Latest / Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence / Costa Vida’s Allen on Catering, Tech and AI

Transcript

Costa Vida’s Allen on Catering, Tech and AI · Choppin’ It Up by Bloomberg Intelligence

0:13
Speaker 1: Welcome to Chopping It Up. I'm your host, Mike Hanlon,
0:16
Speaker 1: the senior Restaurant and Food Service Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
0:19
Speaker 1: Our research and that a bi's five hundred analysts around
0:22
Speaker 1: the globe can be found exclusively on the Bloomberg terminal.
0:25
Speaker 1: If you enjoy the pod, do me a solid and
0:27
Speaker 1: give us a five star review on Apple or Spotify.
0:30
Speaker 1: Today we're joined by Wade Allen, president of Costa Vida
0:33
Speaker 1: Fresh Mexican Grill, a fast casual restaurant chain. Welcome to the.
0:38
Speaker 2: Pod, Wade, his Michael, good to be here, man, super pumped.
0:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, Man, good to see you man. What attracted to
0:44
Speaker 1: the brand?
0:44
Speaker 3: Ah Man, that is a that's an unpacking story, but
0:47
Speaker 3: I'll tell you I met I engaged with this brand
0:52
Speaker 3: in early two thousand. I grew up in Salt Lake City,
0:55
Speaker 3: and I kind of went out to find greener pastures
0:58
Speaker 3: and across the country and the world actually, but I
1:00
Speaker 3: would come back and visit family. And I actually bumped
1:02
Speaker 3: into Coasta Vida probably two thousand and three and one
1:05
Speaker 3: of their first restaurants, and the.
1:07
Speaker 2: Taste was unique.
1:09
Speaker 3: The whole experience was something I had never gone through
1:12
Speaker 3: with the freshness and the cues. So I knew about it,
1:15
Speaker 3: my family raved about it. And then years later when
1:19
Speaker 3: I was had been with Chili's for a decade and
1:22
Speaker 3: I had Kevin Hawkman come in and we kind of transitioned,
1:25
Speaker 3: and I was leaving the brand. Lo and Behold, I
1:27
Speaker 3: spoke at an event and uh front and center with
1:30
Speaker 3: the two CEOs for Coasta Vida and they said, Hey,
1:33
Speaker 3: do you ever be interested in coming back to Utah
1:35
Speaker 3: and leading this brand as a president? And I said,
1:38
Speaker 3: sign me up, let me know when and I'll be there.
1:40
Speaker 3: And that's kind of how it all came together.
1:42
Speaker 1: Oh that's very cool. You know, I'm not too familiar
1:46
Speaker 1: with the brand. Can you tell me what makes Costa
1:49
Speaker 1: Vida unique?
1:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, just to give you kind of a contextual reference,
1:53
Speaker 3: it is a fast, casual fresh Mexican grill is what
1:57
Speaker 3: we referenced it. But basically it's it's kind of the
1:59
Speaker 3: fast as a counter service. So we do all fresh
2:02
Speaker 3: food in the morning, we make all of our proteins,
2:03
Speaker 3: we make chop all of our vegetables, and then we
2:06
Speaker 3: place them on the line and we scoop and serve
2:09
Speaker 3: throughout the day. The I think the most unique aspect
2:13
Speaker 3: of Kostavita is this Baja flavor profile. And we we
2:17
Speaker 3: have a product called sweet Pork that literally is legally addictive.
2:21
Speaker 2: I mean, it is so.
2:23
Speaker 3: Good, and we have we have a lot, a lot
2:26
Speaker 3: of customers who love this product and just live and
2:29
Speaker 3: die by it.
2:30
Speaker 2: You'll see that.
2:31
Speaker 3: You'll find the recipes online. Everybody's trying to copy it
2:33
Speaker 3: and figure it out.
2:34
Speaker 2: You know.
2:34
Speaker 3: We we spend a lot of time kind of marinating
2:36
Speaker 3: it and creating it in the mornings before we serve it.
2:39
Speaker 3: But sweet pork, we have phenomenal Keeso, a really delicious
2:43
Speaker 3: to matill ranch. I'm talking about core equities for the brand.
2:46
Speaker 3: And then I think we have the best desserts in
2:49
Speaker 3: fast casual. We have a Traceh's cake that I can't
2:53
Speaker 3: get enough of, and then a key Lime and I'm
2:55
Speaker 3: a huge key Lime connoisseur that I think could rival
2:57
Speaker 3: any other fast casual restaurant or even catch dining restaurants dessert.
3:01
Speaker 2: So that's kind of the rundown.
3:03
Speaker 1: Makes me hungry, man, it sounds great. How would you
3:07
Speaker 1: describe the company culture at Coasta Vida at Coasta Vida
3:11
Speaker 1: and how do you maintain it as you grow.
3:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're very entrepreneurial, pretty scrappy. We punch away above
3:18
Speaker 3: our weight. We're only just under one hundred restaurants. I'd
3:21
Speaker 3: say we're probably mid nineties, depending on if we get
3:25
Speaker 3: these next two in the ground here in the next month.
3:28
Speaker 3: But we are very entrepreneurial, so we wear a lot of hats,
3:31
Speaker 3: we play a lot of different roles.
3:33
Speaker 2: It is a super fun culture.
3:35
Speaker 3: So we take everybody to Mexico every year, back to
3:38
Speaker 3: our roots of the Baja into Fort Devarta, and we
3:42
Speaker 3: spend a week at Lake Powell here in Utah on
3:44
Speaker 3: houseboats to engage as a culture and to kind of
3:47
Speaker 3: learn about each other off and outside of work. So
3:51
Speaker 3: it's very vibrant, it's very collaborative, and we're scrappy, right,
3:56
Speaker 3: That's how i'd explain it.
3:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like fun. How many restaurants and what's
4:02
Speaker 1: the split between corporate and franchise units.
4:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're ninety two today, hope to be close
4:07
Speaker 3: to ninety five by the end of the year. We
4:10
Speaker 3: may push into the beginning of the year with that
4:13
Speaker 3: ninety five mark. We corporate owns thirty one and the
4:18
Speaker 3: rest are franchised. Amongst about thirteen fourteen different partners. Most
4:23
Speaker 3: of our franchise partners will own three or four, some
4:28
Speaker 3: own as many as twelve. And we're scattered across the
4:31
Speaker 3: western US, So we have been in Canada for a while.
4:34
Speaker 3: We've kind of divested those restaurants, but really California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Texas,
4:41
Speaker 3: a little bit in Washington, and that's kind of kind
4:44
Speaker 3: of the core set. We have a few east of
4:47
Speaker 3: the Mississippi, but only a few right one of Tennessee.
4:51
Speaker 3: We have one up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That's kind of
4:55
Speaker 3: one in Kansas City. That's kind of the rundown.
4:57
Speaker 1: Okay, what are the demographic So the typical Coast to
5:01
Speaker 1: Beat a customer.
5:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
5:04
Speaker 3: She's the customer scuse female and is about feeding a
5:08
Speaker 3: family of two or three kids. The focus is really
5:11
Speaker 3: she's trying to eat healthy herself and feed her kids healthy.
5:15
Speaker 3: We tend to compete best against the QSRs of the world,
5:20
Speaker 3: So rather than feed your family out of a sack,
5:21
Speaker 3: come to Coast to Beat and have fresh food for
5:23
Speaker 3: roughly or close to the same price point.
5:27
Speaker 2: And she's.
5:30
Speaker 3: You know, when you look at that archetype she's super
5:33
Speaker 3: engaged in her kids' lives, what they eat, what they consume,
5:37
Speaker 3: tends to be kind of the mom, the soccer mom.
5:40
Speaker 3: That's kind of the angle. I think household income is generally,
5:43
Speaker 3: excuse a little bit higher than middle class, So I
5:45
Speaker 3: would say kind of eighty to ninety thousand dollars household range.
5:49
Speaker 3: But we do kind of run up and down depending
5:51
Speaker 3: on the areas that we're in and the locations we're in.
5:54
Speaker 3: As most economics, if you can afford it. That demographic
5:57
Speaker 3: wants fresh food if they can get it. So that's
5:59
Speaker 3: kind of the kind of the look of our customer.
6:02
Speaker 1: And are you so, are you mainly targeting targeting those
6:04
Speaker 1: soccer moms or do you have some some ways to
6:07
Speaker 1: target the kids as well.
6:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do. We have a great we have a
6:12
Speaker 3: great kids meal. We have a great cinnamon tortilla that's
6:15
Speaker 3: free with every one of our kids meals that comes,
6:17
Speaker 3: which is really delicious, kids love. It's probably the number
6:19
Speaker 3: one dessert resell. We play a lot in high schools
6:24
Speaker 3: and junior highs and middle schools. We always talk about
6:28
Speaker 3: being close to the action for the school, and that's
6:31
Speaker 3: football's or football programs and basketball programs, sports programs we're in.
6:37
Speaker 3: You know, we're part of the banquets at the end
6:39
Speaker 3: of the year for all of the sports but also
6:41
Speaker 3: all of the music departments. And we place our restaurants
6:45
Speaker 3: pretty close to high schools because we know, I'll use
6:48
Speaker 3: a bad term here, but we like to indoctor and
6:50
Speaker 3: nate them young on our food. Right, Like, you get
6:52
Speaker 3: them in and they love the food and it becomes
6:55
Speaker 3: a staple for us because they stay with the brand.
6:58
Speaker 1: And high school boys can eat I say that from experience.
7:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, massive burritos and those guys will choot that they'll
7:05
Speaker 3: pound their two of them.
7:06
Speaker 2: Right.
7:06
Speaker 1: So it's been widely publicized that fast casual sales are
7:10
Speaker 1: under pressure this year. How it is close to Vita performed.
7:14
Speaker 3: It has been a tougher year than last year. Last
7:17
Speaker 3: year we had a marquee year. I mean we made
7:19
Speaker 3: more money last year and drove more profitability than ever.
7:22
Speaker 3: This year has been tougher, stiffer headwind, but we've also
7:25
Speaker 3: had a steeper hill to climb to get over year
7:27
Speaker 3: over year sales in traffic right now, where as a
7:31
Speaker 3: year to date we're up about half a percent in
7:33
Speaker 3: sales and our traffic's about down about zero point seventy
7:36
Speaker 3: five to a percentage point in traffic, though I will
7:40
Speaker 3: tell you August was a little slow for US September
7:44
Speaker 3: thus far, two weeks in, we're ripping.
7:47
Speaker 2: I'm looking to be off on our good run.
7:49
Speaker 3: So I'm hoping the back half of this year kind
7:52
Speaker 3: of rebounds a little bit better to closer to the
7:54
Speaker 3: three and a half percent we were up last year.
7:56
Speaker 1: Very cool. Have you what have you seen? Have you
7:59
Speaker 1: seen any sort of benefit from Chipotle's recent troubles or
8:02
Speaker 1: is there not too much overlap with them?
8:04
Speaker 3: I mean our markets with Chipotle, they're they're definitely present.
8:09
Speaker 3: They're not the ones that I that I believe we're
8:11
Speaker 3: still in market share from there, but they're in their
8:15
Speaker 3: Their wabble, obviously is to our benefits, so we give
8:18
Speaker 3: big portions. We always had leaned into the portions, but
8:21
Speaker 3: we also have them early on priced in and and
8:24
Speaker 3: in in our core set, so it wasn't as if
8:28
Speaker 3: we had backed off of that kind of volume of food.
8:32
Speaker 3: So I think there's probably some benefit there. I think
8:34
Speaker 3: the bigger benefit for US has just been local players
8:37
Speaker 3: that here have started to wabble. We've been able to pull.
8:40
Speaker 2: Markets share from and grow our business on our cop set.
8:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and just in generally, you know, casual dining,
8:47
Speaker 1: it's lapping easier comps, but also supply and demand is
8:52
Speaker 1: probably better in that space than QS are and fast
8:55
Speaker 1: casual right now. I think that's part of the outperformance.
8:58
Speaker 1: Do you have any uh, any other theories or thoughts
9:02
Speaker 1: about why you think casual dining has been able to
9:05
Speaker 1: outperform this year?
9:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think I have to give credit
9:09
Speaker 3: where credits due. I think the Chili's team has awakened
9:12
Speaker 3: a lot of the younger consumers, the young millennials and
9:17
Speaker 3: Gen Z population to a form of restaurants that they
9:22
Speaker 3: weren't aware of, right. I don't think they played. I
9:24
Speaker 3: don't think a lot of that generation spent a lot
9:26
Speaker 3: of time going to an Applebe's or hanging out in
9:28
Speaker 3: a Fridays or walking over to the Chilis. And so
9:31
Speaker 3: the work that's been done at Chile's on the social
9:33
Speaker 3: side and being part of that cultural zeitgeist has woken
9:37
Speaker 3: up a generation to, oh, my goodness, there is another
9:39
Speaker 3: option for us other than eating out of a sack
9:42
Speaker 3: or going and paying pretty close to the same price
9:45
Speaker 3: for food on a scoop and serve and so I
9:48
Speaker 3: definitely think that's driving some of it, you know, from
9:51
Speaker 3: the data I've seen, And Mike, we can correct me
9:53
Speaker 3: on this, but it really feels like Chili's is a winner.
9:55
Speaker 3: Roadhouse continues to deliver maybe all of Garden a little bit,
9:58
Speaker 3: but the rest of the group I'm kind of watching
10:00
Speaker 3: and they I don't know if they have the same
10:02
Speaker 3: run or lift those those players were getting.
10:06
Speaker 2: And so what's driving casual dying?
10:08
Speaker 3: I really have to give the credit back to Chile's
10:10
Speaker 3: to waking up the group and outperforming.
10:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that's a big part of it.
10:16
Speaker 1: And then Darden talked about value a little bit today.
10:20
Speaker 1: You know, when QSR was able to raise prices before
10:24
Speaker 1: everyone else in twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one,
10:28
Speaker 1: you kind of and and then kept pace with the
10:30
Speaker 1: price increases of everybody else. You know, they their prices
10:33
Speaker 1: just kind of their price increases led the entire industry,
10:37
Speaker 1: that's for sure.
10:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, they were got way ahead of themselves, for sure.
10:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. What are what are your AUVs and what do
10:45
Speaker 1: you have planned to boost SAM store sales in the
10:47
Speaker 1: next twelve months.
10:49
Speaker 3: So our our AUV is a brand, franchise and corporate
10:54
Speaker 3: together is about two point one million. It's kind of
10:56
Speaker 3: where we sit. We do run slightly better evs on
11:00
Speaker 3: our corporate stores at about two four or two five,
11:03
Speaker 3: depending on the area that you're in in our our
11:06
Speaker 3: So that's that's kind of lifting us a little bit
11:08
Speaker 3: as we go through, and then it's about two million
11:12
Speaker 3: with our with our franchise partners. My focus really has
11:14
Speaker 3: always been on comp store set and it's about operational excellence,
11:17
Speaker 3: and so I'm super dialed in on brand standards and consistency.
11:21
Speaker 3: When we run the standard and we stay close to
11:23
Speaker 3: our brand's commitment of quality food and uh, you know,
11:29
Speaker 3: portion size, we do really really well. I think we've
11:33
Speaker 3: got We're working on empowering and engaging our team members
11:35
Speaker 3: more so. We're working on getting our turnover down. You know,
11:38
Speaker 3: we're kind of hovering in that one hundred plus mark
11:41
Speaker 3: managers excluded, kind of just slightly over the hundred marked
11:44
Speaker 3: with our team members, and I think we can do
11:45
Speaker 3: a better job there and empower them when they're on
11:47
Speaker 3: the line working with the guests to make the right
11:50
Speaker 3: decision to give a little bit more knowing that we'll
11:52
Speaker 3: get a return transaction out of that and not Nickel
11:54
Speaker 3: dime our customers.
11:56
Speaker 2: And then the last one.
11:56
Speaker 3: Is I really really talk about systems and efficiencies in
12:00
Speaker 3: systems and process and when we run the same systems
12:04
Speaker 3: and processes with our restaurants and our I team can
12:07
Speaker 3: support those KDS systems and the POS systems and making
12:11
Speaker 3: sure that we're doing all the right stuff from the
12:12
Speaker 3: HRS systems, that then we have success. So I think
12:16
Speaker 3: the the one thing I am really working on for
12:18
Speaker 3: next year on this comp number is we were really
12:22
Speaker 3: smart on pricing. We're not going to overstep ourselves. We
12:25
Speaker 3: always are very conservative, but we know what the impacts
12:28
Speaker 3: can be. And then I so I take I do.
12:30
Speaker 3: I will take price, but I'll be smart on the
12:31
Speaker 3: way to take price. And then I'm really trying to
12:33
Speaker 3: get the brand essence in our in our marketing, which
12:38
Speaker 3: is really about this term so good.
12:40
Speaker 2: When everybody eats costavda to go, man, that is just
12:42
Speaker 2: so good.
12:43
Speaker 3: And so we've coined that and we're using it hard
12:45
Speaker 3: in our in our marketing about fresh quality product and
12:51
Speaker 3: this kind of echoing chime of so good. So I'm
12:53
Speaker 3: hoping those will all lead to better comp sales next year.
12:57
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. I say so good all the time.
13:01
Speaker 2: I love it.
13:02
Speaker 1: Due, that's awesome. So what kind of unit growth do
13:06
Speaker 1: you expect moving forward next you know, next year, twenty
13:10
Speaker 1: twenty seven, and where are you really excited about expanding?
13:16
Speaker 2: Yeah?
13:16
Speaker 3: So I this year, we've put together a plan. We
13:18
Speaker 3: call it the H five five five hundred, So in
13:21
Speaker 3: five years, five step plan to grow to half a million,
13:25
Speaker 3: half a billion dollars in evaluation across our restaurant set.
13:28
Speaker 3: So there is a plan in place. The first year
13:31
Speaker 3: is really about kind of we got to get our unigo.
13:33
Speaker 3: You talked about it unit growth going. That's a big
13:35
Speaker 3: part of this equation. And I feel like our opportunity
13:40
Speaker 3: obviously is to win outside Utah, we just dominate. We'll
13:42
Speaker 3: open a restaurant and we'll hit three million, you know,
13:46
Speaker 3: without a lot of work.
13:47
Speaker 1: Wow.
13:48
Speaker 3: In Vegas and Colorado and Arizona and Texas, we got
13:51
Speaker 3: to get our AUVs kind of north of that two
13:53
Speaker 3: million and starting to rip, and they don't know our
13:56
Speaker 3: brand as well. And so that for me is I'm
13:58
Speaker 3: gonna I'm going to open in these outer mark It's
14:00
Speaker 3: I've got a plan in a strategy in order to
14:02
Speaker 3: open big and open and be consistent, to drive quickly
14:06
Speaker 3: to get our return back and make sure that we
14:10
Speaker 3: hurdle into profitability. We're looking at probably eight to ten
14:14
Speaker 3: a year in this first in this next year, and
14:18
Speaker 3: then our goal is to stay on that clip with
14:20
Speaker 3: our franchise partners also growing at not quite that aggressive,
14:24
Speaker 3: but i'd say i'd say three to five across the
14:27
Speaker 3: franchise set every year. And then it's about looking for
14:31
Speaker 3: acquisition opportunities as they come along that we could take
14:34
Speaker 3: into our brand. You know, obviously clean those up, make
14:38
Speaker 3: them coasters, and grow into a complementary foothold that we
14:42
Speaker 3: don't have today. That's what that five five five hundred
14:45
Speaker 3: is focused on.
14:46
Speaker 1: Oh so that's interesting. So it's similar to Kava and
14:50
Speaker 1: what they did.
14:51
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, just following that playbook and seeing that
14:54
Speaker 3: that playbook can work.
14:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it really boosted their store growth and
14:58
Speaker 1: same source of sales growth, all that good stuff. Very cool.
15:03
Speaker 1: Your catering business is pretty sizable, man. You know, I
15:07
Speaker 1: listened to your panel at prosper you know, I was impressed. Uh,
15:13
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit about Costavita's approach to
15:15
Speaker 1: that business.
15:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I I'm still the term that Noah
15:20
Speaker 3: Glass used rightature bleachers and uh teachers is what he said, right,
15:26
Speaker 3: But it's exactly what our strategy has.
15:28
Speaker 2: Been with Costa.
15:30
Speaker 3: We we have the distinct advantage of having food that
15:33
Speaker 3: carries really well, you know, putting it in heat wheels
15:36
Speaker 3: and carrying it to a work facility or a school,
15:40
Speaker 3: and a great packaging display goes a long way for
15:45
Speaker 3: Costa and so we we kind of leaned into this,
15:48
Speaker 3: you know, this this halo of being in Salt Lake City.
15:50
Speaker 2: You're around a lot of churches and a lot of
15:52
Speaker 2: church going people, and so that was.
15:53
Speaker 3: An easy lean in on, well, every one of these
15:56
Speaker 3: churches around here are going to have something on Saturday
15:58
Speaker 3: night or Wednesday night.
15:59
Speaker 2: Can we cater it? Right? And then we started leaning
16:01
Speaker 2: into schools, and.
16:02
Speaker 3: Then we lean into two PTA's and then we've learned
16:05
Speaker 3: leaned into school districts and that's been a big opportunity
16:09
Speaker 3: for us to just continues to pay well and pay back.
16:13
Speaker 3: We have a fleet called fleet. We have a handful
16:16
Speaker 3: of individuals who are solely dedicated and focused on caterings
16:21
Speaker 3: across a certain number of restaurants, and so their whole
16:24
Speaker 3: focus is drum up sales, make connections, be in the
16:27
Speaker 3: chamber of commerce, talk to schools, talk to people, you know.
16:30
Speaker 3: So when the phone rings they show up, they white
16:32
Speaker 3: glove it, they put it out there, and that business
16:35
Speaker 3: starts to then churn up. And that's been a great
16:37
Speaker 3: model for us, and it's.
16:40
Speaker 2: Been really really strong.
16:41
Speaker 3: I mean, we were probably a four percent catering business
16:45
Speaker 3: for years and then we made the jump to the
16:47
Speaker 3: high sixes and now we're knocking on the door to
16:49
Speaker 3: get into the ten mark, the nine to ten mark,
16:52
Speaker 3: and that has materially changed our business, and so much so, Michael,
16:55
Speaker 3: that this is how it looks when I look at
16:56
Speaker 3: the year to date or every now year to date,
17:00
Speaker 3: every single day in sales. Sometimes there's volatility, and that
17:03
Speaker 3: number depending on how big the catering sales were this
17:06
Speaker 3: year versus last year, and so I have to exclude
17:09
Speaker 3: catering from that and then look at it again and say, Okay,
17:11
Speaker 3: the comp sets up slightly, but the catering just got
17:14
Speaker 3: you know, we just killed it yesterday, and catering across
17:18
Speaker 3: the brand. So I think it and I said it
17:21
Speaker 3: at prosper I'll say it again, if you're not paying
17:24
Speaker 3: attention to this, you're missing a huge opportunity to drive
17:27
Speaker 3: a revenue stream that you you that is pretty easy
17:29
Speaker 3: to get going if you're focused on it.
17:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have the packaging and the display is right.
17:35
Speaker 1: It's a good way to attract new customers too, right.
17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:37
Speaker 3: Absolutely brings them to the brand they've never been to
17:40
Speaker 3: and they go, Man, I got to get more of this, right.
17:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys are really ahead of the curve.
17:43
Speaker 2: It's great.
17:44
Speaker 1: Are you working on any technology initiatives at the moment.
17:47
Speaker 3: I've got a couple of AI things I'm dabbling with
17:50
Speaker 3: trying to figure out. We get a lot of calls
17:52
Speaker 3: into our call center for kind of i'll call them
17:54
Speaker 3: mundane questions. Do you have a patio, what are your hours?
17:58
Speaker 3: Kind of bring a dog to the restaurant, you know
17:59
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. AI is super good to answer
18:02
Speaker 3: that stuff right out of the gate and pretty responsive.
18:05
Speaker 3: I'm looking on I'm working on outdoor boards as well
18:08
Speaker 3: for our restaurants in the drive through, and it's part
18:11
Speaker 3: of a bigger initiative to ensure that our POS system
18:13
Speaker 3: is intimately connected with all of our boards, both in
18:16
Speaker 3: the restaurant and outside of the restaurant. So if we
18:18
Speaker 3: eighty six an item on the POS, not only does
18:20
Speaker 3: it go across our restaurants digitally, but then it sends
18:24
Speaker 3: that command to OLO and to the third party is
18:27
Speaker 3: to have it pulled off as well from that particular store.
18:29
Speaker 3: So I know there's others ahead of us on this part,
18:31
Speaker 3: but this for us is a big initiative. And the
18:34
Speaker 3: digital boards to reduce missing it incorrect where they read
18:38
Speaker 3: back in real time what you're ordering, so the guest
18:41
Speaker 3: understands that is the correct order, which will dramatically reduce
18:46
Speaker 3: that pain point of I didn't get the extra ranch,
18:48
Speaker 3: now my salad's ruined, or I got the wrong protein
18:52
Speaker 3: on the burrito which I'm going to feed it to
18:54
Speaker 3: the dog now because I'm mad, kind of stuff. So
18:56
Speaker 3: that's the initiatives that we're really really trying to.
19:01
Speaker 1: Okay cool, and you know, I know you have a
19:05
Speaker 1: strong technology background. What roles do you see AI and
19:08
Speaker 1: AGENTIC AI you know, playing for playing for you right
19:13
Speaker 1: and and senior management in the restaurant business.
19:15
Speaker 3: I I definitely think that it will it'll help the
19:21
Speaker 3: manager be more focused on being hospitable and less being
19:24
Speaker 3: stuck in the back office.
19:26
Speaker 2: So there's these processes.
19:27
Speaker 3: That run or need to be run, or an analysis
19:30
Speaker 3: that needs to be consumed by the human brain before
19:33
Speaker 3: they go out on the line to engage with the guests.
19:35
Speaker 3: And a lot of times we get stuck in the
19:37
Speaker 3: back office and then we start hiding in the back
19:39
Speaker 3: office and that becomes our day. What we want is
19:43
Speaker 3: the AI to run that analysis to present easy solutions
19:46
Speaker 3: or easy answers to questions they may have in real
19:49
Speaker 3: time to allow to get out of the back office
19:52
Speaker 3: and be more on the line, engaging with guests, promoting
19:55
Speaker 3: the food, promoting the experience.
19:56
Speaker 2: So I know that's.
19:58
Speaker 3: General, but I do believe that it's going to start
20:01
Speaker 3: with GMS in the back office and improvements on how
20:04
Speaker 3: that works.
20:05
Speaker 2: I'm a huge buff on computer vision.
20:07
Speaker 3: I still think you know, we work with Savvy, which
20:10
Speaker 3: is a group here, but there's a lot of different
20:12
Speaker 3: computer systems out there that our vision AI systems that
20:14
Speaker 3: will help you kind of security wise.
20:16
Speaker 2: And look at what's going on in restaurant. But I
20:18
Speaker 2: think there's a huge opportunity.
20:19
Speaker 3: For AI to be involved there to help almost build
20:24
Speaker 3: like a remember when you played sports, you watched film, right,
20:28
Speaker 3: and you'd like figure out what happened.
20:29
Speaker 2: Well.
20:30
Speaker 3: AI needs to be able to identify quickly where are
20:32
Speaker 3: the pain points in this camera that we've seen throughout
20:34
Speaker 3: the day, pull them out, short them up, tag them
20:38
Speaker 3: to an idea of a transaction, and then let me
20:42
Speaker 3: brief my team for five minutes in the morning.
20:45
Speaker 2: Hey, let's look at some film. What went wrong? What
20:48
Speaker 2: went right? How could we made it better?
20:49
Speaker 3: Like I started thinking about that and go when when
20:51
Speaker 3: I played rugby, we'd watched film all day long, and
20:53
Speaker 3: that's how I got better.
20:54
Speaker 2: It was because I knew what I was doing wrong.
20:56
Speaker 3: So there's there's something there I think that we could
21:00
Speaker 3: tease out at some point.
21:01
Speaker 2: Very cool.
21:02
Speaker 1: Thanks for doing this, Wade, it was good to see you.
21:04
Speaker 1: Good to catch up.
21:05
Speaker 2: Thanks man, appreciate it. Man, it's been great all right.
21:08
Speaker 1: I also want to thank the audience for tuning in.
21:10
Speaker 1: If you'd like to find your nearest Coasta Vida, go
21:12
Speaker 1: to costavida dot com. If you liked our discussion, please
21:16
Speaker 1: share it with your friends and colleagues. Check back soon
21:18
Speaker 1: for an interview with Kirk Grogan, co founder and COO
21:22
Speaker 1: at Tip House