my name is Daniel. I've been at Workstream for a few years now for today's webinar. I really, it's my pleasure to mostly just chat with Jeff here. Jeff has a ton of great experience in the restaurant space. Was briefly mentioned, but to kind of kick things off because so much of what we're going to discuss today around restaurant profitability is based right in Jeff's background and all that great experience. I thought maybe we could double click into some of those things. Jeff, welcome.

Jeff Weinstein (02:02):

Thank you Daniel. Great to see you. Yeah, I've had a chance to work with some great brands that were mentioned. I think the most relevant experience though for the conversation today is really my experience with the hourly workforce. I spent a good decade being an hourly worker myself, and really for over 30 years I've been in management and leadership roles where I've really viewed my job as serving the hourly workforce because that workforce is really the lifeblood of the business. We're going to talk about a couple, I think really cool experiences today. I spent some time as the CEO of a company called Vital. Vital was Java Juice's largest franchisee, and then we will also talk a little bit about some more recent experience I've had as CEO of Wise Sun's Jewish Deli in the San Francisco Bay area.

Daniel Blaser (03:02):

Awesome. Well, I'm really excited to hear more about that showing up on your screen right now. You'll see kind of a rough overview of the conversation today. Like I said, it is a conversation. It's not rote presentation, and we definitely want everyone here to help shape what Jeff is going to share. So anytime throughout today's webinar, if you have any questions or follow up to anything that Jeff says, please definitely share that in the q and a box and we'll either maybe some of them will jump right in and talk about them, but we've also reserved some time at the end of the conversation, so please don't hesitate or feel sheepish to ask any of your questions. Yeah, like I said, on this slide, we kind of have the overview of the different ways that we're going to talk in and around this idea of technology and restaurant profitability, where one impacts the other, where they collide. Anything else you kind of want to mention from this overview slide or tee up the main bullet points of today's conversation, Jeff?

Jeff Weinstein (04:10):

Yeah, for sure. These are two really different types of situations and technology really plays an important role in both of 'em. The vitality experience was really an acquisition of 75 locations in northern California and these locations were, it was a great market, but really the business was underperforming both in revenue and also in profitability. And so I think some of what we'll talk about today is how we leveraged technology to really address both of those things. Y Suns much smaller company, maybe 10, 15% of the size of vital and a very different situation, really more of a business transformation, but some lessons that are similar, but also some that are very, very different. I guess what I would say though, too importantly, Daniel, is that technology is necessary in these situations, but it doesn't do the job for you. So we'll also talk about the importance of really applying a leadership mindset to how you strategize and you deploy technology to improve the p and l.

Daniel Blaser (05:31):

Awesome. Excited to dive in. One other brief mention that you'll see on the slide is that we are going to share a little bit more about workstream, how workstream kind of fits into this whole technology profitability equation, and you will have the chance to win an Amazon gift card, so everyone's looking for a little extra holiday cash right now. This could be a good opportunity to get some, and that's going to take place after the bulk of our conversation today. So yeah, stay tuned for that. That being said, you mentioned a little bit kind of the background of vital and that experience, but let's go into that a little bit more and what you learned specifically from that experience.

Jeff Weinstein (06:15):

Yeah, it always starts with figuring out, okay, what is the biggest and first important problem to solve? In the case of these Jamba locations, we acquired the units from Jamba Corporate Great company. I had spent some time with Jamba corporate supporting all of the franchisees across the country. The problem really was that they were really focusing, I think, incorrectly on trying to sell a particular item. In this case it was fresh juice to nine out of 10 people walking into a Jamba Juice are their for a smoothie, and they were trying so hard to sell juice to folks who were coming in for smoothies and they were staffing their stores really, really lean. And as a result of that, you had confused customers, you had a slow service and you had just some general frustration that was really representing an obstacle to the business. So we decided, look, what do we need to really do here?

(07:26):

We need to focus on some basics. Those basics really were, and it sounds almost too simple, but the basics were to focus on being fast and friendly. It was making sure that every customer was greeted with a smile, that we were really listening to what our guests were telling us they were coming in for, and then it was getting them in and out of there as quickly as they wanted to get through the trick. Of course, now you've got 1500 people who you're counting on to deliver that experience and look, there's a lot you can do person to person to get that message out. We focused on getting that really clear message to our district managers. Our district managers in turn cascaded that information down to all of our general managers, the general managers being really the most important person in any business like this because they in turn had to get that message down to their team members. So it's a matter of cascading information in a way where you get 1500 people who are all moving in the same direction. What's much, much more, I think, helpful these days is when you have a tool that you can use to engage directly with those team members. You never want your technology to replace the one-on-one communication that you have, but I got to tell you, in multiunit organizations, it's so helpful to have that tool to supplement the conversations that you know are happening between the managers and their employees.

Daniel Blaser (09:11):

I really like that you called that out because that's the essence of communication is if you're not having the actual connection one-to-one, then it's just another email. It's just another message that's going to be overlooked, but you do have that technology that can reinforce maybe what's coming from the general manager or whatnot. So that makes a lot of sense. One question I wanted to ask you around this idea of this cascading messaging, making sure everyone is bought in and they're kind of on the same page, is how do you make sure that people are taking this to heart? I mean, like you said, it's a fast and friendly service. That's kind of a fundamental, and you can tell your team members to do that, but how do you make sure that that's something that's actually being implemented?

Jeff Weinstein (10:04):

Yeah, I like to think about this in terms of both recognition and also accountability. The recognition part's the fun part. So if you're paying really close attention to the things that you decided are important in this case speed of service and in customer satisfaction, I think everyone's familiar with the term oat or overall satisfaction. If you're paying attention to those things, then you can actually reach out directly to your managers and directly to your team members, and you can call out the great examples of their successes when they have those successes, and that can be, it's very energizing for them. And then also guess what? They know you're paying attention. So when you're seeing that we're not hitting those numbers, that we're not maybe achieving the speed that our guests are not as happy as we're trying to help them be in our stores, you can also call that out and then you can have a different kind of conversation about, Hey, what can we do differently here to change the experience?

Daniel Blaser (11:07):

Yeah, yeah, I love that. A great way to build accountability and kind of reinforce that, like you said, people are watching and listening and that they're going to be recognized if they do things the right way. So kind of a two-pronged approach, what was the impact? I don't think you mentioned this yet, is as you're implementing all of these changes and reinforcing this fast friendly service, what happened down the road or a few weeks later?

Jeff Weinstein (11:39):

Well, you know what, I think before I even get there, I really think that this is an important part of the equation is that it's one thing to tell people what it is that you want them to do. It's another to actually give them the tools that they to do it. And what had been happening up until that point was that there was just a mindset that, look, we're going to try to schedule as few hours as we possibly can to meet the needs of the business. And we took a very different approach. We started by first forecasting the sales that we were looking for and look in the Jamba business, it is the most weather driven business I've ever been involved in. So it's really important to sort of factor in weather to come up with an accurate sales forecast. Once you have a sales forecast, you need a labor model, and a labor model can be very simple, and in the simplest terms, it means having a number of hours or a percentage of sales that you are allocating, that you are budgeting to spend that day against your sales target.

(12:50):

And you want to think about that not only is not wanting to over schedule, but also not wanting to under schedule. So a really key thing that we did was to implement a labor model that was supported by a scheduling tool that enabled us to track it every day, and then we were able to make sure that we were putting the right people in the right place at the right time to achieve that speed of service target, which really for us at the time was three minutes. So from the time you place your order, we want to be able to deliver your order back to you in three minutes or fewer. And the impact is really kind of amazing. This set of stores was really underperforming its set of peers on the west coast. Within six weeks we were actually leading our peers and it wasn't the be all and end all, it was just getting those first couple basic things that tends to make a huge difference, especially when you go from underperforming to sort of getting the basics. So we went really from being a few points below our competitive set to being a few points in sales comp ahead of them.

Daniel Blaser (14:11):

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty impressive and I realize there's a lot of hard work, and like you said, the communication combined with the technology and labor model, there's a lot that goes into that, but in my mind, six weeks is not that long of a time. When you think of that sort of transformation, that's pretty impressive.

Jeff Weinstein (14:34):

I've seen that kind of thing over and over again, Daniel in many different ways. When you go from getting some basic things, when certain basic things aren't there and you implement them and focus them on them and focus on them almost to the exclusion of everything else, you really can get a really good quick win that then lays a foundation for you to build on once you get those things right.

Daniel Blaser (15:00):

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so we kind of touched on the first thing that you were able to do to transform Vital. Next up is all about prime cost. Do you want to kind of tee that one up a little bit?

Jeff Weinstein (15:17):

Yeah. This one tends not to be as much fun as building sales, but it's a really important part of the business. I think anybody who's got experience in restaurants knows that your prime cost, which is your cost of goods sold or food cost plus your labor costs, those are your biggest expenses and in most restaurants that's going to be 50 to 60% of your sales. So you've got to get those things right. In this particular case, there was a little bit of opportunity in food costs and I would say a little bit more opportunity in labor costs. I like to think about these costs in managing them this way.

(16:04):

You generally have a pretty good idea about what your theoretical food costs should be, right? You've got your recipes, you know what those ingredients cost, what your menu price is, and so in a perfect situation, what your food as a percentage of sale, your food costs as a percentage of sales is going to be. And the way you manage that is you look at what your actual costs are, you compare that to your theoretical costs, and you stay really focused on shrinking the distance between those and reducing your waste. I actually look at labor in a very similar way. I like to look at it in terms of, hey, this is the amount of labor that we're earning based on our sales forecast, what is our actual labor? And here again, it's really important to have a tool in which you can track your actual labor, your sales forecast, and the gap between them.

(17:10):

And remember, this is not just about saving money, this is also about driving your top line. So it's not just about making sure that you're not overscheduling certainly part of it, but you also really want to make sure that you're not under scheduling. If you're under scheduling, you're not getting the throughput that you're looking for and you're not delivering the experience that your guests are expecting, then you're not really fully realizing your sales opportunity. So here again, this is generally the very first thing when you're looking at improving a business's bottom line that you're going to focus on, which is prime cost, both food cost and labor.

Daniel Blaser (17:50):

Alright, maybe we go to another topic that's maybe not the most popular or the one that people want to think about, but how did labor compliance kind of fit into this overall equation as you were working to make these improvements?

Jeff Weinstein (18:04):

We seem to be going the wrong direction here in terms of fun and then a little bit less fun and then a lost fun, I promise. We'll get back to the fun part though before we're done. So I don't think any of us get into the food business, which really is a people business because we're excited about compliance. But the reality is that especially in states like California and in Washington where we operated stores at Vital is that there are a lot of rules and you can fight the rules, but my mindset about this is always that, okay, look, we're all playing by the same rules. So the way that I'm going to win is by performing the very best, given those rules and those constraints, I'm going to win by getting these things right. Again, one of the ways that you win, you get it right, is using technology. I do not want my managers spending a whole lot of time thinking about all the rules, thinking about all the details of meal breaks and rest breaks and overtime and how all that stuff works. I want them to have a tool that takes care of most of that for them.

(19:28):

The rules are up to date. The tool tells me, Hey, this is when you really ought to be scheduling breaks, and if you happen to miss break and you need to pay a penalty for the violation, the tool itself will actually take care of that for you. That way your managers, again, your managers being the most important person in the organization and can focus where you want them focused, which is on their guests and on their team members. So in addition to making sure that the tool is helping them stay compliant, you also want a tool that brings their attention to stuff when they need to do something with it and only when they need to do something with it. So we talked about the violations again. For instance, if in your organization the manager needs to take action to address a meal break violation, for instance, you want a tool that just tells them when it happens so they can go in, review it, take care of it, ideally take care of it even from the front of the house and not even have to go back to a computer in the back of the house so that they can manage that stuff by exception and keep their eye on their guests and their team members.

Daniel Blaser (20:50):

Yeah, cool. I did want to mention, I'm seeing a couple of great questions come in already, so thank you to everyone for asking those and we're excited to tackle those at the end of our conversation today. So stay tuned. We definitely have seen those come through. Okay. Final kind of pillar of your experience transforming Vital, this one's maybe a little bit more fun going back into the fun direction. We've kind of alluded to this idea of team member engagement off and on, but let's go into that one a little bit more and talk about how you were able to create maybe a virtuous cycle of this team member engagement.

Jeff Weinstein (21:32):

Yeah, I'm going to talk about something here real quick that I almost never talk about, which is that I've spent all this time in food and beverage, but I don't really have a business background in terms of a business education. I actually studied philosophy back in the day, and I think that what I've really come to Daniel is that one of the things that I studied, this is going to seem a little esoteric so I won't go too deep into it, but I studied 19th century French and German philosophy, and there's this idea about how our identities form, how we become who we become, develop and develop sort of self-consciousness or awareness. And what I really have come to understand and enjoy about this business really kind of points back to that we are working with people who, if it's not their first job, it's close to their first job. And so we have both an opportunity and a responsibility to help them start to build awareness of themselves, help them start to build confidence, engage them in a way with encouragement and feedback. And this I think becomes a really, really important formative experience for them. I don't think it's an accident that when you've got really good engagement with your team members, where you're recognizing, where you're correcting, where you're coaching, that correlates with better guest satisfaction.

(23:21):

We saw district to district, my districts that had the most engaged, happy team members were also the districts that had the best guest satisfaction results. And where the virtuous cycle really comes in is that there's also a really clear quantifiable correlation between guest satisfaction and sales, right? You grow sales more year over year in the stores in the districts where the guest satisfaction is the highest and it makes sense, right? Happy guests are the ones who are going to come back more frequently. They're the ones who are going to take a closer look at your menu and not only are going to visit more frequently, but are going to explore your menu a little bit more. And that really drives your business. Now the added benefit is that higher sales, more satisfied guests, happier your team members, you reduce your turnover. And so now you've got folks who are sticking around longer, they're more effective in their roles as team members, and you're not in that same cycle of really, really high churn where you're constantly bringing new people in, training them and assuming the cost of training them that we all know can be really, really difficult in our environment where sometimes turnover can get to be as high as 200%.

Daniel Blaser (24:50):

Yeah. I did want to ask you, what did you see as far as some of the turnover numbers or different side of the same shape there, internal promotions? What were some of the actual metrics or whatever that you experienced by emphasizing the engagement?

Jeff Weinstein (25:12):

Yeah, absolutely. So when we acquired the units, turnover was over 150%, which means that you're basically hiring your staff and a half every year. And it's not unusual for turnover to be over a hundred percent in our environment, but we were able to get our turnover down below a hundred percent, and that was really game changing for us. And I think just as importantly, or maybe even more importantly, we really focused not just on retaining, but also on developing and coaching. And as a result, about 90%, I would say at least 90% of the assistant general managers, the general managers, the district managers, and then the functional leaders across the organization were all people who at one time had been hourly workers and many of them hourly workers in our organization who we had developed step by step. So in a lot of ways, Daniel, that's probably not probably, that's my proudest accomplishment really from the time vital is that the team, the leadership team came from the ranks. And I also would say that the fact that we were able to thrive through a very 2020, I think had a lot to do with the tenure and the strength of those people.

Daniel Blaser (26:50):

Yeah, that's a really impressive number to get that many people that are in management that started off on the frontline. Very cool. One thing I wanted to just kind of reiterate in what you're saying is you're talking about encouraging this engagement through coaching and recognition, and I do feel like that's where technology kind of fills in those gaps. Well, because technology can't do that recognition and that coaching in a way probably that's going to be as impactful as a person, but you need to use that technology to free up the time to gain efficiencies so that you can focus on those things that will drive that engagement and lead to those really great outcomes you talked about.

Jeff Weinstein (27:37):

That's exactly right. You want to enable people to spend their time where it's most valuable, which is in having those one-on-one conversations with people. And in those one-on-one conversations you're talking about not just what I need you to do, but why, and we're teaching people how to think for themselves about how to run the business.

Daniel Blaser (27:54):

Yeah. Alright, well, let's jump over to your experience at Wise Suns. I know you already mentioned that this was a very different sort of a challenge or different backstory, maybe you'll say too vital. Can you just real quick, just touch on that one more time, how those two challenges compared and then jump into how you started to tackle this one?

Jeff Weinstein (28:18):

Yeah. Gosh, Y Suns has such a good menu and a good brand. I was attracted to it because they were, so, it's traditional Jewish delicatessen, which I grew up with only an even better version of it. The San Francisco Bay Area, kind of elevated version of that traditional deli food, great food, really deese and great neighborhoods. But there was a problem. And the problem was that the business was really, as much as people loved it, the business was not being operated profitably. But it was really clear I think from the beginning that it was a brand that should thrive, that could operate profitably. And the trick was to figure out, okay, what do we need to do here in order to get this thing to a place where it's really sustainable? So it was a true business transformation. And on the face of it, when I got there, like I said, it's 10 to 15% the size of vitality. You'd think, oh, how hard could that be? And the truth is, especially when you think about the p and l, when I went from Jamba Corporate to Vital, I developed an understanding of the p and l.

(29:46):

It was much, much greater. When it's your p and l, it's a very different situation. But until I got to wise sense, I don't think I really, really understood down to the penny, the restaurant p and l, like I've learned from that experience now. So really the first challenge at Yuns was not really a technology challenge or even a financial challenge. It was more of a mindset challenge, which was really about organization. That's kind of where it started. And the way that I like to think about that is that the operating environment is difficult, it's competitive, it's challenging. There's a lot of difficult stuff going on, and you can approach that as a world of interesting challenges and opportunities to navigate, or you can look at that as a series of adversarial, what I'll call adversarial relationships. There's a positive view and a negative view. And my challenge there was to take something that was really negative and turn it into a more positive approach. So we did a few things to build the top line of the organization quickly.

(31:07):

We had a great relationship with a third party delivery vendor, but we had a sales gap that we needed to close if we didn't close that sales gap, it represented an existential crisis for the company. So I needed to bring in a new additional third party delivery vendor, and I needed to do that knowing that my first vendor was not going to be terribly happy about it. So I took an approach that we use over and over again in other parts of the business, which was one, be really transparent with my partner and explain what the heck's going on, and this is our situation and this is why we need to take action. The second step is to ask, Hey, what's important to you here? Right? It's not just about us. You're our business partner. You've got your own set of challenges to say, look, yeah, we got these issues.

(32:00):

What issues do you have? What's important to you? And by doing those two things, just working really closely together and finding some mutual wins. And what happened with third party delivery for us was it turned out that there were some things that were really easy for us to do that were important to our first vendor that made it possible for us to add another vendor. Both vendors then we're really happy. And instead of moving business from one to the other, we actually were able to increase the business for both. And everybody kind of won there similar kinds of experiences on the cost side of the business, there was a lot of grumbling about our food supplier, and if you're in the restaurant business that changing your primary food supplier is extremely disruptive to the business. But I was hearing over and over again, they're the wrong vendor. We need to change, we need to change. What really needed to happen is we need to sit down with that vendor and explain what our situation was. And we also needed to hear from them about what challenges were they having, what could we do together?

(33:13):

And the end result of that was that we were able to find a co-op that was affiliated with that supplier. By becoming part of that, the supplier was happy. We saw a 300 plus basis point improvement in our food costs, which 300 basis points in this business is every point is important. 300 basis points or three points of sales is game changing. And then the last one, I don't want to go too deep into this, is I would just say that I think that sometimes, unfortunately sometimes we see our landlords as adversaries. And I learned during my experience during the pandemic with vit that by picking up the phone and calling all 96 of my landlords, there's a lot of mutually beneficial stuff that could happen in those conversations. And we were able to do that same kind of work at Wise Sons instead of looking at them as the enemy, we looked at them as business partners.

Daniel Blaser (34:15):

I love this idea of reframing what might be seen as adversarial or an obstacle of a relationship, turning it into an opportunity, turning it into a partnership. It's such a good lesson regardless of where you're at in an organization and there's always kind of an opportunity to do that. I do feel like one of the places where we can kind of reframe one of these relationships into a partnership is with our technology providers and platforms and tools. I'd love to hear you talk about the technology side of what you did at yuns, maybe how it falls into that partnership. And then also just why technology is so necessary in today's environment.

Jeff Weinstein (35:07):

There are a lot of legacy systems for managing food costs, for managing labor, for managing other parts of the restaurant business. They're good tools, but they're not nimble tools and you kind of have to plug yourself into the way they do stuff. And sometimes with which HR platforms in particular, my experience is that one company might be really good with one part of the process, but not so good with other parts of the process. So a really, really important step that we took at yuns was to implement new scheduling and time and attendance tools that enabled us to be more nimble. But most importantly, most importantly, it gave us not just a weekly view of the business, but a daily view of the business. So when I got there, our labor results were somewhat of a mystery. And what I mean by that is that I get my p and LA week after the end of a period, and that's when I would see how I did in labor.

(36:27):

At that point. It's too late, you're already into the new period and it's just too late. You need to be able to see on a daily basis, look, I load my labor model into the tool. I've got my sales forecast. I can see every day I said that I was going to earn this much labor. This is how much I used. I used, did I use too much? I need to adjust the next day to get back in line. If I use too little, I left sales on the table because I wasn't really there to support the guest experience. So it was really important to have a tool that enabled me to really track that on a day-to-day basis and then make really quick adjustments accordingly.

(37:17):

There's lots of examples of that kind of technology that happen inside the restaurant, but I would suggest that people think not only about technology to manage the day-to-day business in the restaurant, but to think about it in terms of the labor investment you're making in your overhead. Every penny that you spend in a restaurant environment as much as possible, you want that money to go toward the activities that support the guest experience. And so you want to look at how do I eliminate as much unnecessary administrative work above the store or at the corporate level as I possibly can. And I think that looking at an all-in-one HR platform is a perfect example for thinking this through and finding where the opportunities are, right? If you're using applicant tracking in one system, but then you're onboarding people into a different system and maybe you're doing payroll with the third system, you've got someone now who's having to sort of manually or with spreadsheets move the information through that takes a while or you're now investing in integrations. If you can just move that stuff seamlessly through the process comes in through applicant tracking, onboarding directly into a file from that file is where I can be scheduled. I can calculate my time and attendance and then I can manage payroll that way. The savings are mind blowing, and you don't get into this business to cut, cut, cut, but when you're in a situation where you're not operating profitably, it becomes really important. And we were through in large part to the use of technology, we were able to reduce our corporate headcount by about half.

Daniel Blaser (39:29):

Yeah, that's definitely helpful when you're facing some of these challenges, and I really liked the example you gave of that all in one solution that kind of reduces the jumping from platform to platform. Maybe a slight sneak peek at a conversation we'll have in a few minutes. But before we get there, I did want to ask about this combination of the slide says, emphasizes the importance of technology, but results require leadership. Could you talk briefly about the technology component and then the actual leadership component, how they kind of fit together, compliment each other?

Jeff Weinstein (40:10):

Yeah, sometimes you're going to have to make really difficult decisions. Cutting overhead, cutting head count is one of those. Another one that is that sometimes, especially in an environment that's changing as much as our environment is, I mean think about all the changes that happened in the restaurant space in 2020. Sometimes you have to just, you do what you can to make a particular site work, but there are things that you can't control. And so sometimes you need to make a difficult decision of cutting your losses in one location in order to protect your other locations. And so you're going to use technology to improve the business, but at the end of the day, it's your decision making. Ultimately, that is sort of the most necessary thing in the process. It is how you decide how you're going to deploy the technology. And here's the cool thing.

(41:18):

We did close a couple of units at Yuns and we did get to profitability in part as a result of closing those units. But the flip side of that I would say was the experience of vital where the difficult decision in 2020 was not to close units. We had to close some because Jamba and malls had to close because malls were closed, but we made the opposite decision and we took anybody who was working in a mall and gave 'em a chance to work in a neighborhood or streetside store, and that paid off in a very different way. But I guess I just wanted to make sure that we don't think about, we don't think about technology as the solution. We think about it as a really important tool and a toolkit that still requires that we make really good sometimes difficult decisions.

Daniel Blaser (42:18):

Yeah, it's such an important point. I feel like I've heard stories from people that they want technology to kind of ease some of those burdens that just like you said, it's, it ultimately comes down to leadership technology can't make those hard decisions for you. You have to stand by them Anyway, so that's such a great point. Alright, we have one more slide here that we're going to kind of summarize some of the points that we've discussed today and following this we have that gift card and then we also have some q and a, so we don't want to spend too much time on this, but just to reiterate a few of the points and then we'll jump into those next couple parts of today's webinar.

Jeff Weinstein (42:59):

Yeah, thank you. So I pose these questions that are really related. It's like where are you spending your time and where are your competitors spending their time? If you're spending time on an administrative task that does not add value to your business, that's time you're not spending with your guests. It's time you're not spent engaging with your team members. It is time that you're not out building relationships in your community and it's time that you're not out doing local marketing, which all four of which are really important. So your competitors, where are they spending their time? If you're spending your time on admin and they're spending time on those other really important things, then you are really at risk of setting yourself up at a real competitive disadvantage. So really important to find those things in your business that are not adding value and use technology to automate those things or eliminate some of those tasks so that you can put your time where it's most valuable, which is really with people, and this is first and foremost, this is a people business.

Daniel Blaser (44:16):

Yeah. How about the bullet point, talking about the importance of onboarding. I'd love to dive into that before we transition maybe into the work stream side of the conversation.

Jeff Weinstein (44:27):

Yeah. One of the most game-changing uses of technology that I've ever experienced in my career was when we introduced workstream as an applicant tracking system at Vital, we were hiring, we had 2,500 employees. It's a lot of hiring and it's time consuming and it enabled us to have a presence on all the job boards to get people in to shrink the period of time from when they apply to when we can get 'em in the door and working in training. I like to think about it, we talked about being fast and friendly for our guests at the start of our conversation. I think about this as sort of being fast and friendly for our team members, for our employees. There are certain things like this that I just believe that in a multi-unit environment especially, these are no longer things that are nice to have. They're kind of things you need to have in order to just be in the game. So I would look at something like an applicant tracking system is, and find your examples in other parts of the business that are just becoming sort of standard. Because again, if you're spending your time, if you're slow to get people in and that experience isn't great, well guess what? Somebody else is bringing them in fast and creating a better experience and you want to be on the right side of that competition.

Daniel Blaser (45:55):

Yeah, such an important point. Well, thank you for walking us through all of this, all your great experience and some of the learnings. I'm going to briefly jump into workstream, like I said, after that we're going to do q and a. So this is kind of your last little window. If you had any questions that popped into your head, please drop those into the q and a box right now. I'm going to real quick, just want to talk about workstream. If you're not familiar, workstream does help with a lot of the things that Jeff has been discussing today specifically. One of our big goals as a company is to create an all-in-one platform that doesn't require you to jump between different tasks. So when you think about all of the different steps within hiring, you've got to put out job listings across the internet. You need to accept applications, screen interview.

(46:52):

Once you've found the right people, you need to onboard them. Those are a lot of little steps in that process. Now, once they're hired, you need to make sure that you're communicating with your team that they can get paid accurately and consistently. They can access their time sheets. There's all of these other tasks and anyway, workstream, our whole reason for existing as a company is to make this as easy and seamless as possible so that it goes back to what Jeff was saying about spending your time on the things that actually matter, things that will improve your employee engagement, coaching, motivating, all of those important things that technology can't do very well. But when you use the technology in the right way, you're now freeing up your time and the time of your managers so that you can focus on those higher impact tasks. So anyway, I think I did a fairly good job there. Jeff, did I miss anything else as how I think you got it workstreams connection to what you're saying. Okay, cool.

Jeff Weinstein (47:52):

We can start taking questions about 19th century French and German philosophy now.

Daniel Blaser (47:56):

Yeah, I know. I was actually expecting one who is your favorite philosopher or something. So maybe we still have time for that as far as this competition that I teased earlier. So one thing, like I mentioned, workstream allows a really seamless quick hiring process, and that means a really easy way to accept applicants for a job. So I'm going to show a mockup of one of our hiring posters in just a second. On that hiring poster, there's a QR code and the first 10 people here that scan the QR code or text the message and then kind of go through the application process just to kind of see what it's like. Then you will get a $20 Amazon gift card. So I'm just kind of teeing that up because once I shift over to that slide, we're off to the races. So you're going to want to be quick if you want the $20 Amazon gift card, and it's coming on the screen right now.

(48:48):

So you can see, like I said, this is a mockup of one of the hiring posters that workstream allows you to generate. You can obviously print that out, stick that in your window of your store. There's also a lot of digital versions of the hiring posters, but the whole goal is to make sure that when you're trying to fill a role, that you are anywhere and everywhere, and it's as easy as possible for potential employees to fill out that application from their mobile device. It's not something they have to sit down at a desktop computer because most of your potential team members, they're not going to do that. They want to be able to apply quickly on their phone. So that's really one thing that we try to make easy as possible. So like I said, go through this application process. I'll leave this QR code up on the screen for a little bit longer. We're not going to get confused and think you're actually applying. So don't worry about that while I leave this up here for another second. Jeff, maybe we just jump into one of the questions that came in that I think is such a great question. Nicholas asks, what are the recommended three of your top recommended technology tools that will impact a restaurant's p and l?

Jeff Weinstein (50:07):

Yeah, well, look, an HR platform is a must. You need something that helps you manage your schedule, your time and attendance and your payroll. And you need one that into which you can load your labor model. It needs to understand what you want your labor spend to be in relationship to your sales. So it's got to be one that can really account for both of those variables. I think that that's just absolutely essential. A couple other ones, we touched on one of them, which is that you want an inventory management or a food cost system that enables you to load in your menu the costs associated with it so that you can compare your actual food costs to your theoretical food costs. Again, you're really quite necessary. I mean, we can talk about, I think everybody understands they need a good POS system, but what I would say here is that you need a tool that enables you to take all of your relevant data, and by relevance I mean relevant to your KPIs, your key performance indicators.

(51:28):

KPIs will vary a little bit from one organization to another, but what you want to be able to do as a business owner or as a manager is you want to start your day being able to look at a dashboard where you can see all the numbers that you know are most important to your business, your sales broken out. However, it's relevant for your business to see your sales broken out transactions versus average check sales of individual featured items. And then you want similar data around your labor and labor metrics and around your food and your food cost metrics. So some kind of place where all the data is feeding to a dashboard where you can see your numbers, not month to month, week to week, but day to day.

Daniel Blaser (52:20):

Okay. Yeah, those are great recommendations. So just to summarize, you touched on three there. So number one was an HR platform. We've obviously talked a lot about that already today. Number two is inventory management, and then number three was kind of this real time dashboard, right?

Jeff Weinstein (52:39):

Exactly. I think about it. I think about it as business intelligence.

Daniel Blaser (52:43):

Okay, cool.

(52:44):

That's great. Alright, another question from Michael before we ask this. Actually, I'm going to do kind of the final, this is the final warning on the poster and then I'm going to move on to the next slide. So this is your last chance if you wanted to get one of those gift cards. Alright. I'm going to move it over the slide over to a little bit more about how to contact Jeff. So as we're going through these questions, if you have a follow-up or another one that pops into your head after this conversation, feel free to shoot Jeff an email. I think he said he was fine with that. He's ready for your questions.

Jeff Weinstein (53:20):

I love networking. I'd love to connect with people.

Daniel Blaser (53:23):

Please

Jeff Weinstein (53:23):

Reach out.

Daniel Blaser (53:24):

Awesome. Also on LinkedIn too, I'll throw that out there even though it's not on the slide, but okay, the question from Michael. So Michael asks, my experience suggests a plus or minus of a 3% ideal variance on sales forecast versus actual sales. That that's that 3% is a manageable tolerance. What are your thoughts on this?

Jeff Weinstein (53:48):

I love this question, Michael. I think you're right. I think plus or minus 3% is a good range. I think the important thing to bear in mind here though is that you're generally going to want to forecast out 10 to 14 days and things change. Variables change for us in the Java business, it's weather. So we we're updating that forecast sometimes daily, sometimes even within a day. The clouds burn off here in the Bay area and the sun comes out and suddenly people start streaming into your restaurant. You really need to be able to respond quickly to those changes. So plus or minus 3% is great, but make sure you're reevaluating it at an interval that makes sense for your business. And then also make sure that you're factoring into your forecast the variables that are most important for your business. For us, it was weather, but there might be other variables that are more important to your business. And so you want to be able to have a model, ideally a model that's automated and there's great tools out there to automate your forecasting that make sure that you, you're really feeding in the right factors to get to that accurate sales forecast. But I like your range.

Daniel Blaser (55:21):

Awesome. Great answer. All right. One more question for you, Jeff. This one might be tricky, maybe not, I don't know. But if you were to put on your back to the future hat or your peering into the future, I guess, what do you think is going to be ahead in 2025, we'll even say 2026 next couple of years in regards to new challenges or increasing challenges around this topic that we've been talking about today of restaurant profitability? What should people expect? What should they plan for, do you think?

Jeff Weinstein (55:57):

Yeah, we saw an uptick in restaurants going out of business in 2024. I think we're going to see that continue into 2025, but so much there. There's so much you can do to avoid that. I guess if I were to say one thing that I think is of utmost importance, that's not strictly speaking about the cost savings itself. The days of incrementally increasing your menu prices every year, right, to offset minimum wage increases, those days are over. We have hit a point in 2024 where our guest's sensitivity to price really changed. And so I would just offer that you want to make sure first that your value proposition is strong, right? And before you raise price first, take a look at every penny of potential savings in your business that would enable you to hold your prices where they are. Because I think that the brands, the restaurants who are going to win are the ones that are delivering the best value. And that doesn't mean cheap right? Value in A QSR is different than value in a fine dining environment, but those guests in each one of those environments has a certain set of expectations we need to deliver or over deliver on those expectations.

Daniel Blaser (57:34):

Yeah, it's a great principle to keep in mind and definitely seems relevant. So thank you so much for answering these questions, Jeff, and once again for sharing all of your great knowledge. Alan, we'll kick it back to you.

Alan Little (57:47):

Hey, thanks so much Daniel and Jeff, thanks for your sharing of information and ideas about tech driven ways to impact your p and l. Those gentlemen are both from workstream and I'd also add not only good conversation about the tech, but the human touch aspects of management and p and l scrutiny as well. Were touched on very well, and I thought there was some very interesting information. Shared Workstream is also do a big thank you for the sponsorship of this program that made it possible. Thank you. Work stream. And so this event was recorded and will be available to view on demand within 48 hours. You'll receive an email with a replay link to review this content or share with an interested associate. Do share that with an interested associate. I think they'll thank you for it. If you've not done so, please check out your console's resource area for links or downloadable documents related to today's program. And also, please take a moment if you might click on the survey clipboard icon on your webinar console toolbar. It's down on the right, I believe to provide some feedback so we can better serve you in webinars in the future. Finally, please do join us for future restaurant business webinars and know that for now all of us here bid you a goodbye and a good day.