← RESTAURANT STRATEGY
RESTAURANT STRATEGY
Putting Employee Retention Front and Center
00:36:52
#527 - Putting Employee Retention Front and Center ***** This week's episode is brought to you by: KICKFINVISIT: https://kickfin.com/demo/ This week's episode is brought to you by: AJINOMOTOVISIT: https://ajinomotofoodservice.com/ ***** KickFin: https://kickfin.com/demo/ KickFin is an incredible tool that allows for instant, cashless, tip payouts the second an employee's shift ends. It saves the management team from late night tip distribution plus all the annoying bank runs. Safe and convenient. They are working with thousands of companies all over the country... why not you? Prairie Canary: https://www.prairiecanary.com/ Check out this charming little upscale bistro in the middle of Iowa to see how the PHG leadership is putting the staff experience front and center. ***** If you want to snag a copy of Chip's book, The Restaurant Marketing Mindset... CLICK HERE: https://www.therestaurantmarketingmindset.com/ If you're ready to learn more about the P3 Mastermind... CLICK...
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- [00:00]
A
We know the importance of culture and the employee experience, right? Just like we talk about marketing restaurants to our guests. How do we convince them to come in?
- [00:08]
B
How do we convince them to come back?
- [00:10]
A
I think the same is true with our employees. How do we, how do we convince an employee to come work for us rather than the restaurant down the street
- [00:17]
B
or Starbucks or Target?
- [00:19]
A
And how do we convince them to stay with us? Because when we lose an employee, it is expensive. So today we're going to talk about how we do that and how the guest experience experience plays a role in that. I'm joined by an operator, Shannon Redding. She is the GM and a partner at Prairie Hospitality Group. And Justin Roberts, co founder, co CEO of Kickfin.
- [00:38]
B
We're going to have a really deep
- [00:40]
A
conversation all about how we improve the guest experience on today's episode of Restaurant Strategy.
- [00:45]
B
There's an old saying that goes something like this.
- [00:47]
A
You'll only find three kinds of people in the world.
- [00:49]
B
Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown.
- [00:55]
A
This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close. I am your host. This is the Restaurant Strategy podcast. We put out two episodes every week. The whole point is to help independent restaurant owners and increase the profitability of their restaurants.
- [01:27]
B
What does that mean?
- [01:28]
A
Helping you to make more money and to work less and be really deliberate about how we do those two things. I write books, I give talks, I host a membership site. I am also the founder of the P3 mastermind. It's a group coaching program where I work with restaurant owners from all over the world. 45 states in this country, including Washington D.C. 8 different countries around the world.
- [01:51]
B
I work with restaurant owners to help them increase profitability.
- [01:54]
A
If that's something you struggle with. 2025 was hard. If you 2026 to be better. If you want to beat those single digigit profit margins, come join me. We talk about consistent, predictable 20% returns. There is no pressure to join, but let's start with a conversation. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule we'll ask each other a bunch of questions and see if you're a good fit again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, you'll find that link in the show notes. Now, if you've been listening to this show for any length of time, you've heard me talk about Kickfin because they've been a trusted partner of mine for years and genuinely believe in what they do for Restaurant operators, managing tips has always been a headache, right? There's never enough cash in the drawer. At the end of the night, managers are stuck making bank runs and doing spreadsheet math. At 1:00am Tip pooling regulations keep changing, getting more complex. It's just not fun. And that's exactly why Kickfin exists. With Kickfin, restaurants can calculate tip pools automatically send instant payouts directly to employees existing bank accounts. No cash, no predatory pay cards, no glitchy employee apps required. Your team gets paid their tips fast in the account they choose, right when their shift ends. Kickfin integrates with all major PoS players, including Toast Square, Skytab, Genius Union, and many more. So you get a fully automated end to end tip management system. It is fast, it is accurate, and it gives you a clean digital record for accounting and compliance. Kickfin powers tip payouts for every type of concept, from mom and pop shops to regional hospitality groups to national brands like Walk on Sports Bistro and Marco's Pizza and Toasted Yolk Cafe. Great hospitality starts behind the scenes when your people feel valued, when they are paid fairly and paid fast. I promise, everything improves. Kickfin makes that possible. So if you're ready to save hours every week, eliminate cash runs, streamline accounting, and make tip payouts the best part of everyone's business day, visit kickfin.com demo
- [04:05]
B
okay, so two guests on today's show. I'm thrilled to welcome back to the show Justin Roberts, co founder, co CEO of Kickfin. Justin, welcome.
- [04:15]
C
Thank you, Chip. Great to be here.
- [04:17]
B
My pleasure. And Shannon Redding, who is a P3 member. She's also the GM of Prairie Canary, owned by Prairie Hospitality Group, of which
- [04:28]
A
she is a partner.
- [04:29]
B
Shannon, I'm glad to have you on the show.
- [04:31]
D
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [04:33]
B
My pleasure. So obviously I have talked to both of you guys offline plenty of times. Again, Justin, you've been on the show plenty of times.
- [04:42]
A
Today.
- [04:42]
B
We wanted to shape the conversation and really talk about building a better guest experience. And before we hit record, Justin, I think you made a really good point about how to automate that better guest experience.
- [04:52]
A
So it's not something you have to work at.
- [04:54]
B
It's just something that's effortless, that's in the background, that's just part of the fabric. So I'm probably gonna start there. Justin, I'm gonna let you go first. Quickly give a top level overview.
- [05:05]
A
Because if there are people who are
- [05:06]
B
new to the restaurant strategy podcast, what is Kickfin? What does it do? How does it help restaurant Owners. And that'll be our nice launch pad. And Shannon, I'll kick it to you in just a second to let you give the same.
- [05:19]
C
You bet. As mentioned, Justin Roberts, co founder, co CEO of Kickfin we came to market because we believe that as operators were looking at evaluating their technology stack, so much of the tools that they were using were very much automated and digitized. Yet the most important part of the day, which is the management of employees gratuities, was very, very analog and typically dealt with in physical currency, very long Excel spreadsheets. And we believe there would be a much better and more efficient way of dealing with employee tips. And so we created Kickfin to make it really easy for operators to manage their gratuity program and instantly pay employees directly to their bank of choice after every shift. And so we've been fortunate enough to work with brands across the entire United States of all sizes and just feel really lucky to be a part of the hospitality ecosystem.
- [06:15]
B
I love it. Justin, obviously you're speaking to someone who spent the better part of, I'll say 13, 14 years doing exactly that, either helping to count out tips or running to the bank once, I don't know, sometimes twice a day or at the end of a 13, 14 hour shift, bleary looking over an Excel spreadsheet where I'm literally putting in people's points one by one by one. One of the reasons why you and I hit it off is because you were telling me all about the, this product that you had, that you had created, which takes all of that, all of that out of the manager's hands and automates it. So less cash, less cash on hand, less bank runs, no mistakes. At 2, 3, 4am trying to get the tip pool just right. I love it. Obviously we've worked together for a very, very long time and I'm a big fan of what you guys have built and how it helps restaura owners. Shannon, for everybody who is out there who doesn't know, you've got this beautiful little restaurant in this beautiful little small town and I think that story will resonate with a lot of the listeners here. So talk to me about what Prairie is, what you guys do and how it's grown over the last couple years.
- [07:24]
D
Well, I am with Prairie Canary. It is a casual fine dining in the middle of Iowa, actually in the middle of Iowa right off of Interstate 80 in Grinnell, Iowa. It is a town of about 10,000 people and we've been able with the people who started it, Paul and Kaylyn Durr they are our closest friends, and they started this great restaurant with wonderful food. And I started working there as a server and just worked my way up. And then, I mean, I cared for it as much as they did, which is, you know, always find people who love your thing, love your restaurant as much as you do. So then we just decided to become partners with them.
- [08:08]
B
I love it. Server, manager, owner. I mean, being a partner there. And obviously, I've gotten to know all four of you, both couples who co own this restaurant. Talk to me about employee experience, because that's what we're here to talk about. And I know from being an employee to then overseeing a bunch of employees and now having to administer programs and think really much more deeply about how do you attract people, how do you retain people? Talk to me about the employee experience within the Prairie Group.
- [08:35]
D
I think one of the things that being in the middle of Iowa affords us with the experience is that our employees get to meet people from all over the country. We are centrally located where people come and meet one another to visit. They're like, oh, I'm from two hours away this way. And then I'm from two hours this way. We'll meet in Grinnell. And the fact that they can meet so many interesting people has been so nice. I mean, I met the person who was, like, on the marketing team for the priceless commercials for MasterCard, and he was telling me how they came up with that tagline and the baseball commercial with it. I mean, you just don't get that everywhere. And that's fun.
- [09:25]
B
So talk to me. And yes, and anybody I know who's from the Midwest, and they say, oh,
- [09:31]
A
no, not that far.
- [09:31]
B
And by that they mean, like, four and a half hours. So I grew up in the Northeast, and so you go like 30 minutes and you're in, like, the next. The next big town. So y' all who are out there, do it different and think about it differently. One of my very best friends is from Iowa, went to School in St. Louis, and now lives right near me, right around the corner. And every time he tells a story, I'm like, but really, how long was it? How far was it? Yeah, obviously it's a small market and people, you know, there are only a handful of restaurants, but people have other options for where to work. So how do you convince them? So, I mean, obviously I want to understand because you were very deliberate about bringing in Kickfin and integrating into the things. So talk to me about all of the ways that you think about, again, that sort of like, how do we make this a great place for people to work? And then why Kickfin was sort of like a natural sort of addition into what you were already offering. Does that make sense? Does that, am I asking that the right way?
- [10:31]
D
Yeah, I think so. We brought in Kickfin because, you know, a lot of our employees, you know, they are, they're students, they're young adults. We, and you know, they, they want and need their money and having the cash in the register at all times to do that and is very cumbersome. And then having to sit with the Excel spreadsheet and decide, okay, so the expo was only here from this time to this time. So now I have to figure out how much they actually get. And if I had, you know, a hostess or a server assistant to take that out of it. And it also takes the guesswork out of the trusting of my bleariness at 1am to be looking at this. They know the tip outs are going exactly where they need to go and there's really no mistakes that way.
- [11:29]
B
So. And Justin, I want to kick this over to you because obviously one of the biggest things you were trying to solve was, hey, a restaurant, you know, that's open late at night with maybe one person watching the door shouldn't have all this cash on hand. That's just, it's just asking for problems. And obviously we've made the joke now a couple of times as people are bleary at the end of a long day, a long week. We're recording this in the middle of December. This is a long month for a lot of people, you know, taking that guesswork and when somebody just makes a mistake after a 14, 13 hour shift and it really affects somebody's livelihood, you know, again, it takes all of that out and automates that. Talk to me about like the logistics, the nuts and bolts of what the Kickfin, you know, software really does because some people are tip pools, some people are, you know, people keep their own tip or they, they tip out. So talk to me about all the different ways you, that Kickfin sort of deals with the different, the different kinds of restaurants and the different methods for, for doing this.
- [12:26]
C
Yeah, and it does really start with that employee experience. Right. So when you operate and being from the Midwest myself, I mean a lot of the times when you're going to these hospitality venues, these people know your family, they know where your kids go to school, who's graduating. That is the essence of that kind of connection with a brand going, you know, out on a Friday night for Dinner. And so much of what needs to be front loaded into that from an operations perspective is that employ experience, an employee is going to show up to a great venue, maybe an elevated, you know, experience like what Prairie is doing. And this is a big deal for them. It's not a drive through, you know, get your burger and go home. This is a night out for celebration. And so I think what a lot of our, the best operators that we're seeing to use that employee experience is really saying, hey, we understand that your W2 wage is set it and forget it, you lock in, you show up. But how we decide to make it equitable for employees to receive gratuities is really, really important. We want to make sure that you understand that expectations and performance is tied to compensation. Right? And so if you can marry those two together and how that is best done is by taking what typically is a very analog process of crunching an Excel number, manually looking at, you know, one off receipts and trying to figure out who needs to get what. And one thing that we've really worked on and kind of really refined over the last couple of years is how do we consume the sales data, the labor data from the point of sale, taking whatever custom rules that that operation might have. Prairie has a couple different concepts. They could have a couple different tip policies. One may work in one location, one may not work at the other location. So we really want to be flexible and nimble enough to take these complex calculations, consume the sales and labor data, apply those calculations and make sure that those employees know rewarded that gratuity, ding, you've instantly been paid the second year shifts done. And if we can do that and then provide that employee, kind of like how the sausage was made in the back end of how it was divided and split, it's just really sets the tone for high expectations. Your contributions, because of how good you did, you know, increased your tip. Those are the types of things that we really focus on now more than ever.
- [14:50]
B
So Justin, I want to follow that up with a question. So obviously now you have thousands and thousands of restaurants who are using this software. So you get big data. You can slice this across a lot of way. So in the operators that you're talking
- [15:02]
A
to or in the data that you
- [15:03]
B
see, how is this affecting the ability to acquire new talent or mostly, I think especially since the pandemic, it's been retaining that, that talent. How, how has this, how has kickfin impacted that?
- [15:18]
C
Well, when you get good people in and they feel secure and confident, you know, the fact that they're going to be able to increase their earnings by providing great service. You want those people to be talking. You want to get more of those people in. And I think the data that we've seen just across board is that the best operators aren't just slapping down a tip policy and saying, when you sign on and you give us your direct deposit information, here's a tip policy, get to know it. And it's just, it's left on the desk forever. Right? No one kind of.
- [15:52]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [15:53]
C
What people are really using with our data is they're now starting to look at this on either a nightly or a weekly kind of performance. You just conversation, not assessing who's doing, you know, good or bad in front of somebody. But if you're looking to bring someone in from another restaurant and bar, you want to be able to articulate, hey, if I have you front facing, working this section, we anticipate that you'll make X amount of dollars. And, you know, money is one thing, but when you think about front, front of house facing or customer facing, you want to be confident. Especially I think, where Prairie is, if they're an elevated brand in that market, that's something to really brag about because they're going to make, you know, more money there because of just that experience that they're giving. So using that kind of that tip data, that amount of money that they should be expecting by, you know, meeting expectations of how the, the, the restaurant runs, is a huge recruiting tool. You can really brag upon that and then just clearly state like, yeah, our great performers are making somewhere in this range. And that's huge. That, that data is very, very powerful.
- [16:59]
B
Yep. I always, one of my mentors always said he's like, you can make mistakes in this industry. Nobody's perfect. You can't mess with people's money. They will not forgive you if you mess with their money. Shannon, you're, you're shaking your head really heavy because I know you. I mean, you, you know, you were on that side and then, you know, when, when you were on the floor, you know, this. Talk to me about that. You felt really strong. You can't mess with people's money.
- [17:23]
D
Oh, yeah. No, you can't. And I've recently taken over doing payroll for the entire company. And so, you know, and we pay weekly. So I am looking at this. I mean, I probably am triple and quadruple checking it every time before I hit. Okay.
- [17:42]
B
Pay.
- [17:43]
D
Because I, you know, and I do make mistakes and I have to, you know, but I Think for the most part, they also know I don't do it purposely. It's just because I'm human and, and I own it and move on. But yeah, for tips, it is just. It's been a game changer for us. I mean, for me to go in there and look at each employee, what they have brought in, and, and, you know, toast, our point of sale is great, but going through and finding that data can be a little cumbersome. So just, it's right there, it's in front of me and I can show them.
- [18:17]
B
Talk to me, Shannon, because Justin just mentioned this a minute ago, so I think it's a thread worth pulling at because Prairie Hospitality does oversee a couple of different concepts and one upscale, one more casual.
- [18:29]
A
Are you using the tool in different
- [18:31]
B
ways or do the people in the
- [18:33]
A
different restaurants, like, are they interested in different things?
- [18:37]
B
Talk to me as you're, as you're looking across company wide, we kind of,
- [18:41]
D
we're using it about the same in each restaurant. Each restaurant might have a little bit different things to it, but it's about the same. But it's also about that they have the ability, you know, I want to get this the next day. You know, I want it instantly in my, my checking account. Or, you know, I'd rather have it in my check. I mean, I have, I have both ways that I do this. And so I have people who do want the instant, you know, gratification. I've got it in my checking account and the others, I'd rather get that in my check. And that's been so nice. And it does help retain. Because, you know, we were, before we started researching what we were going to do, I mean, I talked to Kickfin and some other companies, but we also talked about, you know, we're just going to go straight up. You have to get it in your check. You know, it will be delayed a week to, to coincide with your paycheck. And, you know, there was an uproar as we just kind of discussed it, and we also knew we were going to lose people and we didn't want to lose good talent over that.
- [19:48]
A
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- [20:48]
B
Yeah, and over the last five years, obviously it's been. This has been a particular challenge with the workforce. But yeah, I mean, to your point, there used to be two ways of doing it. Either you get your cash out at the end of the night, right? So you wait in line and the bartender gives your cash, or the manager gives you your cash, or you. It all goes into your paycheck and you get it, you know, 10 days later or whatever it is. And the power of what Justin and Brian have built is that they. There's another option here. It's, you know, it's just like the Uber drivers, right? It's. I mean, it's built on similar technology. Justin, am I wrong?
- [21:18]
C
Yeah, no, you're. You're exactly right. And you know, Shannon, you nailed it. It's all about giving employees choice, right? You know, some may say, I only work here Friday and Saturday night. If it winds up on my paycheck, I'm good. Others are like, hey, listen, I go to school, but like, I need to get a bus ticket or, you know, pay a cell phone bill. This $150 that I'm gonna get tonight is really meaningful. And so we've kind of intentionally, you know, taken all this feedback from the likes, you know, people like Shannon who are in the trenches every day saying you need to give flexibility, optionality, make it really easy for the operator to kind of click a button and it works through. But that the employee, the it is now more than ever. People want choice in that. Yes.
- [22:07]
B
Justin, talk to me quickly about this because while this doesn't affect Shannon and the folks at Prairie, the tip credit has disappeared in many states across the country. Most notably, let's say California was one of the first ones to disappear. And so people have been utilizing tips to sort of even out, bring more equity between front of house and back of house compensation. Can you talk a little bit about that and how kickfin. Cause you guys have really been at the forefront of this and been a participant and a partner in helping make this happen. Talk to me about how restaurants have been utilizing the platform to do this.
- [22:43]
C
Yeah. And it really does start with kind of that overall assessment from the owner's operator's perspective on, you know, how do we identify our core KPIs, what is the most important things that we as a business look at that are really going to drive the success of, of each and every single shift. And once they kind of take those through, they realize, hey, expediting, getting plates out in under X amount of time, making sure that you get employee customer review cards, feedback from, from customers that come in, setting the tone when people walk in and building the rapport, going through and trying to sell specials that are happening that night. So once that framework is there very much organized, what a lot of operators will start to look at is specific ways that each person is going to contribute. And so they're trying to make it more equitable for the host that is probably dropping off food that is, you know, going to be picked up by an Uber driver, you know, back of the house, making sure that there's, you know, performance things that are standardized so that like when that all that data comes into the tip policy, which is resides in the Kickfin app, all of those very nuanced scenarios can then be split and dialed in correctly. And I would say, like going back to how Kickfin started, we originally started to eliminate physical currency. Like that was the whole thing. And we didn't necessarily integrate with a point of sale and was just, hey, tell us who needs to get paid and how much and we'll just disperse it digitally. But now, and this is just universal across the board, it's not an if, but it's a when. We will digitize, automate and streamline this piece of the business. So where that is changing, where the impact is really on these point of sale integrations where you can take, you know, your tipped employees that get it instantly, you can take your payroll people, you can push all that into a report. And now you can be really smart about is this in compliance? Is this going to be taxed correctly? Did we give optionality to employees and how they received it? So it's it. I think the fun thing for us to see is this gratuity management is not, not just a, you know, small little sliver. It's now become very much of this category. It's a category of work, you know, point of sale scheduling, you know, gratuity management. And that is because that has created that category is because of again the complexities, the compliance, the data, the calculation and, and we're just fortunate enough to partner with people like Shannon in Prairie to say, this is something that can really serve you guys as a benefit not only to your operations team, but your staff.
- [25:24]
B
Shannon, talk to me about this because I was always very opinionated about this. I used to work with people, I used to work under GMs and owners who said when I sit down to interview a waiter, if they ever ask me how much they're going to make, they just never get the job.
- [25:40]
A
I was like, that's why you work. You work for money.
- [25:44]
B
I think you have to know. So a lot of this that comes out is transparency that you get from this. Famously, when I was like a service director or agm, you know, and head of all personnel, what I would do is I would print out the tip sheets from the previous seven days and I'd black out all the names so nobody could see who made what, but I would show them. I said, just so you know, here's what our captains made. Here's what our two closing captains made. Here's what everybody else made. Here was the first cut. Here were the bussers, the runners. Here's the tip pool. Like, here it is now again, we did it analog. We did it way back when in Excel, and then we had to print out the sheet for the binder and all of that. Justin's created something really helpful here. But the transparency I just thought was so important. And I just thought, man, that's how we're going to get really great candidates. Because this place is busy and the people here make good money and anybody who's going to come and interview is going to see they make good money. They're going to want to work here. So how do you handle that? Or what side of the sword do you fall on when it comes to that?
- [26:43]
D
I am very transparent because I am in Iowa. Server wage In Iowa is 4, $4 and 35 cents. So when they ask, you know, what is your hourly rate? And I say that, their faces immediately drop. So I have to be transparent to say, but this is what. And I give a range. I have not, like, brought out the sheet and blacked everything out, but I do give a pretty good range of. At lunch, this is. This is where it is. Yes, dinner is much better, but I do bring that out there. But you have to be transparent, and it's not easy work. People can think being a server is easy, but it's not. So they want to be compensated and be compensated well, and you have to be transparent to show them that.
- [27:33]
B
I want to make sure to be really respectful of your guys time. So I got one last question for each of you as we look forward. I mean obviously the last five years have been sort of of last, almost six years have been pretty cataclysmic for how the industry is upended. And now we have tech stack and the way we think about employees and acquiring employees and retaining employees, we think more about that experience, et cetera. And the guest experience has changed because half the people work from home and all of that as it pertains to building places that people want to work, the kind of places where people want to work and the kind of places that will continue to support them for many, many years. Not just, you know, somebody who works here for six months and then goes, or a year and then goes. Shannon, how are you guys thinking about this? Or what do you think is coming down? What like, what is your focus on as an organization of like, hey, this is something I think people care about and they didn't necessarily care about it just so little or it wasn't as
- [28:31]
A
important as it is now or as
- [28:33]
B
it's going to become. Like what do you guys have your eyes on as you move forward over the next 12 months, let's say?
- [28:40]
D
For us, I think it's mainly just trying to make a culture that people want to be in, you know, that it is a good place to work with people who, I mean, I can't be best friends with everybody, but I want them to, you know, I want them to be at Prairie because they want to be there. They want to work hard for themselves and for the restaurant. And so continuing to make sure we're doing right by our employees and our customers is really important to us. Us.
- [29:09]
B
I love it. I would agree. I think culture is becoming huge. It's this overused word. But I always remind people, so listeners here don't roll your eyes. I think culture really is crucial. Seth Godin always says that the most important seven words in all of marketing have everything to do with culture. And it's that literally his seven words are people like us do things like this. So people who work here believe this or have these set of expectations or always take care or always nurture, always show up on time. People like, you know, the kind people who work here do the following behaviors and it's just about ingraining, grooming those behaviors. And I think people ultimately now have choices. They can go work at a lot of places, not just the restaurant down the street, but they can go work At Target, they go work at Starbucks, they can go get a landscaping job. You can do as a lot of choices you have as to where to go get a job. Justin, same question for you. What do you think when it comes to building a restaurant or building an industry that will continue to attract people into it and, and be able to retain them, what do you think? What do you see operators caring about? What do you see people focusing on?
- [30:18]
C
Well, I, the, the culture piece. I mean, I think you're seeing hospitality brands that are really knocking it out of the park put such an emphasis on that guest experience. The connection of not just dropping a plate or drink off, but almost like, like a lot of these servers that I see in some of these, the great, great markets, they have a Rolodex of people come back and see them. It's the conversation and the expectation that, you know, people want to be out, feel entertained and have a level of experience and connection with the brand. So I think hospitality as a whole, and regardless of market, whether it's, you know, Middle America or even where I'm at, you know, on the west coast, the expectation that, that people really want is I want to be and feel that there's a level of like, care factor. I want you to be part of this brand and part of this experience and that comes with culture. Now in the technology side of things, because that's where I sit. I think that a lot of things that you're going to start seeing in hospitality is this invisible infrastructure. And I think you're going to start to hear a lot about this. Of great core technology companies that exist today are just going to leverage AI to help empower operators, employees to be able to feel more confidently employed, have that level of transparency, but help these operations teams run more efficiently. And it's not adding another layer of technology. I think you're going to see the big players out there, they're just going to add more efficiency to their technology platforms. And so what I'm really excited about, I think in the years to come is with this excitement around AI, is that so many of these larger companies are really going to, you know, all in on what are we doing from a partner perspective to really help these operators focus on that culture, get them out of the paperwork, get them out of the analog work that they're doing and making the connections. As Shannon said, you know, I can't be best friends with everybody, but I want people to feel good where they're here. I want that connection. And I think with the, the tools that are starting to come out. That will only be easier to do because it will free up a lot of this kind of tactical work that you have to deal with, that you don't want to deal with. But I think hospitality is even just an awesome spot right now, and the great brands that care about, you know, experience and culture are going to do wildly successful things.
- [32:42]
B
Do you know what I love? I always say that our industry is hard, and I like that it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. I think it was easy. Anybody would do it, and it wouldn't be special. I think it's a special breed of person who says, this is what I want to do. And I like that they push through the hard, and I see it as my job to help make life a little bit easier for them. Justin, I know you feel the same way, right? Like, how can we bring better tools that help them be more effective, more efficient, more profitable? Ultimately, that's really what I care about. But I like that it's hard. It's supposed to be hard because if it were really easy, everybody would do it. And we. And I don't think it would be special. I don't think we'd want to be a part of those places. I appreciate you guys taking the time here. Shannon, we'll include any links, but where can people go to learn more about. If they're on 80, they're trying to get from one place to the other. Grinnell's a great place to stop.
- [33:30]
D
That's wonderful.
- [33:31]
B
How do they go? Learn more about Prairie hospitality.
- [33:34]
D
You can go to prairiehospitalitygroup.com prairiecanary.com, hometownheroes.com, you'll find everything about us right there.
- [33:41]
B
I love it. Justin, same thing. Where can people go to learn more about kickfin and all that you guys are up to?
- [33:46]
C
Our website has everything on it, so Kickfin.com is the best place to find us. We're just happy to be of service, this industry. Chip, I'm always grateful that, whether it's your events or, you know, getting to meet people like Shannon through this network, it's. It's the best industry, it's the best people, and so we're always grateful. Yeah. Again, kickfin.com, justin Roberts. I just feel lucky to be here with y', all, for sure.
- [34:10]
B
I feel really grateful to be in the center of these conversations. So, you know, Justin, you and I met when I was just starting the Mastermind group, so it's called the P3 mastermind. I talk about it a lot on the show because it's something. It's mainly how I spend the majority of my week. We grew up from one group with just 10 people, all the way up to now four groups with over 150 people currently enrolled. We've put almost 400 people through the program already. And so it ends up being this. It has turned into this really incredible community where the live events are a way to get everybody together, the weekly calls are a way to problem solve, troubleshoot in real time. And the relationships that I've been fortunate to build with companies like Kickfin are really great because I'm very deliberate about who I choose to work with. So, you know, it's like, here's a product that I know will help you do what you need to do and do it better than anything else. So it's been a really strong partnership that we've had over the last many minutes.
- [35:07]
A
I mean, it's been like four years
- [35:07]
B
that we've been working together, both through the podcast and the events. And, you know, we've been on stage at events. We were at FS Tech together. I mean, like, we've been doing this a while.
- [35:17]
C
You bet. It's been awesome experience.
- [35:20]
B
Absolutely. Guys, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you very much and I will see you later.
- [35:26]
A
So once again, I got to thank Justin for taking time out of his day to sit and chat with me. Gotta thank Shannon for taking her time to sit and chat with me. All of the links are going to be in the show notes. As always, if you have any questions about the P3 mastermind, that's the group coaching program I run, you can go and learn more by clicking the link in the show notes. It's restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule. Appreciate you guys being here. I look forward to chatting with you.