← Restaurant Unstoppable with Eric Cacciatore
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- [00:00]
A
What up Unstoppables? Quick favor to ask before we hit play on today's episode and that is please follow and subscribe to this podcast. Nearly 70% of the people that listen to the show or view it do not subscribe or follow. And you owe it to yourself to do just that. Because if you do, when we get an amazing guest on the show that gets a lot of likes, a lot of shares a lot of views, the algorithm is paying attention and it will push that episode to your feed so you'll get our best content. Not to mention it is absolutely free to you and it is the most impactful thing you can do to support this mission. Mission to inspire, empower and to transform the industry. And I can't do it alone. I need your support. Thank you in advance. Welcome to restaurant unstoppable. For 10 years and over 1, 000 episodes, I've been traveling the country chasing word of mouth leads and having in person only long form discussions with the industry's finest owners and operators. Our mission is to inspire, empower and transform the restaurant industry by bridging the gap between this generation's leaders and the next. Listen to today's guest and so many others and get one step closer to becoming unstoppable. This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Their total Oil management solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Restaurant technologies services over 45,000 customers nationwide. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. This episode is made possible by US Foods. Running a successful restaurant takes more than just great food. With US Foods, you can expect more high quality products, advanced tools and flexible deliveries to grow your business. Their industry leading Moxi platform also does more than just place your US Foods order. It uses AI to help you take control, save time and increase profitability. Visit USfoods.com expect more to learn how to become a US Foods customer one more time, that is USfoods.com expect more private event inquiries are coming in and you're losing them. Unanswered emails, Ignored calls, Leads that vanish before you can close. You're not losing to the competition, you're losing the to the clock. Meet Mia, an AI agent built specifically for private dining. She responds to every lead within seconds 24, 7 with personalized human like messages she knows your venue inside and out, handles the back and forth, updates your CRM automatically, and converts leads you forgot about into bookings. You didn't expect all of this without touching your team's play. Actually, MIA takes 85% of the busy work off your event team and gets fully integrated in under 10 minutes. Stop leaving private dining revenue on the table. Head over to Hermetic AI that's H E R M E T I C A I to learn more and tell them I sent you. If you're an independent restaurant owner building next week's schedule probably comes down to a gut feeling. Guessing if Friday is going to be slow, hoping you're not overstaffed and bleeding labor costs. Restaurant owner and listener of this podcast, Albert Bernie, built Hot Shift to fix just that. Hot Shift pulls in local events, weather, even nearby concert and game schedules. Weighs that against sales history and shows you the forecast labor costs before you even publish the schedule. Go check out hot shift at hot shift pro/unstoppable. That is hotshift pro slash unstoppable with excitement. Allow me to introduce to you today's guest back on the show for a third time. That's how much I like this dude. Owner of Andolini's Worldwide, Mike Bower. My man, Mike. Are you feeling unstoppable today?
- [04:09]
B
I am feeling unstoppable, Eric.
- [04:12]
A
I'm stoked to get into today's conversation. Today I want to cover with you just like, you know, I've been following your YouTube channel. The. The knowledge you're dropping. You're a straight shooter. You know the world of marketing, of technology operations so well, and you go into such a detail. I just kind of want to unpackage it all today. So we're going to cover websites, marketplaces, I. E. Your Ubers, Yelps, you know, of the world, whatever you want to talk about. POS systems, back of house operations, and something I'm really excited about. Need to be better about discussing on the show. AI. So before we dive into those subjects and talk about what you're using and how you're using it, let's get that motivational inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra. What do you got for us?
- [04:52]
B
My quote, especially for the restaurant industry, but for all business, for all life, if you are not impressive by default, you're unimpressive and it's a hard pill to swallow. It super sucks because if you are not, oh my God, you guys, you gotta go. Then you're mid. And mid won't survive in a world of optionality.
- [05:17]
A
Yeah. It's a very competitive world out there. It takes a lot to stand out. You can't just do what everyone else is doing. I mean, what's one thing you think you do, Your concepts you do that helps you stand out?
- [05:31]
B
There's a lot of experience drivers. Each restaurant. I. I seek to have a signature item with an experienced driver. As basic and as tactical as that sounds, I hear a lot of fluff, like, you know, each customer is our family. I'm like, that's not true. They're not your family. They're not there. You hope that you treat them well. Great. But tactically, every restaurant could be like, oh, hey, here's our signature item that we do in a very specialized manner that we add some vegan vigor to. And therefore, there is a call to action worthy of trying us out and potentially returning. And from that perspective, from a very granular, tactical way of looking at it, we are factually creating connection. And that's the difference. That's the difference between mid and. Oh, my God, you guys are in town. Let's go there.
- [06:23]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Great way to get this thing started. So like I said, this is your third time on the show. First time was episode 772. It was a little over almost a year and a half ago now. Your episode was 1186, almost 100 episodes ago. Then you're at 12 locations, seven brands, 300 employees. You're on track to do over 16 million in sales in 2025. Did you. Did you make that happen? Did you hit your goal?
- [06:48]
B
Yeah.
- [06:48]
A
Nice. Congrats. And you also were about a year into unsliced, your digital brand. You had written your book. Was that about. You've been going at it for about two years now.
- [07:00]
B
I wrote the book, came out in 2020, right after Covid.
- [07:03]
A
Right.
- [07:03]
B
And then I never knew, like, I wrote that book with no angle. It was not like, and then I'm gonna do this. It was just my take on this industry has always been like, this is really hard. If I've learned something and I can share and it might help someone else out, then I have a duty to do that. Yeah.
- [07:25]
A
That was the first time I had you on the show when you. About the time you published that book.
- [07:29]
B
And then it just was like, well, people were saying, hey, can you fly out and do help me out? I was like, okay. And then someone else said, hey, can you fly out? We're gonna look at this thing. And then I always kept on saying, well, we do this at the workflow for our restaurants. We do this. We do this. It was really hard in someone else's place to show them, which was a lot of office stuff and mindset stuff. I'm like, we're in a room. Like, this could be done over zoom. And then interestingly enough, I wanted to learn guitar when I turned 40. So I turned 40 and I go to guitar center and I'm learning it in person and I'm like, not learning a thing. I'm trying. I'm in person. I'm like, why is this suck? Why am I not getting like, this isn't that good of a teacher? What if I had a great teacher? And then I out of nowhere I see an ad for Metallica will teach you how to play guitar with musician. I was like, okay. So then I'm doing it on a glorified program at home with my MacBook and tuning my guitar with my MacBook, which was getting me better results than when I was like, hold on, I could do this better at 11 o' clock at night on my own time than with a one to one professional. What if I could do that for other restaurants? And that's when I said, I don't need to be there in front of you to show you my workflow. But if I'm there available at a time where you say, hey, what problems do you have? And what's essentially a Facebook group, I could help more people. And that's what really made me want to do what I do with unsliced.
- [08:54]
A
Yeah, when was that aha moment for you?
- [08:58]
B
When did I do what?
- [08:59]
A
When did this aha. You said you're 40 years old.
- [09:02]
B
I turn, you know, some summer of 2022.
- [09:08]
A
Okay.
- [09:08]
B
And then I focused my effort for a year to say, okay, how does this look? What can I do? All a few different programs in and of myself. And I was like, oh, I see how this could work. And then I built it out in the summer 2023, launched it in November of 2023 to like 30 people who would always comment, hey, can you help me on Instagram? And then all 30 of them posted insane wins doing my stuff. And I was like, all right, there's something here. And then like I officially hard launched it in 2024.
- [09:38]
A
Yeah. What you're describing right now is the transformation economy. And I think you might have mentioned earlier, like the. I think in your opening quote, you're talking about experiences. We were in the experience economy. There's Mike or Joe Pine, author of the Experience Economy, just recently launched the the transformation economy. I'm getting him on the show. Super stoked for that. But his argument is that we're in the. The business of up leveling each other, and that's what you're doing. I think that that is really what we're in. In the game of restaurants, too. People come, they join our team. Our job as owners is to transform not just our team members, but our communities. If you look at it that way, it's just elevating all those around us. And that's what you're doing with unsliced.
- [10:19]
B
I totally agree. And to add to that point, you know, my best GM right now is not the most knowledgeable of wine or beer. He's not even the most personable. And I was like, why is he so good? And it just boiled down to, he's a coach. He's a coach, and he gets all of his staff ideologically bought in to be better. Yeah. And therefore, they kill. And it's like, it's. There's so many misnomers. I got to be the best business owner. I had a business owner talking to me the other day saying, you know, I make it so easy for my guys, and I genuinely felt empathy and sadness for him. It's like, that's not. They never asked you to make it easy. They asked you to make it obvious. They asked you to have the expectations set. They want to be better than they were yesterday. At their core. Everyone does. Everyone wants to be better. It's just. Do they want to be better in this environment for that leader? Yeah. Yeah.
- [11:26]
A
Great way to pop this. We haven't got into what we're here to talk about today.
- [11:29]
B
What.
- [11:29]
A
What you're using and how you're using it to kind of dive into some of the videos I've seen online. I love your stuff. I guess I'll say time and time again, but has anything changed since the last time we spoke? About a year ago. A year and a half ago. 12 locations, seven brands. Do you have any new brands? Are you just focusing on unslice, like, what's going on?
- [11:45]
B
No, I mean, I. My goal is. My primary focus is my restaurants at all times. And what I mean by that is if I'm being the best restaurateur possible, then unsliced just carries over. I'm like, look at this stuff that I just did. You guys want to try it?
- [11:59]
A
So as you're up leveling, you're just paying it forward to the greater community.
- [12:03]
B
Exactly. Got it. So we have another. We have two Things opening in the next six months. One is next month and another is in six months. One is a small location, and they're both, like, not public. I don't know. But. So let me say it with as much. The first one is going to be in an arena which we're very proud about and that we will operate. It's not a vig or anything like that. Even our location in the international airport of Tulsa is not a big. What I mean by vig is like paying a percent of sales with someone else running it. It's us operationally running it. And then by end of this year, early next year, we will have our biggest, most nicest fine dining location, even more prime than our current fine dining location of Prosimo. And we're very much looking forward to that.
- [12:55]
A
So you'll be at a total of 14 locations. And is the new fine dining gonna be a standalone brand?
- [13:03]
B
Yes.
- [13:03]
A
So eight brands. So you're basically adding one brand in two more locations in the correct. Cool. All right, man, let's just get into it. So one of the things, again, I love about the content is you're. You kind of just lay it all out there, man. And something I'm struggling with right now, personally. And what I see online is it's harder and harder to know what's real for content online. So much of the content being put pushed into the world is. Is marketing, and it's. And it's being under the skies, the guise of, like, some expert saying, like, this is the best, but, you know, they're being paid. And I know this is the truth because I have people approaching me offering me these same deals, and I'm like, I want to do journalistic work. I want to do honest, transparent, journalistic work. And it's getting hard to do that because my whole business model hinges on sponsorship. And that was one of the lessons I've had to learn. The hard way is you can't put all of your eggs in one basket. Started this thing 13 years ago. You bought advertising space, and that was the deal. Now it's, we want to have the CEO on the show. We want to work in testimonials. And that's great if it's a product that I love, that I believe in. But sometimes, you know, it's getting to the point where I feel like I don't know if I really love this company the way that they want me to say it, that I love them, which is why I've been turning away sponsors. And I'll be honest, man, it's fucking hard. One of the reasons why I love what you're doing is because you're literally just to. To your point earlier, you're figuring it out, you're trying things, you're failing, and you're saying, that sucks. This is great. This is great. And you're just paying it forward. So, yeah. So you're already kind of like, we need more of that in the world. And you, you make it a point to say in your show, your. Your content, like, I'm not being paid for this. So what's going through your mind?
- [14:45]
B
Well, the. There's people I partner with very rarely, and I will just say, hey, if they come, like, if someone. Again, it's very rare. Like, Ovation has never paid me. I talk about them a lot. People like you must be getting paid. Like, they use my face on their ads at their trade show. They don't pay me. All I ask is, hey, if you see someone who's struggling, tell them about unsliced great. But if they ever sucked, I would bounce on them. Thankfully, they don't.
- [15:17]
A
Yeah.
- [15:18]
B
And on top of that, I'm just like, I don't need the. The 3K, 5K, whatever. It's not gonna move the needle and it's not worth the integrity hit of being like, well, you're only saying that because they paid you. Like, no, it's not. And I'm not coming at this from some moral high ground. I could do that. I could say, hey, my words, my bond. That's true. But on the inverse, it's bad business for me because my whole, you know, promise to anyone who remotely is into my stuff is, this is what I use. I ain't gonna tell you about it unless I'm physically using it. Yep. So if there is someone, there's been times where people are like, hey, we want you to use this point of sale or talk about it. We'll give you big time money. I'm like, guys, I don't use your point of sale. We're already screwed. It's not worth your effort to even remotely, can we do a demo? I'm like, I'm happy to see it. From. As an owner of a business to see a demo I'm not going to look at as a demo to then talk about it. Because even if I think there's merit to it, I gotta have years under my belt using it before I'm gonna be willing to talk about it online. So it's just a failed effort. You wanna talk to me as an Owner, I'll do your demo. But if you wanna talk to me as a. As a paid spokesperson, you guys talk about your stuff better. That's even what I train owners. I'm like, don't go out and hire a marketing agency. Just do your thing with your voice and then I'll get the blowback. Well, I'm not really on camera. And I was like, you know who the first food influencer ever was? Like, oh, it's Dave Fortnite. Hell no. Oh, it's that guy from Vegas. No, it's Dave Thomas. That's the first food influencer speaking about their brand. Like, hey, look at my thing. This is my restaurant. And he's not exactly a model. He's not exactly a voice actor. And here he is never Frozen Patties. I named it after my daughter Wendy. And people are like, great, I trust that guy. Let's buy that burger.
- [17:07]
A
Yeah, no, that's a great point. I mean, this is like the. Been like the longest. Like, warm up into what we're gonna actually talk about. But think. Let's just get into it. So let's start with websites, man. You just recently published a video on this, what you're doing. And, and it's. You're not using, you're not outsourcing your website, are you?
- [17:26]
B
In what regard of. Of the.
- [17:28]
A
Of the restaurant, are you building your own website? It sounds like from the. The content you. You give, the advice you give, you're
- [17:34]
B
you developing Ando pizza runs on WordPress.
- [17:38]
A
That's right.
- [17:38]
B
That I have worked with a company that does international work, but they're here in Tulsa and, And I trust and it's. I'll tell them, they'll give them a plug. Forefathers group, impeccable website designers. And they did our website. And so I have them in the mix and they built our macro website for the restaurant group on Shopify, of all things, which not because we wanted to sell product. It's a really good base website. People don't realize that Shopify is really. If you're like, I need to build a website, I should use square or Shopify is super good. Side note. And then we built the external individual pages linked to it from the tree on WordPress. And WordPress has a lot of variability. But I'll say openly, there's a caveat today, maybe I'm going card before the horse here, Eric, but there's a lot of people putting wrapping paper on the present of their positive. And it's like. It is a controversial take, but I don't love putting an online ordering platform on on Toast. I'm like, Toast is online ordering. If you're using Toast, might as well just go with Toast and have a talk to a if you're using Square, no need to put pop menu on top of it. You can, you're totally righteous to do that, but now you're double dipping. It's a hat on a hat, right?
- [19:04]
A
You're probably paying for both too. Yeah, well with Toast you can turn on the feature, right? You're not necessarily paying for online ordering.
- [19:09]
B
With Rutos, you're going to pay for online ordering as a module at like 50 bucks a month instead of like this, you know, loyalty program on top of it at 300 to 500 bucks a month.
- [19:23]
A
Got it. So right now you're using, you know, you're building your own website on WordPress. You're outsourcing the actual build to Forefathers group. Why not go with a platform like Spot Hopper or Owner or Pop Menu? This episode is brought to you by Restaurant Technologies, the leader in automated cooking oil management. Unstoppable restaurant owners know which services to keep in house and which services to outsource and oil management is one of those things you should outsource. Their Total Oil Management Solution is an end to end closed loop automated system that delivers, monitors, filters, collects and recycles your cooking oil, eliminating one of the dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. Create a more efficient food service operation and ensure consistent food quality with a safer, smarter and sustainable cooking oil solution. Restaurant technology services over 45,000 customers nationwide including countless past guests on the show. Automate your oil and elevate your kitchen by visiting RTI Inc.com or call 888-779-5314 to get started. This episode is made possible by US Foods. It takes more than great food to run a kitchen these days with US Foods, more means consistently high quality products, industry leading tools, inflexible deliveries that let you grow your business on your schedule. Whatever your goals, US Foods helps you turn them into reality. As a US Foods customer, you'll gain access to their industry leading moxy platform which doesn't just make it easy to place your US Foods order but but it uses AI powered technology to help you take more control of your business and increase profitability. You can also explore the latest issues of Food Fanatics magazine from US Foods. In each issue you'll find real world success stories, bold culinary inspiration and practical profit boosting ideas you can put to work immediately. Visit usfoods.com expectmore to learn how to become a US Foods customer again. That's usfoods.com expect more.
- [21:33]
B
Well I first off the owner guy owner is a solid ass business. With that said, if you're brand new and you're like hey I want to get something and my website sucks, that's viable. It's viable but for us I want to really control my data and the second you bring anyone in, you want to speak a to a the thing you lose functionality every time you get someone else in the mix of your point of sale. Just straight up that's a fact. You can't mess with it if you like on the most simple basic tactical level. And also this is the value proposition of what I bring is like I know because I'm doing it. If you bring another thing in on top of Toast let's say then when you say orders done it can't text the customer orders done that functionality is lost. When you bring in a thanks or a pop menu or an owner if you have a discount code you can now it's like really confusing. It's confuses the hell out of it because it's not A talking to A, it's A talking to B. It's why Mac became Mac because it was the same hardware developer, was the software developer and as opposed to Microsoft who had the hardware being built by Dell and the software being built by Microsoft. So there's always a disconnect not across the board but at some point now if you are brand spanking new and you're like I don't have a website, I don't got nothing. I don't know a better option today than Toast. I'm not being paid by them to say that because you have a, you have a one shop. Stop that I Holy God that I wish I would have had that day one I just wish I would have had if you're a single unit, you got your website, you got your payroll, you got your scheduler and it's all on one one name and password. Holy God. Is that.
- [23:23]
A
Yeah, it streamlines a lot of the
- [23:24]
B
BS out of the mix.
- [23:25]
A
Yeah, I think that's really important stuff and I have some thoughts I'm going to share to the end that kind of reflect on this. I think I agree with everything you say. One thing about owner to your point, phenomenal technology. But the reason why if I'm hearing you correctly, you you've chose to go with a native build is because you want the data and the functionality where those are two big reasons you lose a lot of functionality with owner. And from my conversations with Gould, he optimized that platform for QSR and quick service. Like he that is, it was first an SEO platform that evolved to offer online ordering. And what he's trying to do is to create a path of least resistance from discoverability to ordering from your website. So if you want to, if you're a fine dining restaurant or a full service restaurant with a lot of events going on and you want to cost, you want to create the, the, you want to have the feel of your own website reflect your brand, you can't do any of that. So it's something I think. What are your thoughts on that statement?
- [24:26]
B
I completely agree. And I think a lot of these companies will say, hey, and we'll take care of your marketing for you owners. Not overtly. They'll say they'll help it, but you have again, pop menu and no ill will to these people. But they'll say hey, we'll hook up and now you'll have your marketing. And that's just not true. There's hey, we'll have an email service or a social media scheduler in the mix. But that would say when someone says we're gonna do your marketing for you, that's like saying, and we'll do your workouts for you. It does not work that way. They're like, we will provide you a workout plan. But at the core of marketing, you have to know what you, what your message and brand is and then you gotta do the reps. You cannot outsource sit ups. You cannot outsource marketing and have it work. Every marketing agency is going to come in and do three videos where they sell to you or in this case, me as the owner, as their customer, when it's my customer that I want to appease, not me. So the marketing agency will, even if it's like a pop menu or whoever will say, hey, give us some photos and we'll post it online. That's not marketing. It is, but it's bad. You have to do it at scale, with connection. And a few photos of food does not do that. It's too obligatory. And most of the time the photos that they're not saying, hey, these photos are garbage, guys. We need like you need a photo shoot under your belt before we're going to push this. Even doordash has the wherewithal to say, hey, no, we're going to send a photographer to you to actually take some halfway decent photos. And that's better than the schlock I see for so many independent restaurants who are taking fluorescent top down photos of food that's all cut up and mashed in a styrofoam box and then posting it online thing like we did social media, we did it. And that's not everyone. I don't want to condescend, but the point of it has to be like hey, here's how I make this. Three things you didn't know about falafel. Like whatever it is, it's connection and humanity. And the they hired their social media girl who did two videos a week is not enough to move the needle. And I swear to God I know no agency. I'm going to tell anyone who listens to this who is a marketing agency. I'm going to tell you exactly what to do that no one's doing. And if you did it, people would hire you first, learn their brand, their message and if they don't have one, you got to work with them to create it. Then film the owner with hooks content and call to actions. A lot of it, a crap ton of it and stuff in the restaurant, enough that you have enough tonics to do two videos a day at a minimum on Instagram. And then once you've built a base and then you see what's working, do more of it. If it's whenever this owner is talking to this customer or when they green screen, learn what works, do it a lot, which means you have to do it like a hundred times before you can see what works. Then do a call to action with a many chat trigger and then direct message people every single day that followed you. If a marketing agency was going to really sit in it and direct message people, not like that, get the owner, hey this, this customer is really interested. Send them an offer, do a voice memo, do this and you were connecting the shit out of your experience to the customer, then it would have merit. But no marketing agency has that level of time, effort or dedication to do it or at a price point that's not just egregious and already ruins the customer acquisition cost and lifetime value. That's why it has to be done by the owner. And if you want to make more money, Mr. Restaurant Owner, start direct messaging your followers. And if you think it's too like candy ass or lame, then that's you being lazy. And if you accept, okay, I'm not going to be lazy and voice message them so they know it's you as opposed to a direct as opposed to just copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.
- [28:24]
A
Yeah, you also kind of slid it in there many chat signature. So after doing a bunch of content, seeing the patterns, then you said 100 of these. So that would be, you know, 50 days of consistent content looking for patterns. You're then going to follow that message, that piece of content with a call to action, using a mini chat signature. And I'm pretty sure you're talking about like, hey, like if you, if this appeals to you, drop the word, you know, appetizer in the comments and we'll send you what, like, what's the offer?
- [28:56]
B
So for me, here's what I've. My tech stack is a little advanced, but it's still doable. So. And again, I'm going to give the keys to the castle right now. Toast email, super solid email program if you are entry level. At this point in our game, we are not entry level. And I use Klaviyo. Klaviyo is super, super awesome email that is connected to Toast. It's the first one to do it. In fact, if you hit up Toast and say, hey, what's the best email program I should use? They're going to tell you it's Klaviyo. All right? Now if you're like, what the hell is Klaviyo? Klaviyo. When you are on Tick Tock and you see, hey, get this shirt at 50 off. And you swipe and you click on it and then it goes to Shopify and then you start getting emails about men's shirts if you're a man or women's shirts if you're a female. That is Klaviyo connected to Shopify.
- [29:43]
A
So that's geotagging.
- [29:45]
B
It's no, it's not even geotagging. It's just, it knows, hey, because this person bought a men's shirt, we send them into the male nurture sequence.
- [29:54]
A
Got it?
- [29:55]
B
So in this scenario, I say comment garlic and I will send you a link for free. Garlic dots. But what happens is they put in their name, their email, their birthday, we send them an email for this completely free appetizer, not discount, completely free. And now they're in our nurture sequence as well as our broadcast messages in perpetuity for the cost of this. And because it now if they're, they've already done it, it already knows their email and name. It doesn't allow them to do it. Just like if you're like, well, I tried to do this discount for Bomba's socks. That was a Klaviyo email connected to Shopify. And because you're like, well I've already got my Bomba socks at 20 off. I can't do it again because it already knows my email. Unless you want to go through all the effort of creating a new email, it's not going to work.
- [30:45]
A
So what's the cost of garlic knots for you? 25 cents? 50 cents?
- [30:49]
B
Very, very low. Yes. Yeah.
- [30:50]
A
That is a very great return on like that return on that investment. You know, the, the direct channel to communicate to somebody for the. As long as they're alive or on your list. As long as you're alive. This is so valuable.
- [31:03]
B
That's what's up. And that. So the other, the other why reason why this matters and I want you to really wrap your head around it if you're thinking about doing this yourself. Anyone who's listening is. People are hungry twice a day for lunch or dinner. For most of us, if we're not a breakfast place, let's say. So that means if I do like hey, buy now, but they're seeing it at 11 o' clock at night, I lost the moment. If I could say comment this to get it next time, like oh, that would be cool. They commented, they get the email, it's 11 o' clock at night, but they could use it next Friday. That takes the time lock out of the mix, which is a thing. When I first started doing TikTok ads I was like, I gotta have these only go from like 11 to 5pm or else it's worthless. And I was like, well what if I could do this in a manner where I'm giving something to use in a future time? Then I could sell it 24 hours a day.
- [32:01]
A
Yeah, that, that tool you're talking about, you said klaviyo C L A V
- [32:05]
B
I O K L A V I O.
- [32:08]
A
Got it. I'm gonna link to that. So we kind of started with websites and that brought us down this world of like the thing is today it's all connected, you know, digital and in store. Like point of sale is isn't just in your four walls. It's all one thing. It's kind of bleeds together. Safe to say, but should we. Is there anything else relative to websites? You know, you're. It sounds like you're endorsing the tools on your video you mentioned. Spot hopper, owner.com, pop menu, you safe to say you kind of endorse those three in terms of whether or not you're doing it yourself.
- [32:42]
B
I am not. If I think a lot of companies are saying, hey, you don't know what you're doing, and we do. And it's a dangerous proposition. It does not necessarily work. I am not a big fan of certain ones. I don't wish them any ill will. But I think Spot on and Spot Hopper are two very different things. Spot on is a pos. Spot Hopper is like a. Again, I call it gift wrap on top.
- [33:10]
A
Did I say Spot?
- [33:12]
B
I. I get lost in the two. I was like, spot on is the point of hand. So.
- [33:16]
A
So if I said I'm gonna say Spot Hopper, but if I said spot on, I apologize.
- [33:19]
B
And then there's also pop menu. And so again, it sounds like, I think if you got a relationship with them and it's working great, let's even use Slice. Slice is an even better example. Slice factually screwed over a ton of restaurants. Factually. This is the realness. If you don't know this, I got no problem saying this.
- [33:41]
A
Here's why I like talking to you.
- [33:43]
B
Slice actually did this dumbass move of saying, hey, we know how to game Google better than anyone else. You should give a slice. And they had the best booth at the trade shows and the best branding and just chef's kiss, right? But then they're like, we're gonna get you a crap ton of orders and we're gonna do it because we have gamed Facebook and Google and meta and all this. So then they're like, great, we just need to get some manager access to your Google. And somehow, because I granted manager access, they took admin access and then they switched Ando Pizza, like, my website. So when you clicked on Google, it didn't go to my website, it went to theirs. They made that. Even if you try to go to Ando Pizza, it went to their website. And I had to call like, what are you guys doing? What is this? Oh, you don't want more business? Like, no, I want ancillary business from you, not primary business from you. Well, what's the problem, guys? Switch it back. Well, we don't know. Like, hey, guys, I gotta tell you, I'm gonna have a lawyer in the next hour if we can't switch this back. I'm not kidding. Like, well, okay, here's. And I got to the point, guys. I'm booking a flight and flying to your office. This is not how we do business. Oh, okay. Well, we're sorry. Like, that's how bad it was. And I wasn't the only one. There's a litany of people like that who had that same situation happen where they took over the Website to then route it to someone in a third world country to then call into the restaurant and place the order over the phone. And the person like Dembezimo, saying the words wrong, getting the order wrong, and that they would then. So essentially someone would order on Slice, it would go to a third world call center, the call center would call the restaurant. And it was all this big workaround in case there was a mom and pop pizza place who were such dumbasses that they didn't have a website at all, that we could make a website, have someone from India call the restaurant, place the order over the phone, and then someone else could come and pick up the order. Or maybe have some type of third delivery party service delivery. That was the intention to keep costs low, down to $2 if they just came and picked it up. That's the, that was the, the plan. It went way off track. And then when people were like, oh, screw these Slice guys, they started calling up every single pizzeria in America aggressively. Like, why aren't you using us? It's not for me. What, you don't like money? Well, you guys actually took over one of my friends websites. Well, that's not. I mean, we did that a few years ago, but come on. Like it was egregious. Like the way Yelp ads is egregious. And that's why I boil everything down in this business. Are you a partner or are you a pariah? Do you look at restaurant owners as just mouth breathing dumbasses awaiting the kill, or do you respect the acumen and hard work they put in to get to this point? And here's the thing, Ain't nothing about them up to that point that makes me think they are reputable. Now today maybe they're better, but I'm burned. Now there is a lot of people on the east coast that love Slice,
- [36:39]
A
that it built like they're bringing the marketplace too, right?
- [36:43]
B
They do really well. For the pizzeria owner on the east coast who has the mom and pop slice shop, they did well there. So if you're still monetizing and making good business, good money, hats off, run with it. But if you're a regular turn and burn place in Sheboygan, it ain't gonna work. And if you're a premier pizza place anywhere else in America, you have no business getting with them. You should be doing it on your own, with your own point of sale. Yeah.
- [37:12]
A
So we're kind of touching on three things right now. Website, point of sale, and marketplace. I was. We're kind of just drifting, which is fine. This is how I like to talk. I do want to bring to the conversation. I do have Marketplace. I was one of the things I want to dive deeper in on. But before we move fully into Marketplace, point of sale. We've been dancing around it. You're using Toast on the video that I caught that you produced on your YouTube channel.
- [37:36]
B
You.
- [37:36]
A
You touched on Toast Square. I believe it was co Clover on Touch Bistro.
- [37:42]
B
Yeah, there's Clover Touch Bistro Lightspeed.
- [37:46]
A
Yeah. Toast, by far the number one recommended on the show. And that's really all I have to go off of is like word of mouth referral. I'm just my, my goal with this podcast is to fish for leads, fish for recommendations to get data to see. Okay, what are the trends? Toast is by far the most recommended. Square is a strong second place. Clover, Touch Bistro, Lightspeed. Almost never hear about those from people being referred to on the show, I guess. And I was going to say this for later, but I'm just getting into it now. I get concerned sometimes that overwhelming majority of restaurant owners are on two POS systems.
- [38:26]
B
You mean and it's potential negative because then they'll monopolize it and then try and price gouge the restaurants.
- [38:31]
A
I think that's a big part of it. To your point, one of the points you made on your video is that all the benefits of Toasts fantastic technology downside is if you're in Toast's world your balls deep, you're all the way in and there's no getting out. And if they choose to change things like they did in 2024 where they decided to hike the credit card processing rates, you're kind of like shit. And they're really good at getting people to bite on their arguably predatory loans that direct debit straight from your income. You know, which I mean, I get it. Sometimes your freezer goes down, you need to get the money fast. There's some sketchy things that they do sometimes that I've heard about. And this is one of the reasons why I stay away from taking them on as a sponsor or pursuing them as sponsors because I want to be able to talk about the bad stuff too. You.
- [39:28]
B
Let's talk about this. I will say on the toast side of things, here's my knowledge of Toast Capital. Toast Capital at least is pulling the what you owe commiserate to what you sold, not like a hey, it's the third of the month. Fu pay me so there. I wish I would have had that when I Started because a lot of the leases I had with point of sales, I got to the end of the lease and they're like, no, you still owe us money. I was like, what do you mean? And I have, you know, AI to evaluate my lease or a lawyer. It's like, no, I don't even have a dollar buyout. No, you still owe us. I was like, we'll take it back. Well, they'll have to do a pickup fee and you still owe this. I'm like, holy God. Like there was a lot of predatory leasing back in the day. Now I'm not saying that to justify Toast. I think Toast, we're basically believing that they have a partner based interest to be king of the hill. And if they do violate that, like taking up a percentage here there they're going to argue is just inflation or whatever it is. And for my benefit, majority of my restaurants are grandfathered into the pre interchange system. I have that benefit. I'm not going to deny I have that benefit. If you're still not on Interchange, I don't think there's a good reason to go to it. All right, again that's straight talk across the board. And I will say they their pizza as of today is not nearly as good as Hunger Rush from a user interface perspective, but they're updating that with a pizza beta that I've heard about and I'm going to be checking out in the next few weeks. So that's the negative there and I think a lot of things they do are a solid B B plus and it's it. It dumbfounds me. Like I talked about Klaviyo right now. I shouldn't be talking about Klaviyo. They should just update their setup to have a slightly better email program. Their email program is a B plus. If they just fixed nurture sequences being a possibility and pop ups on WordPress, they're just as good as Klaviyo. Those two small things are holding them back from being the best and they could just not lose market share to Klaviyo. Same thing for like why does thanks exist? Because their loyalty program inside of Toast is not as good as a loyalty program out of thanks. But thanks is trying to connect it and it goes sideways, especially for a restaurant group. Simple dumb things that Toast could do to win the pack. Now the other guys in the mix, Clover is doing a. For the longest time Toast had the best handheld. They still do. Clovers has all this other like, well we have this handheld, the disk terminal, this big one. The Small one. So if you want a lot of equipment options, Clover's the best right now. But it's a lot like talking about back when Samsung had a better camera than iPhone. Are you really going to go to Samsung? Because they have one thing better than your whole iPhone. IOS setup with Apple Fitness and your Apple TV and your MacBook connecting to this, like they're doing an Apple setup compared to most other people who are like, hey, we have this one thing that's really good. Square started as a POS for cafes and for hair salons and now they're trying to like shine it up. Like, no. We also could do all these other things, but they didn't enter the game creating thousands of force modifiers. So their ecosystem isn't built to do that. It's just not. Now we get it to light speed. Lightspeed ain't trying to be Toast. Lightspeed is for, oh, I'm a golf course that has a restaurant. Great. We could do both of those on premise and have it go to the same thing and have it actually make sense. So that's what Lightspeed is. And if you're like, I ain't trying to do online delivery, I'm not trying to do like 10 level deep forced modifiers. Like it's an inception.
- [43:29]
A
Almost like an entertainment situation.
- [43:32]
B
Exactly. Yeah. So that's light speed and that leaves you with the slew of spot on, positouch, touch, bistro, blah, blah, blah. And if those things have a terminal on site, you're already screwed. It's just, it's not cloud based. It's not going to do what it needs to do.
- [43:52]
A
What I thought spot on was cloud based.
- [43:55]
B
I'm saying in general, if you have just some run of the mill X pos.
- [44:00]
A
Got it.
- [44:00]
B
That's still doing a terminal. It's antiquated technology. Now if it's not and it's cloud based, at least it's better. But the fact of the matter is that they're going to have probably 30 to 50 developers hoping to sell this product as opposed to Toast, who has 1300 developers. And they are not trying to sell the terminal, they're trying to sell the ecosystem. So it's not about, hey, let's sell this thing, and hopefully they don't ever hit us up for help online.
- [44:29]
A
Yeah, and I think what, what you alluded to hit the nail on the head for me is that if there's two companies, Square and Toast, I think ultimately the restaurant industry loses because there's no, there's no competition. Right A diverse market is a good market, creates competition. I think there should be options. It just creates a lot of power in the industry. And I worry about there just being two behemoth options at the very top. I think we're like three or four years away from that, where others just won't be able to compete.
- [45:02]
B
You're totally right. And. And if I'm Toast, I would lean into it and do more things better. So I don't even have any competition. And I would take any little app that's doing something good, I would buy them, and I would have my guys replicate and build it better. Just like Apple or just like Instagram, you know, either said, hey, we'll try and buy Snapchat, or we'll just do it ourselves.
- [45:23]
A
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
- [45:26]
B
But in terms of the fear of having the big boy, I'm completely there. I say that to them, like, hey, you guys have got all my stuff. I. The only thing I don't have with them, again, I was speaking super candidly. I don't have payroll with them. Their payroll is really solid. But if there is. And when it comes to insurance for people that have quit or moved on, they refer you to Simply Insured. This is super tactical. If you're with, like, adp, they handle all that for you. It's just part of the service. So it's a lot more due diligence and effort for certain things. Again, Toast Payroll, Sal, Like A plus, a million on certain things, and then a few things that are like B plus are just enough of a pain in the ass that I don't want to have my people, like, right facing down stuff.
- [46:25]
A
What's better, having A pluses across the board with no integration or having a fully integrated one stop shop, one Pat, one password, one bill with an A, couple A's and a few B's. Like, it does A versus B in best in class. Really? Is it so much better that it's worth having multiple platforms is the question.
- [46:49]
B
I would say that's a great way to phrase it. It is for me. If you got to build it and you had the time to do so, if you got nothing and you're starting up, it's not worth it. The integrations, the amount of time ever, like getting seven shifts to connect properly with Toast took a bunch of time. And when you're opening a restaurant, you don't got that time right.
- [47:12]
A
Yeah. Which kind of brings us to one of the other things I wanted to talk about. Backup House Solutions. Solutions. You're pretty outspoken about Keeping it simple. Stupid. I think your back of a house or operating system is a whiteboard.
- [47:26]
B
Yes.
- [47:26]
A
Is there any other technology using backup house?
- [47:30]
B
No.
- [47:31]
A
You do use seven shifts. Labor management.
- [47:34]
B
I mean like from the labor management side. Yes. If you're saying do my guys like go and log in the. Anything. There's no iPad on my line.
- [47:44]
A
When I think of like back of house, I think really anything that kind of controls prime costs. Right. I think I would throw labor into back of house because it's the management responsibility. Whether you're a kitchen manager, maybe front of house, managers separate, you can look at it, but just operations in general, beyond point of sale and marketing.
- [48:01]
B
So like I've, I've messed with me's for our prep kitchen because of scaling items. It's really good at that. But it's not like the beauty of my costing cards is that I have a single sheet. Not even, not the costing cards, but my, my operational build cards. Whether it's a regular ass cocktail or a three different size pizza that's on one eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, I don't know anything else that could do that. It's a spreadsheet. It's not magic, but spreadsheet. When you complicated people with, you know, dirty hands and fingers or water or whatever it is, have to go reach for the iPad. The iPad breaks multiple points of contact. It doesn't work when you have the laminated sheet and people are passing around, we have the printed sheet. It wasn't working. That's why I was like, this. Whiteboards work at hospitals. Why would it not work for us? So I made a glorious, perfect whiteboard. And the cool thing is like if I change something ain't hard, just print a new one for 40 bucks and put it on the walk. It's.
- [49:01]
A
I know, I know. You give that out. Where do people go to find this whiteboard?
- [49:04]
B
If you want, I follow me on Instagram at Mikey Bouch and I do a whole live training about every two weeks to three weeks. And I show people, I don't know when this is. When is this gonna air?
- [49:20]
A
Three weeks?
- [49:21]
B
Well, I have two things I'm doing. I have a whole. I'm gonna do essentially a live intensive of unsliced on August 3rd and 4th. And I'm doing that where you, if you've ever even been remotely curious about what unsliced is, I'm doing it for 200 bucks. And that's a six hour intensive.
- [49:40]
A
Live, digital or in person.
- [49:41]
B
Live on zoom and giving away the whiteboard and giving away P. Ls and spreadsheets and all that stuff. So people, anyone, anyone in the world could get in and do this. I have people who hit me up from third world countries, people who are really down under. Like, I just, I really want to do, you know, these programs. I just don't have the effort or time. I'm like. So I thought, what if I did something that anyone else in the world at the low price point could see what the program is in a crash course intensive perspective and get operational, get their. Get their act together and start moving. So I'm going to do that on August 3rd and 4th. I'm calling it the time to own Summit and I'm going to do that. And if you want to do the whiteboard, I explain in depth how to use it, follow me online. And I do them like every other Tuesday usually where I explain that. Also I give out my AI prompts that I use for claw, GPT and my own AI that's going to be
- [50:38]
A
the first week of. Is that Tuesday, Wednesday.
- [50:43]
B
The time to own summit is going to be August 3rd and 4th, which is a Monday and Tuesday.
- [50:48]
A
This episode goes live on the third. I might have to bump it up a week early for you, man, so we can drive some traffic to it.
- [50:54]
B
It. Well, I. I'd love that too. Yeah. And I just want again, the. My goal, my macro goal with everything I do with it, whether it's the customer at the restaurant or other restaurant owners, is how can I lead with value and the mission and let monetization follow later. Yeah.
- [51:15]
A
And that's Mikey Bouch. M I K E Y B A U S C H at Mikey Bouch. If you want to follow him on Instagram, I will try to get this live a week early to help you drive the traffic to that. Oh, awesome.
- [51:29]
B
Very, very cool. Thank you.
- [51:29]
A
Yeah, of course. So go ahead.
- [51:32]
B
I. I defer to you.
- [51:34]
A
So one thing you point out, which I think is really important too, in terms of back of house, which I go back and forth on this, I think some people. I think you're an exception, Mike. I gotta say, I think you're an exception. I think that you're very tech oriented. You like operations, you like marketing. I don't think all restaurant tours gravitate towards like the technical side of things. They. A lot of them gravitate towards relationships.
- [51:58]
B
Right.
- [51:58]
A
They're more social, emotional. Not to say that you aren't those things, but they gravitate more in that direction. I think there is something Nice about going with a R365 or a restaurant assistance pro. But I do think that it's really important to know what you're in for when you sign up for those platforms. If your goal is to scale to get to seven units and you're, you got venture capital back, you're, you're already rich, you're opening a restaurant and you want a step by step step system that's fully integrated, that's connected, you will never build something on your own. Likely that these, these are proven systems. Maybe that's more true statement five years ago, but the technology has approved a lot since then. See where I'm going with this, it's, it's a heavy lift to get on board with those. And I think it's really important to know that.
- [52:44]
B
I think I know very, very few restaurant owners that go in with venture capital money and a massive, like not
- [52:50]
A
even venture capital, but like you're already rich. Like this is like your, like you're, you got the money. Maybe you're, you, you come from a family with money. You can invest in a, a technology. You got three years, four years of operating capital in the bank. Like you, I don't know.
- [53:07]
B
I'm saying you have your money really binary and basic. Yeah, because I'm very tech focused in some aspects and not in others. If the technology proves a minimum five times its cost, I'm on board for it. I'm on board for it. So if, let's say again, people come to me all the time with extra chef from Toast and I'm like, are you using it? They're like, well, kind of. We put some recipes in it. I'm like, okay, well, you're at 200, 300 bucks a month. Let's say you didn't use it for 10 months, you're at 3,000 bucks. Let's say you got two stores now we're at 6,000 bucks. 6,000 bucks means times five. Did you save $30,000 or create $30,000? Save or create. Saving is hard. Creating is also really hard. $30,000 because of this app on inventory. And that would mean that you were like, oh no, we can't buy. We're. Someone's stealing the cherry tomatoes. It says we bought too many. I'm like, what are you doing with that knowledge? Because if you can't buy 24 beers, sell 20, but you have two left and then have the wherewithal in your setup to know we have two beers missing and then do something about it it and actualize the data that it's a worthless data metric and most owners don't even get to that point. Sure as hell not the pizzerias to know. Oh, between half pizza, full size slices and everything in between. This is how much we went over on mozzarella. When I'm like just pre portion your mozzarella and have it under a camera. Like there's the technology camera system and pre portion or a whiteboard that says this is what we need to do today. Because the inventory game where people are like, we gotta do inventory. I spend like 5 to 25 hours on inventory. This is a controversial take, but I'm like, If you have 25 hours to kill, I'd rather you do revenue creation than trying to save. Like if you have your portion incorrect, you have your brand tight, you have camera systems verifying. And then you know what your food cost is because you're taking cash out of the bank and cash into the bank and you're aware of that now you know your food costs. What is the goal of the inventory? Like what's the goal? And most owners can't even get it up and operational, let alone the goal. So we get right to Restaurant365, which I bought it, I was like, oh, ready to rock. Let's do it. All gung ho. And it's chart of accounts. Well, I don't give a about the chart of accounts. Like that's, that's the first thing you log in. This is a glorified accounting program with other, you know, not the Swiss army knife, but the scissors for a scheduling program and at this program and that. And then you got to have someone dedicated for six months to a year to onboard it, whether on site. So much so that there's services that will call people who have Restaurant365 like Hey, you got that? Do you want us to like set it up for you? So they don't even have their own people setting up, they have other firms setting it up for restaurant owners at another cost of another thousands upon thousands of dollars. I'm like, guys, what was so Horribly wrong with QuickBooks or QuickBooks Desktop? For, for that matter? Like here's a again, we're a big fancy restaurant group. We work on QuickBooks Desktop and we don't pay the fee every month. That's how analog we could still be. Because I'm like, where's the value? Where's the money? And now if something could generate money, I'm all in. If it doesn't and the system works as is Then what are we doing this for? Some ego play?
- [56:36]
A
I think it'd be interesting to have you engage Bob Sloop, who's somebody who's very active in my community, who is a controller, CTO type who like advocates for an enterprise solution. But he sees it through the lens of a, as a, you know, accountant, I think. I don't know if he's, he's not a cpa, but he's a cto and I'd be interested to hear that conversation. He, this is not like, I gotta be honest, man, I, I'm here to, to capture advice. Like I, I don't own, run restaurants. So I have to the hear in different perspectives. Right. And just track that and let my listeners decide to deal with it what they want. But that'd be a really fun conversation between the two of you, I hear.
- [57:18]
B
I have no antipathy towards these people. I want them to make money. I want them to have a great life. I'm just saying my personal experience, I've met a lot of owners who have used these things. I have like, oh yeah, we got, we got restaurant 365 to work. My great. How long would it take? About 10 months. Yeah, it was like my wife was doing it for like seven of the months and then we got it. I'm like, okay, what's the file? It's pretty good. I'm all right. Was those seven months better than if you just did QuickBooks? Yeah, it's almost like they, they hiked up the mountain and they scaled it. There's a lot more people who bought it, spent all this time and effort and never got it to work, started
- [57:51]
A
hiking and died halfway up. Frozen.
- [57:53]
B
Yeah, it's the Mount Everest of apps.
- [57:55]
A
No, I, I hear that argument a lot. And I, I do recommend that if somebody is looking to go with an enterprise solution, I. If you are scaling, if you're at the right point, if you're at three or four locations and you're bringing in money and you're trying to get to like 10 locations in a few years. Consider a fractional executive who is experienced with that, who you don't have to have, who won't come with a six figure paycheck, but they, their job is managing that software. Hire cto, a fractional CTO and have them onboard it for you. And then they just tell you what to do, like what they need from you. Do you agree or disagree with that?
- [58:31]
B
I'm gonna blow up all that real quick because here's something I'm taking, here's Where I'm at right now.
- [58:37]
A
Here's the painful truth about private dining inquiries. Most of them die in your inbox. Your team's already spread thin, so when an event lead comes in, especially after hours, nobody jumps on it fast enough. The prospect moves on, the booking goes to the venue down the street, and you never even knew you were in the running. Now let's play the what if game. What if you had a team member who never clocked out, who responded to every private event inquiry in seconds and every single time, no matter the hour? That's Mia, an AI agent built specifically to convert private dining leads into booked events. Mia gets trained on your venue and integrated with your CRM in under 10 minutes. From that moment on, she is working. She sends personalized human like messages to the leads the second they come in. She answers questions about your space menus, the availability, with the confidence of your best tenured salesperson. She nurtures the leads that when cold and reactivates past guests year after year automatically. No input from you, no follow up reminders, no drop balls. MIA handles 85% of the busy work your event team dreads so that they can focus on what actually requires human touch. She doesn't sleep, she doesn't forget. And she is constantly refining her approach to close more deals over time. This is not a chatbot. This is a purpose built AI agent that treats your private dining room like the revenue engine it's meant to be. Stop leaving private dining revenue on the table. Head over to Hermetic H E R M E T I C A I to book your demo today. Tell them I sent you. If you're an independent restaurant owner, building next week's schedule probably comes down to gut feeling. Guessing if Friday is going to be slow, guessing how many cooks you need, hoping you're not overstaffed and bleeding labor costs. We've all been there. That's why I've invested in Hot Shift restaurant. Unstoppable community member and founder of Hot Shift. Albert wanted to stop guessing and he wanted to stop paying five different subscriptions that never speak to each other. He built Hot Shift because he needed it himself, running his own restaurant. And here's the cool thing. Hot Shift does not replace your manager's judgment. It feeds it. It pulls in your local event calendar, weather, even ticket sales for nearby concerts and games, and weighs that against your historical sales for that exact day alongside the eight weeks leading up to it to actually project how busy you'll be. I'm telling you, Albert's a smart dude. Then it shows you the forecasted labor cost percentage before you publish anything. After the shift, Hot Shift shows you forecast versus actual. So you're getting sharper every single sh, not just guessing. Next Monday, if you want to stop guessing and start scheduling with actual data, go to Hot Shift Pro slash Unstoppable. That's Hot Shift Pro slash unstoppable.
- [61:27]
B
The world is everyone's like, oh, AI, it does this, but it can't do this. Like people are using AI, there's like three levels of AI and people who have adopted it are still at level one, by and large. And I mean that you, you created a cloud project or a GPT project or a GPT to your business that has loaded up some information. That's where most people who are using it are at. So they have a GPT or a cloud project. Now that's all well and good, like, hey, I wanted to clean up this email or give me some prompts for Facebook. Cool. Copy paste. The next level with Claude that is occurring right now is going to Claude cowork, where it's going onto your hard drive and then creating a cloud skill and potentially putting that skill in code. Now those things are actively occurring in a lot of the software as a service people that are trying to create these apps to the solve. I'm telling you right now, everything that we do on a computer can't be automated and then done so much so that I saw saw a big time business owner who was putting out a crap ton of content and I investigated the hell out of him and I finally got to give up that heat. I'm like, how are you doing 800 different pieces of content? And I got with his team and he told me, oh, we have Claude as the Claude brain that has a Mac mainframe that connects through Claude to this app, this app and this app and it tells them all to do through Claude skills that whenever I videotape this, it'll then cut it. And whenever I say XYZ thing and then puts them on B roll, we're not talking op his clip, we're talking sub putting B roll into it whenever he says a certain thing and then automatically exporting it to drive, then automatically sending that to their social media platform and automatically creating a caption and then someone just approves it all on autopilot. The same thing happens with their accounting. It's connected to Excel, which is automatically taking CSV files, sending it if there's a variable, it's then sending it as an email to these people with the context like anything that you could physically say out loud. And then I do this and then I copy cut it, then I paste it over here and then I do this over here. Is not years away, is months away. What I'm saying today is going to be laughable. In five years it's going to be like, oh wow, in six months. And people are going to adopt it. So my point is, is all these apps are in a crap ton of trouble because everything that people are doing functionally is going to become a crap ton easier here. It's just the ability of the prompt.
- [63:53]
A
I've been sitting on this for the whole conversation because I want to wrap up with the future. I think we're kind of at the last section now. So so far we've, we've touched on everything that I wanted to talk about. We talked about a little bit about websites, pos comp systems. We talked a little bit about the back of house. We kind of touched on marketplaces. I want to get your take on DoorDash versus DoorDash Drive and Uber versus Uber Direct and how you can use Uber and DoorDash just for the delivery only, not the, you know, benefit from their delivery like infrastructure and not necessarily have them be your marketplace. I think that's really important. But you know, you just touched on something really important that this. I think right now, if you're a restaurant software company, you're your pants. Because in the past year, the cost of developing software has plummeted. It started in November with Vibe Coding. I have people in my network who are creating their own restaurant software. They've replaced Ovation, they've replaced any sketch schedule, they're replacing inventory. And it's better because it's regional, it's specific to their region. And they're. We're talking about like, why don't we just like you built this stuff. We have all these restaurateurs in my network talking about what they're building, sharing resources, selling it owner.com like $400 a month. Like you can have that for a hundred dollars a month or build it yourself. But not every restaurateur is a Vibe coding programming type person, right? So. But they can get it for a hundred dollars a month from a buddy or free if you're really close friends with them. So like, I think restaurant tours are getting raked over the coals right now. And the next now they're saying Vibe Coding is dead. And to your point, they have. Their people are buying MacBooks and those MacBooks are essentially employees that are just Running agents all day to do this stuff for them. So like, to your point, if, if you're a software company, I think you're going to be a dinosaur tomorrow.
- [65:52]
B
We'll see what happens. I mean it's, it'll be, there's many, many ways this can go down.
- [65:59]
A
Yeah. So let's get in.
- [66:00]
B
I just know that the ability, the things that seem so impossible, they're like, well, no matter how good I ever get it, you know, understanding code, I could never develop a thing. You can. And now it's just, well, then I do this and then I do this and I do this and then if there's some way that you could like the prompt game. Right now inside my program, I take all the prompts that I've created and I have them already pre baked in so people could use them and have their own AI. Like I give out, hey, here's how I build the costing cart. Just, just read off your recipe and boom, there's a costing card that's already here. Today I'm doing that live. I already give out my AI prompts to create a logo or how to do Google responses in Claude. Like that's live today. The next level is happening quick and whether it's oh, go ahead, download my flow, download my workflow, it still assumes that you have a Mac Mini to network it or you're going to spend your, your ass off in Claude tokens. So it's not there yet, but we're at the dawning of it and whatever it becomes like we're at the Ask G's level. This is going to become Google soon enough. Yeah. And really GPT was the Ask G's
- [67:11]
A
and then Claude Claude started to take over. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things happening so. And you have a lot of resources in your community on YouTube for best practices around AI. But the three or four the, the three things I saw you focus on with, you know, where you're focusing AI, at least where you were six months ago. But that's ancient at the rate this is, you know, moving forward. Writing content is where you're using AI. You recommend chat GPT ahead of Claude for that or vice versa there Claude.
- [67:42]
B
Claude's better on everything written word except
- [67:45]
A
for the video or the imagery.
- [67:47]
B
Is that what you're imagery? GPT is still better entry level. And then at that point like Nano Banana is already kicking its ass. So. But for what it's worth.
- [67:54]
A
Yeah, for the, the imagery.
- [67:58]
B
Yes, got it.
- [68:00]
A
So writing content, video phones were like the three major Topics or the the three focal points that you're using AI. Do you want to just touch on those three things? Writing content, video and phones and the the tools you recommend or what you're
- [68:13]
B
currently doing for writing content. If someone is like, I don't even know what to say, hey, here's a prompt. I own blank business that sells blank product in this town. I want to create unique videos, look through my niche and give me some ideas. And then let's say a percolates idea. All right, great. Give me 50 hooks, four main call to actions and then three three main content pieces and then three call to actions. Now this would probably be better suited if you started the AI by saying ask me a hundred questions about my brand to make me sound unique and different and really understand the did you know value of what we're all about and then boil it down into an actionable manner that someone can elevate or pitch my brand really quick and understand why it's special. So let's say we go through that exercise now it has an awareness. Okay, this is what you're all about. Then it might say four things you didn't know about empanadas. And now we have a hook. And then you talk about the content and then book your order now book a reservation or get our freebies. The call to actions. So now we have hooks in that. That and now it's editing it and loading it. And we could have AI like captions app is really good. But again, this is going to get easier and easier and easier today. Captions, cap, cut and opus are like the easy AI editors. That's going to change in weeks, not even months. Now we get into what other things you'd be using for your AI. You could just download a CSV file or your Excel spreadsheets of your P and l say analyze this data. Where are we at? Where are we going? What should we be aware of of and see what it says. You want to download your menu. What's superfluous? What's killing? What else should we be doing? Even our upcoming fine dining restaurant, like analyze this menu. We're trying to be the greatest fine dining restaurant that does xyz. Not just in Tulsa, but in all of the world. What should we focus on? What should we modify? And it gave some decent ideas and of like an amuse bouche to add and other things like that. So the point being is there's a wealth of data in front of us, a wealth of knowledge. It's just the value of the question that's the failure point right now is the value of the question. And then also the, well, what could I do? Because it used to be why I have to get this app or this app or this app with Claude skills and cowork along with code, you could do everything you're currently doing on automatic and then anything you want to do is available to you. Right.
- [70:36]
A
Right now the obvious thing is like, oh, like all these tech leaders in our space, the restaurant space are going to be really struggling. They know they're not. They're really kind of being placed. You can build whatever restaurant tours are going to be building their own solutions. But the next fear is like, well, if that's all being like, what giant are we creating out of that?
- [70:55]
B
Right?
- [70:55]
A
And like that's the conversation that has a lot of these, you know, podcasters talking about like what. We got to be really careful about how powerful we let Claude and chat GPT become because literally the whole world is going to be running on these platforms if we let that happen. Do you like, do you have concerns about that?
- [71:15]
B
I. Well, here's why I do my concern versus the non concern. I don't want going out to eat being like going to a jazz club. I don't want to be like, oh, we went and saw jazz tonight. Like, like it's okay. Like it was all experience and there's no one who's doing it. So that's really just a fear of robots. Luckily for us, like for all the restaurant owners of the world who decided to do this thing that's built completely like the plumbers of the world, the tailors of the world, they're all still pretty much covered now. The fear of the Elon Tesla robot taking over stuff. I don't see a robot throwing dough in front of the customer. I do see it as the first thing it would take is maybe the dishwasher, potentially, potentially. But a server or a, or, or making food. I don't think we're within five to 10 to 15 to 20 years. I don't know. I don't think people are going to buy in on that. Potentially.
- [72:15]
A
They're saying that by 2020, sorry, 2033, that, that there's a good chance that all Americans could be receiving a paycheck from the government 25000 a year to start a universal basic income. It's only five years away at the rate at which it's currently going.
- [72:35]
B
It. They've. In the past, people have said, people said in the 70s the world was about to freeze over then by the 90s, the world's about to, to overheat. And I'm not saying anything about global war, I'm just saying to what the world's about to do has always been a fear.
- [72:50]
A
Yeah, it's true.
- [72:51]
B
It's what's going. What I do believe is that people's favorite topic of conversation is and always will be themselves. People will always want to connect more with humans. The more, the more we have things in the mix and we're in a rare air of creating the most communal, live, functional, necessary thing there is, which is food as entertainment. And that, that I don't feel is going, it'll shift, it'll pivot, but I don't believe it will die. I don't think it's. A lot of things will die.
- [73:22]
A
I don't know if it's just food as entertainment, but it's literally my hope, my dream, the future I want to fight for is to reconnect with food as everything. Food is entertainment, food as connection, food as community, food as literally what it has been to us for the majority of our existence as a species. Our whole existence ties to our relationship with food. How we sourced it, how we grew it, how we built communities from it, how we built society from it. We are so disjointed from our relationship with food. It's a commodity. It's literally a commodity. Things that were once living are listed next to minerals as their value. You know, life. It's life. And I think we are more connected to food than we realize. And we've up our relationship with food real bad over the past 50, 60 years to the point, or I should say like 80 years to the point where if you're alive today, all you know, is a up food system. It's normal, we don't know what it like, you know. So my hope is that if more and more people are being displaced from their white collar jobs, that more and more people are going to be coming to the only thing that matters most. Food. How we source it, how we grow, you know, how we grow it, how we source it, how we, how we deliver it. I think more and more people are going to come back to that and hopefully crafts, art. You know, I think we've lost a lot of craftsmanship. I think people are going to be more interested in getting into like woodwork and building things, making things. I think we're going to start to value that stuff more back to like experience relationships, you know. Is that, is that a pipe dream?
- [74:53]
B
No, I think everything you said is completely real. It's just, it's even down to like a leather belt. Like people love watching the tick tock of the guy making a leather belt belt. But is it scalable? Like I'm still, are you still going to go to Dillard to buy I need a belt or you. I want the best.
- [75:06]
A
But if you're getting a fifty thousand dollar check once a year from the government to cover your most basic needs like food and shelter, that's the inverse problem, right? Yeah.
- [75:14]
B
So it's a very altruistic view that we don't monetize AI and then also where does society step in? What I know today is that I use any AI to be a better human. And if I'm doing that, I think I'm on the right track. If you try to outsource humanity or try to skip on that part, then we're not doing it right.
- [75:40]
A
Yeah. In the short term. 1 thought I've been having, and you kind of alluded to this earlier with, you know, there's more and more I've heard a few other influencers in the space saying they're going to see a lot of these big tech companies coming together, staying in their lanes and joining forces under one umbrella. Fewer players in the marketplace. And I think there's going to be a period where that is, that reigns true but for maybe like six months. And then I think what you're going to start to see is more all in one player like or more all in one. I guess enterprises coming into the scene at way lower costs because the to our point it's getting easier and easier to engineer. So I almost hope that, that the pendulum starts to swing back from like, you know, these massive monopolies to almost like back to bilocal regional break it up. Like you're a restaurateur, you probably said support local where you, you're in, you're in Tulsa, Oklahoma and your POS is in Boston. Why not like have the local Tulsa, the Oklahoma restaurant tech stack. That's totally plausible in the future if it's viable, possible. Yeah, it's totally. You wouldn't say that, that like that would be awesome. And then you have, have 50 different restaurant tech stacks. I think what, I think what has to happen if we don't want to have these giant tech companies is conscious capitalism. We have to say who are we choosing to give our money to? And there are tools out there right now that are like, they're rating these AI platforms on ethics and like how responsible they're being and they're, they're grading these companies. So you know, like, well who are we going to give our money to? Who's going to run the world in the future? So I hope that we can almost treat our software companies as buy local at some point to kind of almost like just, just to serve as a counterbalance to having these giant tech conglomerates. Is that a pipe dream?
- [77:32]
B
You know, for every argument there's always a counter and that you could say the same thing. Like well now with the world being so global, I could buy. If we get went down that road, I could say, well I have the, the, the, the, the child in Zimbabwe who made a, who made a positive. And by supporting their point of sale, I'm funding his village.
- [77:53]
A
Yeah.
- [77:53]
B
So I'm buying the point. Like you're the same thing.
- [77:56]
A
Like, I mean that's the argument with outsourcing. Right. It's like one for one.
- [78:00]
B
Like, oh, I buy these again, go. I bomb. This is a good example. Like buy socks because it gives it to someone. Or I'm buying this. And that's where you're at. Madison's hierarchy of needs at the top. If people get to the top then they can start to make those decisions where they self actualize with their choice places.
- [78:16]
A
Yeah, definitely.
- [78:17]
B
A lot of people are in the middle are like, hey, I just need things to be cheaper.
- [78:20]
A
That's where I think everybody is. And that's. We're all in survival mode today. And my concern is that we're all making decisions to survive today at the cost of tomorrow.
- [78:30]
B
It's a very viable concern.
- [78:32]
A
That's my concern. That's where I tend to spend most of my time thinking which is why I love talking to people like you because you're so in it. You're in the weeds of it every day that you know what works. Today day I'm in the clouds 90 of the time thinking about like what's happening at the big picture. Because I don't, I'm not in it every day like you guys are. But I love, I think both things are really important. Like what's working today but also what are we doing today and how is that going to affect what happens tomorrow.
- [78:56]
B
And if it makes us feel any better, I think there's a, there's a place that makes margaritas by a robot in Las Vegas. It can make a margarita in front of you. It's right there at Planet Hollywood. And when it opened it was like, oh wow, it's not going to be the most popular Bar, it's novelty.
- [79:11]
A
You see it once, you never go back because that. You don't have a relationship with that robot.
- [79:14]
B
There's nothing to go back to.
- [79:16]
A
Yep.
- [79:17]
B
There's nothing to go to. It's like I can see it from the window. Okay, I get it. And that's. Why are people going to a bar? So that Tom listens to them and they have a joke and a talk. They when, oh, no, we could drink over Zoom during COVID people. Then people tried it. No know there is a desperate connection for humanity in the world. And it's never. It's not even. It's natural. So that's when I fear, when I have fears, I come back to that and still know tonight the most popping bar in Vegas ain't gonna be the robot.
- [79:53]
A
That's what gives me hope, is that it's, it's. It's human nature. It's human need to be seen and to see others. Human need. And that is basic right above physiological. Am I getting fed? Do I have shelter? The thing above that is, am I seen? Am I loved? Do I belong? We fucking need it. We don't realize how badly we do need it. And that. That's the one thing that I hope we're gonna wake up to real soon. There's one more thing relative to the future that I wanted to touch on, and that's around this idea. You pointed it out. How quickly and easily, if you know what you're doing using AI in these systems and these agents, how you can automate your marketing. My hope is that so many people go down this path because let's be honest, how many people want to market. How many people are like, I can't wait to create my marketing this morning. It's a thing we, we have to do out of survival. I think most people would say that the world is going to get so noisy if more and more people are automating this and just cranking out content. That I think, especially if people are using AI influencers, which is a real conversation, I think a lot of these marketing platforms are just going to be. Are going to lose. To your point. It's the robot behind the bar shaking margaritas. I wonder.
- [81:04]
B
Always a way to tell what's real or not. Yeah, there's always. And at some point, you know, like, like I could still watch. I could watch the Avengers. I could tell what's not real. Right? Like, there's always a way with even the best cgi, the best everything. There's always a way. So. So that and we're already in it. It became, hey, I got a letter, I got an email. Oh. Then I was like, no, this is an A. This is a turn and burn Multiple, multiple person LinkedIn message. Oh, this is not a real email. Then it's like, well, how do we separate ourselves out and create humanity? The voice memo, the video message. Oh, well, it's a deep fake. You could still tell. Yeah. And. And then it's like, hey, comment this back so, you know, it's me or whatever. Then let's say that fails. Let's say that goes to crack. Crap. There's still going to be the samples at Sam's club. There's always a way, there's something. Just can't fake that. So there's always going to be something that's humanity and real. And that's where we will always have to go.
- [81:58]
A
Mike, I always like talking to you, man. I've really enjoyed your videos. I've enjoyed every conversation I've had with you. You're super generous with your knowledge. What's working right now. If you're not Following, Mikey on YouTube is YouTube. YouTube channel is gold at Mikey Bausch. M I K E Y B A U S C H Also on Instagram as well.
- [82:19]
B
Correct? Yep.
- [82:22]
A
Who else is out there? I really want this to be my North Star. You talk to a lot of restaurant tours, you know a lot of smart people who's out there that when you talk to this person, you're just like, damn, this guy's sharp.
- [82:36]
B
The. Every time I talk to Tony, Jim, Tony, Jimmy's my pizza mentor. He's my restaurant mentor, too. He's my friend. I care about him deeply. And he, you know, he took a chance on me. But let's take all that out of the mix. Let's take just how much I care about the guy off the mix. He is the greatest pizza maker in the world. And I look at every single type of metric for the goat. Let's look at a goat. Usually you go down. What I call the baseball theory was like, who's the greatest of all time? Here's either the Babe Ruth, the first to do it. There's the Barry Bonds, the person with the most stats to do it, or the Mickey Mantle, the person who did it with the most style. Tony's all three. And as great as he is at pizza, I'll be like, yeah, I'm looking to do this. He's like, oh, well, then we should do a marketing approach where we do this. We do this on the side, but Then make sure that we. We get the ROI via this and then we pull it off this way. And then we do this is. He's the hardest working restaurant owner I've ever met. He's the most dedicated, the most knowledgeable and the smartest marketer. And he just does it with such a level of like. Yeah. I mean, the only. The only other guy I know that's in the space that's doing moves like that that's as good or better while still living it is Jose Andres. And I say that from personal experience. I was in D.C. teaching two weeks ago, and I went to every Jose Andres restaurant I've ever been to, has been impeccable, which is more than most like, you know, celebrity chef restaurants. And I said that to him, you know, for a celebrity chef restaurant, he's always. All of his places are impeccable. And like, that's very kind of you to say, but in fairness, he's never been a celebrity. She's never done like, like TV or
- [84:24]
A
just celebrity from his reputation or his reputation.
- [84:26]
B
And then no. Who's walking up to go table to table and walking through the kitchen on a random Tuesday? Jose Andreas. Yeah, right there. Just like I was like, holy. He's here at this restaurant, working the kitchen, going table to table, owns Mercado, fought with 10 restaurants in Vegas, Miami, like six in D.C. he's just there working. So I was the best, the most. The guy who I'm like blown away every time I have a conversation with, while also his acumen is Tony Gani. There's. There's just certain the level of genius with also an immense dedication to work and craft is. Is abound with both of them. There are some guys who have their one restaurant and holy. You're gonna have an amazing time. And they are the best at the thing they do and that's that those guys are making moves across the world and it never skips a beat.
- [85:33]
A
I'm gonna have to reach out. I had Tony on my radar. I think you actually put him on my radar. And also Nick. You might know this name, Nick Bogat. Put him on my.
- [85:41]
B
No. Nick Bogat is the current president of the World Pizza Champions. I. Tony was the first, I was the second. Nick is now the third. Nick is an impeccable restaurant owner growing at scale in the pizza world. There's very few times you meet someone who has culinary acumen and business know how and could do both and did, you know, pat their head and rub their belly simultaneously. All those guys can so. So and I think pizza gets like a, like, oh, well, but it's pizza. Pizza's so much harder. That's why fine dining is kind of a cakewalk, because people have insane hard opinions about pizza. You gotta market your ass off and be super approachable to be the best. Really hard opinions on donuts.
- [86:26]
A
How many places do you know are the only game in town with pizza? How much competition is. Is there a lot?
- [86:32]
B
Well, everyone I think has like the premier is pizza place in their area and those guys are usually fighting like three to four PE places. And then in New York there's a ton of options and you know, where there's like a ton of great pizza. It's not where you would think like Denver and just Colorado in general. Ohio is littered with great pizza. Littered with it. And it's an aggressive sport. Like you got to be on your. Your marketing game, your financial game, your people, your life coach game to all your staff. Have a vision for the brand and then like, oh my God, it's a great pizza. Like, that's the cost of entry to the carnival. Gets you on none of the rides. Yep.
- [87:15]
A
Man, this has been a lot of fun. I'm gonna reach out back. Back out to Tony. I never got him on a guy. I reached out to him. We never make it happen. I gotta follow up with that in hosi.
- [87:24]
B
Very busy person.
- [87:25]
A
Yeah, he's been recommended a bunch of times, so I'd love to make that happen. Thank you so much for making time for me today, Mike. I always enjoy our conversations. If I can ever share my platform with you, know that it's always open and just. Thank you so much, man. There is no questioning. You are unstoppable.
- [87:42]
B
Thank you, Eric.
- [87:43]
A
Cheers.