Latest / Restaurant Misfits / EP 56: Peter Litvinenko

Transcript

EP 56: Peter Litvinenko · Restaurant Misfits

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I still think that on a brand level, you know, if you're spending a thousand dollars and stuff like that, there's something powerful about the tactile feel of a menu, but you can't ignore the data and you can't ignore the opportunity. Right. Like you said, we have these wifi capture screens and we'll have 5,000 people a week, and we'll get 50 to whatever, 250 emails from that. But if you think about someone scanning and the four people on the menus and the , and , and the way you could then get them on a retargeting level. Yeah. That's, at some point, the money has to outweigh your branding or has to .
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Brett Linkletter, co and co-founder of Guideline, a restaurant growth agency. We help restaurant brands of all sizes grow and scale to new heights, whether that means opening new stores or increasing revenue at existing locations. We have a done for you model where we take care of all the work for our clients on the marketing front. And we also have a unique software solution called dio , which allows owners to showcase their restaurant in the best light possible online, while also turning guest interactions into data to increase profits. Right now you are listening to our podcast Restaurant Misfit , where we'll discuss all things related to restaurant marketing, management, and everything else in between. Growing a restaurant business, scaling a restaurant today takes much more than having grit and hustle in this age . It's about utilizing the newest technology, educating yourself on new platforms and trends, and having a deep understanding of how this industry is changing. This podcast is dedicated to keeping you up to speed with the latest and the greatest through interviewing the biggest and the best in the restaurant industry. As always, we appreciate you for being here, and we hope you enjoy the show. Pete, how are you ?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I'm good, man. How you doing? Thanks for having me.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, man. Uh , I'm very excited to chat. Um, I've been actually interested in chatting with you for, for a long time, honestly. Um , because we met first, God, it was it on the Keys? Yeah . Right. That was the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: First time. Yeah . We took a , we took a snorkel trip together.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Man, that was so fun. Um, that was my first time in The Keys, and I had no idea what I was doing. And thank God our friend Sergio could kind of walk us through and help us understand what we should be doing in the area. . Yeah . Stay afloat. . Yeah, a hundred percent. Man. So you, you do, you've done a lot of interesting things. Your background is very interesting. You now oversee the operations across a portfolio of clubs and restaurants. Um, what, what's that like?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, I , I would say every day is, you know, putting out a lot of fires and every day is really different. Um, working with, you know, Roman Jones and Aristos, having projects like Kiki on the river, we just opened up Habibi. Uh, we had an Italian restaurant, a Mexican illa , a speakeasy , uh, Roman just closed on a church , uh, that we're gonna turn into an event space. Crazy. Uh , we've got Capitano, which is like our sort of like a casua , uh, uh, waterfront restaurant that we're opening. You
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Guys have a lot coming in this year, it seems. Yeah. Like, it's just nuts. Um, Kiki's in particular, you guys, I read somewhere recently you , are you guys like one of the top 10 grossing restaurants in the world? Is that accurate?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It feels like that some days. I , I , I think we're up there in the US mm-hmm . Um , I don't know how much, how we compare against like the Vegas, like straight up nightclubs mm-hmm . But we, we gotta be up there as just a restaurant and it's, it's incredible what he does within, you know, just that small of a space.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Um, you guys are an interesting concept. Um, I've been there multiple times. Yeah. Uh , great concept, I think great food. You have the club vibe right on the river. Beautiful spot. I think there's a lot of reasons you , you can, you can say for your success. But what, what do you think is, in your opinion from working there for all this time? What is the one thing you think that stands out?
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: If it's one thing? Um, I think we think about creating content pretty much throughout the space. Mm-hmm . You know , the drinks, the food, every corner. Um, I think they, they were really pioneering. 'cause when , when we opened in , it was like seven or eight years ago, you know, Instagram wasn't what it was, and it was really important for us to Yeah. Just make sure that people wanted to take pictures and take pictures of the space all throughout.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: For sure. I mean, I think this is something, I had another podcast about a year and a half ago, and , uh, the chef told me the same thing. He was like, Hey, when , when I, when I create our menu, I'm not just creating for taste. I'm creating for look and appeal and Instagram appeal. I want people to love the food, talk about the food, but also want to take pictures and share with their friends. Yeah. Because that's our marketing, right. Um, and obviously on our podcast, we love talking about marketing. Uh, we have a marketing agency, obviously. Yeah. Uh , , so what we do, but yeah, you guys have been, you've, you've taken that in that concept to , to another level. I mean, and now you guys were a client of ours, which we're, we're so happy about. Mm-hmm . Uh , very, very excited. You guys were signing up to dio , I think your guys' first day was today. Literally. Yeah . Yeah . Which is so awesome. Um, as we were helping you guys design your menu, I remember one thing you mentioned and some other members on your team mentioned is like, we really, really, really are hyper-focused on, on making sure that we have this particular look. And I think maybe one of your employees said it's kind of like a more like a girly feminine look, right?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I I think that's the other,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That's the appeal, right?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: That's kinda what brought me into to the , the opportunity that I saw when I joined the group was that, you know, I think a lot of restaurants and clubs from a marketing strategy, they target women mm-hmm . Um , but there's very few that target women on a brand level. So Kiki , uh, you know, really, really targets women. If, if you look at our, you know, brand colors, the floral of , uh, accents that we have throughout our Instagram and our website, and even just like the cocktail menu, the decisions with food we're really focused on for sure , women. And I think there, there is some statistic out there, there where like a top five bachelorette destination in the US Mm . Which kind of gives credit to sort of the business plan, right?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah . Probably 50% of the time, if I've ever seen a bachelorette party here in Miami, their plans are to go Kikis then . Yeah , exactly . It's like, it's like the must. It's the must. Right. Um, but the floral, like you're mentioning, I mean, we had dinner recently, and I was just noticing it again because it was, I mean, I hate to admit this, but it was one of the, one of the few times ever been sober in Kiki's , uh, just looking around and finally observing everything for really the first time for , for what it is. Yeah. And you guys truly have a , a beautiful restaurant. Yeah . I mean, seriously.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And I Thank you. I think also part of the charm is it , it's almost like a little residential or it's a little like , um, like it feels like it's, it's done by hand. You know what I mean? Like, you , you look at a lot of these projects and they, they look like it was done by a professional design team, and it's, it's all shiny and glossy, and Kiki kind of looks like it was layered by, you know, a bunch of different projects and a bunch of it , it's a little bit of a testament of a time
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: For sure. Because the one thing I always think about, and look, I'm, I'm not a restaurant owner. I'm , I'm the marketer, right. And I always tell my clients, Hey, it doesn't matter how good I am or how good anyone else it is that you have on your team helping you in the marketing. If, if your food is not good, the service isn't there. And , uh, the , the brand's just not quite there. It doesn't matter what you do, it's not gonna work. Right. But we always say, we kind of joke at our company, marketing is a truth accelerator. If you've got a great product, great service, and great team, we're gonna accelerate that success through marketing. Uh , if it's the opposite, you , you might see the opposite. You might accelerate the negativity. You guys have done such a phenomenal job. Uh, it's, it's incredible. And it's, it's almost like it's so over the top. I mean, if you don't mind me asking is do you know, do you know, what did it cost to open Kiki? So what did , what was the price point? You know , it's
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Been years honest . I don't know. Um, I think one of the first thing that I wanna say with it is I think they, they kind of bootstrapped the project and then layered on, okay, let's do this room next, or mm-hmm . Okay , let's work on this bar. Let's add these tables. Yep . So it, it really probably took three, four years before it became what it is now. And, and even now, I mean, honestly, every week, where I think the other thing that makes it so great is the ownership and, and myself and all the way to the GM and the ship. We're just never really complacent with what it is. Mm-hmm . So it's always like, we need to buy more lasers, we need to add more tables. We should, you know, redo the uniforms every single week for sure. Um, to, to kind of keep things fresh and new and
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Well, I'll tell , I'll tell you something else I've noticed by your team in just the last two weeks from our conversations is your guys' team is on it. Like, when we work with a client, I swear this happens half the time as they say, okay, so we just like paid this investment with you guys, and then like, we don't need to do anything. And the truth is, those companies, those don't work with us. It , it doesn't work. Yeah . E even our company, by the way, so like we, we spend a lot of money on ads for our business. We have also hired outside of agent outside agencies to help us with our own internal ad spend for running ads for our company. 'cause we're just, we're spending so much, we're spending like 130 KA month now. Wow. So it's, we, we actually, we sought outside help, but I'll tell you right now, the agency that we hired to help us with our ads , um, they would not be successful if we didn't also put the time in with them. And so I've already noticed this is , is your team, as we've been speaking with you guys about just getting things started, they , they've been so on it, like
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I would say all the way to our servers and like to our marketing department, to the people you're dealing with, sense of urgency is like the biggest thing for us. Right. So, yeah. Um, and I'm sure you could appreciate that as a , as a business owner as well. It's, man . Totally. The culture in these meetings is like, we'll say something and they're , they're like, we should call this guy. And someone will be like, okay. Yeah. And we're like, no, call him right now. Yeah. And so it's, it's very much like a get stuff done as soon as it hits your desk kind of culture, which I, I've
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Loved , I love that because, man, the truth is, I , I forget where I read this recently, but it was like, you can measure the success of someone not by their intelligence or even necessarily their motivation or a ton of other factors, but, but truly how quickly that person goes from idea to action. Literally. Yeah. Like, that's it. Yeah. Because that person might make the wrong decision 10 times in a row, but they're gonna get to the, the finally, the 11th time they try whatever it is and it's Right. And the other guy hadn't even tried once.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. . Exactly.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: So, so yeah, you guys, I , I've just, I've noticed it and I felt it. And I'm not directly involved with all the transactions and conversations, but I did take one meeting and I was like, blown away. I was like, this is , it's great to hear . This is good, man. No , seriously. It's really cool. Um, you as a person though, so you did investment banking. You, you had a branding agency prior to this. It sounds like you had a , a pretty successful career prior to restaurants. Why, why then restaurant office . Yeah . How did, how did this happen? Um,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So banking was kind of just what you thought you did when you went to college, right? Uh, I grew up in Connecticut, just out just outside of New York City and Wall Street. Mm-hmm . And , uh, always had hospitality in my blood. Uh, was, you know, my first job was as a cook at the ice skating rink at the age of 14. Um, and kind of after a couple years of banking, decided to pursue my passion and got my foot in the door first on the real estate side. Through real estate side, you start to meet some of the design teams and branding agencies behind a project. And through the help of a lot of great mentors, eventually became a creative director for a restaurant group, grew that to over 70 restaurants. And Wow. Left that to accept an offer to run my own branding agency. Again, focused on restaurants, but I kept getting vetoed by the ops guy. Right. Like it was, I was, I was the branding guy that understood ops or the marketing guy that understood ops, but the ops guy would always have the final vote. Yeah. And I just kind of just , and I, I felt like I could, the same principles that made me successful in branding and marketing, you know, understanding financial deadlines, sticking to budgets , uh, you know, kind of understanding the holistic approach behind any project. Yep . I thought that those same principles apply to ops or marketing or whatever else you wanna do in life. So mm-hmm . Um, again, got, got a really great opportunity to join a group called Lifehouse Hotels , um, just as they were entering a , a big series c $60 million raise. Um, and same thing , uh, became the head of food and beverage for that group. Uh, I think by the time we left, we had like 55 restaurants within our hotels. And , um, and yeah, from there was introduced to,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So wait, creative director, head of food and beverage branding. So you, you, you've, you've kind of done it all, maybe outside the , just being in the kitchen. Yeah .
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe not the kitchen and , and not on the ownership side yet.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah , yeah. And yeah . So you're, you're thinking about maybe starting one of your own projects. I
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Think that's, that's every, that's everyone's dream, right? Is , is to do something that, to kind of take all of their experiences and all the great role models that they've had to do something of your own.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Is this something that you've started already or is this still an idea? Or what's
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It's, it's still an idea, you know, casually looking at spaces. Um, I , I think even probably no startup founders, like on this day I started my business. Right. It's always like, I failed here. I took a turn here, I, I pivoted. Yeah. So , um, yeah, I think always looking at spaces and kind of , kind of working on different concepts for some of the things I see.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: For sure. For sure. It's, it's , um, it's tempting and even, even, like, I've thought about it, right? 'cause it'ss funny man, like a lot of people on our ads, again , we spend a lot of money on ads. Uh , people say, ah , this , but you've never had a restaurant. You know, what , what do you know about back of house? I'm like, great question. Nothing. Yeah . Nothing. But, but I've always said, Hey, look, but I really know how to get someone to walk through your doors. Yep . The question is, can , can you keep them?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I I think a lot of the credit I give, like in my success or in my career, is it , it's not that I'm very good at anything in particular. I think it's, I'm very good at managing really, really talented people around me. Right? Hmm . So , as, as a business owner, you, you must also kind of acknowledge it's, it's, you're not doing a great job if you're the smartest person in the room. You're, you're supposed to surround yourself with people that kind of, you know, make up for any of your weaknesses or, or , uh, kind of help you out there.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah .
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: So, yeah. I , I give a lot of credit to that. And , and just being able to manage a lot of really, really strong personalities. Were you're ,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Were , you're your , you said you were , you were always interested in the restaurant space. Were your parents in the restaurant space, by any mean , anyone else in their family? No . What attracted
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: You about it? I , I think , uh, I loved, that's a question. Uh , that's a great question because I almost always have to remind myself of it when, like, you have some tough days. Yeah. I love that. At a restaurant, you can walk into a room and there could be a basketball player, there could be a rapper , a celebrity, a family that's been saving up for a month just for that special day there. And they're all in the same room, and they're all, like, you get to service them, right? Yeah. And you get to, they're picking you for that special moment. So I think, like, I , I almost get chills just thinking about it. I think when, when you remind yourself that like, all these people are coming together and they're picking your venues, they're picking your service, they're picking, picking what you're putting in front of them. Yeah. That's a pretty special thing. And I , I don't know any other industry where you can have such an eclectic group of people and get to meet so many great people. Mm-hmm . Um, and I think at the end of the day, like food breaking bread is almost at the center of everything we do. Right? Whether for sure, it's, it's a celebration of life. It's, it's , uh, how we drown our sorrows. It's, it's sort of, it's literally the common denominator be behind all of our memories. Um, so, you know, I , I love the idea of that for
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Sure. You know what I love about your answer too , by the way? Is it, it's fully, I can tell 100% genuine, which is awesome. Thanks, . Like , I can literally see the , the , the sparkle in your eyes. You talk about it, which is awesome, by the way. But before I worked with restaurants, I worked with a lot of e-commerce brands, and I worked with a lot of e-comm owners who had truly not a lot of passion about what they were selling, but saw an opportunity. And it was, you know, it was a cash opportunity. And I think what , what you're describing here is you can make a lot of money in this industry, but also you truly love it. Yeah. You truly love it. And so the, the , the cash opportunity is just a bonus. Hey, if I, if I can make a lot of money, great, but, but I also love this. I you gotta love the grind, the hard work, all the attention you gotta put into this thing. 'cause if you don't, I don't think you truly ever can be great.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: My opinion . Yeah. There's, there's a great, there's a , I actually have a tattooed on my chest. It's, it's called Follow Your Bliss. And it's, it's a much longer quote from Joseph Campbell, but it's, it's just that if you're really passionate about pens, right? And you Yeah. You just pursue that passion somehow, you know, the money, the abundance, whatever, will , will follow.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: For sure. For sure. Um, random question for you. So I know since other conversations we've had, you guys at Kiki's, I mean, successful for a lot of reasons, but you guys actually are very old school and how you do a lot of things operations wise . Yeah . Uh , why is that why it's not just you guys though, by the way, the restaurant space in general is very old school. Like, I think you mentioned still paper checks and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Why is it your , in your personal opinion, why is that happening? Well,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: One, I think that's what attracted me to restaurants and, and even Kiki , is like, I had experience with startups and finance, and you could see at the time, like FinTech was really taking off and you could, you were able to see how technology was really , um, disrupting the financial sector mm-hmm . And I'm sure you see it as well, where, you know, those same opportunities kind of present themselves with hospitality for sure. I think it's, there's, there's just a lot of , uh, like transactions and points of contact and so many things that to make a change requires such a collective buy-in and so much , so many, so many like disruptors and so many things to go wrong. Mm-hmm . That I'm sure you experience it too, really , right? When you wanna break into a group or when you wanna do something different, you have to get eight people to sign off on it. You have to, you know, take two steps forward and one step back over and over and over again, where you could argue it might not be as smooth to make those changes in the restaurant industry as it is in certain other sectors. Mm-hmm . Um, but at the same time, I think that's what makes it such an exciting opportunity, right? Is you , you , you just look at the way marketing is done in tech or, or with for sure . Retail or anything like that, and you're like, man, if we could just apply that to restaurants, that , that could be such an
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Exciting opportunity for sure . Man , we see. So eye to eye , it's actually like, insane. Yeah. Because that's, that's is exactly why I got in the space too. Yeah . But I think , um, but we're, we're, we're coming up from different sectors, right? You're, you're more literally working inside the operation. Um, and real quick, like, just on that topic, like what, what does your day to day look like right now?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Man , um, , it's, it's, it's really different. Um, I think I'm blessed that the owners , uh, really give me a lot of autonomy and a lot of responsibility. I think , um, it's, it's everything from working on the marketing plans and the PR strategies and the social media strategy behind our existing properties mm-hmm . To working on some of, like, the real estate and design and, and and branding behind some of the upcoming projects we have.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Got it. Uh,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: You know, anytime you have a new opening like we have with Habibi, there's just a , there's a lot of turnover. There's a lot of growing pains. You know, you, you're, you're still figuring out who you are and who your customers are. How , how is the ,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: How is the company structured? Is everything go back to Roman ? Is there, is there other managers and team members are, are , yeah . Like how does , how's all structured? What's the org structure look like?
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So , uh, Roman and his partner Aris are , are the two partners there. Roman really , uh, runs the creative and the brand. Got it. Aris runs operations. Um, outside of that, we have about 30 people at corporate between finance, hr, got it. Myself, maintenance. Um, and then on the property level, you , you know, you have anywhere from like 50 to 90 employees , uh, on the restaurant side for sure. And , um, everything kind of, I , I think one thing that, that I love about the way they do it is every property sort of has a brand champion. And so with Habibi, we have this incredibly talented guy named eComm , who's , who's a partner. And he's kind of running that , uh, with the latest deal. We just closed Casablanca seafood. We have , we have someone else that's really developing that. Um, and, and yeah, that it kind of, that brand champion kind of makes sure that every, all, all the decisions are still true. And I think that's really important too, is that mm-hmm . You know, you walk into a lot of restaurants and it just feels a little disjointed. Like
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: For
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Sure, you know, their colors are this, and their marketing message is that, but their services , you are ,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: You got your , but what's interesting about Kikis in particular too, is you're like, it's almost like the decor and the employees and the whole like, service offering it , it truly is like, you feel the brand. Yeah. Like, you, you , you do, like, the moment you walk in, order your first drink, get your first appetizer, talk to the waitress, doesn't matter. It's you're getting this collective experience Yeah. Across everything.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: The word that comes to mind is whimsical, I think. Mm . You kind of walk in and it's, you know. Yeah .
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: It's super interesting, man. I, I like, it's, it's something I think a lot of restaurants try to create and have failed at many, many times. Um, event stuff. You guys, obviously, you're not just a restaurant, you , you're kind of like a club. You guys are known for Sundays. Yeah . Sundays is the spot at Kiki's. Yeah . Uh , how did that come to be? How'd you guys get that name for yourself?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You know, that was a little bit before my time, but I think , um, I think the owners, I think they started out like really pushing , uh, for even Saturdays and, and Saturdays in Miami. Like, everyone's busy and, and you're gonna do well. Yeah. Uh, but then almost like organically, we started to see more, more people pull up on their boats or come into party on a Sunday. And , um, we, we then really saw an opportunity there, sort of like a blue ocean strategy, if you will, where we, we saw that no one was really attacking that, and that that was really a big opportunity
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: For us. Wow . Yeah. And Miami is , is such an interesting market . 'cause I've only been here since end of 2023, but then I was, I was living in Brazil for the next year pretty much, or sorry, 2022. I came 2023. I was living mostly in Brazil. And then , uh, but I was, I was, I was back and forth and I was getting really acquainted into Miami. And what has always surprised me about Miami is there's always a new restaurant opening. Yeah. It always seems like it's gonna be the newest, greatest thing ever. A lot of other restaurants, I won't say names, have gone outta business , uh, have suffered. Uh, this was a really tough summer in general from Miami , um, restaurants like Kote or ko , however you pronounce it, I've heard both ways, but they, I heard they were resorting to like, doing like takeout as well, or like delivery. Mm . Which not seems like that never happen . Right. Yeah. Uh , a restaurant like that, you know, but a lot of people have suffered. Um, and you guys, it seems, I'm sure obviously there's been some downtime, but you guys have weathered some serious storms like . Yeah .
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of answers behind that. I think the first, as far as restaurants failing, one of the things you mentioned is, you know, even yourself wanting in get into restaurants, I think restaurants have one of the lowest barriers to entry. Yeah. So there's a lot of people that make a lot of, you know, mistakes that end up costing the restaurants closing. For sure . I think if you ask a lot of restaurant owners, whether they would be loved, whether , whether they would rather be loved by owners or tourists. Mm-hmm . The smart ones would rather be loved by tourists. Because if you make the list as a top interesting five bachelorette destination, you're probably not getting off that list anytime soon. Right. If you're, if you're the number one date spot, whatever, whatever. If you're the, the favorite local restaurant and whatever, there's probably gonna be three of those that open up in the next year mm-hmm . So it's really, really competitive there. Um, so
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: You got , so , so you actually, you guys are saying it , it's , it's better to be the , the tourist restaurant than the locals.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I think we did a really great job of making ourselves a, a a must stop for tourists that visit Miami. For sure. I think the opportunity that I see, and that one of the reasons I joined is, is to kind of win back the local audience. Mm-hmm . You know , because like you said, there's been, people saw what Kiki was doing, the supper club model, you know, before it was nightclubs or this or that, and now everyone's doing supper clubs. Yeah. Everyone wants to open up a supper club.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: But you guys, but I would say, look, you guys are definitely a big tourist destination, but at the same time, I mean, there's, there's talk of going to Kiki's every single Sunday here. Yeah . And these , and these are locals. Yeah . Like, it's just like, oh, it's Sunday. Hey, I'm gonna have a chill Monday. I'm in. Yeah. Yeah. Like it , you know what I mean? So it's, it's, well , it's always, always happening. And then let's talk real quick about , uh, Habibi . You guys just opened a BB too Yep . Which is also nearby. Yeah. Right next door . This is, so that's, that's nuts. So you're, you're opening, it's, are they competing with each other a little bit? I've always No , imagine that a little
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Bit. I think we saw it as really complimentary. Right. We, we had , uh, an Arabian Nights on Saturdays at Kiki that was wildly successful. Wow . Is just like a piece of programming. And we, you know, I think just in the, when you look at the global landscape, you just start to see, like Dubai coming up as a major metropolitan city, you're, you're , you're really starting to see that culture embraced . Mm . And when you're kind of looking at all the concepts that are doing, right, everyone was doing Italian, everyone, everyone was doing Mediterranean for sure. Miami, Latin American. And we just saw this really great opportunity to do that cuisine. And I think what, what's also really smart about Habibi is it's looking at a capsule , uh, of time in Morocco that had a really strong French influence. Mm . So it's not outwardly, you know , uh, middle Eastern, it's, it's got like a, a little bit of an Asian influence. It's got a very strong French Moroccan influence. Uh, there's , uh, pieces of Tunisia, north African , um,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Super cool. Yeah. I still haven't been yet , but I've only heard good things, honestly. Yeah. You gotta come by. Um, I know that the launch party was pretty successful. I wanted to come that night, but , uh, it looks awesome. And, and I, I think though, like, I think we've talked about this also before, but Roman is, is such an interesting owner. 'cause I think he, he had other multiple concepts. Some haven't worked out, but obviously you , he's had a lot of home runs. Yeah . Which is , which has been awesome to see. See , um, a lot of owners that we personally speak to on a regular basis, they, they have like first year success, right. The honeymoon phase. Things are great. And then it's like they just, they just kind of die off and it's like they didn't really do anything wrong. Like they're good. But do you think, like now, for example, okay , COVID for example, destroyed tons of restaurants and a lot of people have said a lot of restaurants that probably should have been outta business already anyway and, and they just kind of got rid of the fat. A lot of owners have told me that we're now years later. Do you , do you guys feel the competition again, creeping in a little bit? I mean, I feel like I see a new restaurant every day and I know the owners we speak to, they're like, we're doing everything we can. Yet, there's so many more restaurants opening and I, I, they say that's why this is all happening. But is it, is it something else? Is it the competition? What do you think it is
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: That is kind of forcing restaurants to close
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: That just that's, I dunno if there's always closing, but like, it's this first year and , and they're the new, you know, hot girl at the party and then all of a sudden they're dead . Yeah. And this is like a very common story I'm seeing consistently not just here, but like all over the place. Yeah.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: There could be a lot of reasons for that. I think the first thought that comes to mind is just correctly budgeting. So a lot of people think that you're gonna open your restaurant, you're gonna have 400 people through the door for sure . And you're gonna sustain those 400 people forever. You know, I think a lot of , at least the , the smart people that I know, they actually plan for the first year being really tough. The second year being more of a break even year, you know, year three, you're finally doing a turnaround. And I think if you manage the expectations of your investors and, and your partners that way and, and you know, everything else is upside Yeah. Then you'll be a little more successful.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: For sure. For sure. Um, I had another guest on the PO on the podcast maybe like almost a year ago at this point. Um, Juan Barientos , and he owns a number of restaurants. One is L Cilo here in Miami, Michelin Star Place. Great spot. And what he, he said something similar actually. He said he , a lot of restaurant owners, they, they raise enough money for what they think they need and they truly need it a lot more. And they're not budgeting for that figure it out phase. Yep . And so sure they open up, but then something breaks or whatever, or they need a new oven and, and boom, they're, they're out cash and Yeah. They're, they're playing catch up .
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: And that goes back to, you know, lack of experience sometimes, right? Yeah . Where you , you think you know everything about restaurants 'cause you've eaten a lot at a lot of good ones. But , um, I, I strongly recommend anyone working with a restaurant to kind of hire or work with a partner that, you know, has actually done it before and maybe even failed before. Because for sure, I think some of the best experience that, that I've had has actually come from some of the failures that I've had and not the successes.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. For sure. You don't, you don't learn anything when you're just killing it . Yeah. You , you learn when you're kind of eating. Right? Totally. So , so , uh, again, I'm, I'm so pumped. 'cause you guys, today's the first day with Kikis on dio . Um, and I know there's a couple other venues you guys were interested in too, which I'm, I'm pumped about. Yeah. We, we, as a company, we've, we're at the point where I think our agency is, we've been on for 10 years, right? So we, we've worked with over 2000 brands. I feel like I'm personally at , at the point where like, I, I can look at your concept and I, I know it's gonna work or it's not. Um, all the concepts you guys are doing I see as home runs personally, I think, I think they're awesome. Yeah. Um, dio as our new software i'd, I'd love to get like, what has been, so I've had a great experience with your guys team Has ha what have, what has your team said so far about the software? What has, what has been some of the highlights you guys have noticed so far?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think we instantly see the UX is really friendly, right? We love the design. I think the people behind it are really great to work with. And you could tell that they have experience in the field, which mm-hmm . Which is really nice. Um, yeah, I think just much like a restaurant, you almost need to do like 30 things, right? Just to be good. For sure. I think when you're working with a vendor, if their customer service is a little off, then the other 29 things just don't seem as great For sure. You know? Uh , so I think top to bottom we're, we're just really happy with the onboarding process, the , the way the product works. And , um, I think it's just the beginning. As, as we start to get more data, we, we do wanna do a little more advertising with you guys. Yeah,
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: For sure. And on that topic, great segue, how many, okay, so how many guests do you guys get at Kiki's? Monthly.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Monthly? Oof.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. What would you say? I guess what would be an estimate?
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Five . Maybe 25,000 . 20,000.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: And what's your guys average ticket again?
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: You know, it really varies. Uh, anywhere from like a , a dinner reservation that's 130, $150 to a bottle service, you know, minimums that, you know how bottle service is anywhere ,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Could be 20,000 . You guys have a bottle that's 20,000, don't you?
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I think we have one that right now that's about 75
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Actually . Oh my God. Yeah . So anybody listening? You , you guys aren't charging enough. Let's just say that. Okay. Yeah . Um, so what I, what I, but we'll focus on this first number of 25,000 because you said obviously the data, right? And this is something that like, I think a lot of restaurant owners don't think about enough is they're so concerned with getting their product right, their service, right. Which they gotta be before they even think about data. So let's, let's just be honest, like, yes, they should focus on that. But once they've mastered that, like you guys have, and a lot of other brands we've worked with have, it's, it's all in the data. Mm-hmm . Right ? And so 25,000 customers a month, 75,000 customers over a quarter. That's a lot of traffic. What I'm so excited about that now that you guys have DIO , is the potential opportunity to see who these people are Yeah. To, to, to capture data on these people. Whether, whether it's uh , whether it's just a , a pixel from meta, a , a Google tag , um, a phone or an email address , um, being able to then now remarket to these people. I know you said, obviously when you came in, you were looking at like, Hey, how do I help bring back the locals even more so than the tourists? Well, almost like, it's gonna be so easy. It's gonna be stupid now. Yeah. . It's like, I can't wait. Uh , I can't wait. I mean, it's gonna be, it's gonna be so exciting. Um, you guys' Instagram too, I think you guys have like 200,000 or so.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Same thing. You put a smart sign right there on your link in bio. I mean, you guys are gonna be driving summer traffic. It's gonna be crazy. Um, just so I know also from a marketing standpoint, do you guys, do you guys have an email list that you guys regularly email? Yeah,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: We, we have a , we have an email list pretty much the same size as our , uh, Instagram followers.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: So like 220,000. Yeah. And how often are you guys emailing this list?
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Um, it's one of the, sort of, since I joined the group, we're trying to get a better cadence to it. So we, I think the , the right number is about two a month,
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Two a month , two per month. That's it. Yeah. Wow. But you have 220,000 or so. How did you guys capture these emails? That's incredible.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: So , uh, I think there's, there's, I mean, if you want , you probably understand email, email strategies better than anyone, but Yeah . Um , we have everything from wifi captures to making sure that we have certain RS VP initiatives behind any events that we do.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Um, I think doing partnerships with other brands where you share mailing list as a smart way of doing it. Mm . Um, so, you know, I think there's, if, if your goal is to grow your email subscriber list, there's a couple ways to kind of go about that.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. Um, the wifi capture, do you know what you guys use for your wifi to do that? Which system?
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: We just switched to a vendor called Fishbowl.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Fishbowl. Okay. I know Fishbowl. Yeah. Nice, nice. Yeah, we were talking to, I won't, I won't name their name , uh, but another big restaurant group here. You , you probably know who I'm talking about. And they, they mentioned that their wifi system and other reason they were interested in this show, their wifi system, they captured like 2% of their traffic coming through, but in that 2% of the traffic of, of which they were able to capture an email. So there's two things you can do with emails, which is really exciting. And this is , this might be interesting for you too. So emails are valuable not just to email your audience, but you can create also a custom audience mm-hmm . So you can actually on, like, on like meta. So you could actually take those emails. Oh, man, I'd be so curious to do this with you guys. I'm thinking about it. We should take these emails, we should upload them to meta. Meta is going to basically see the track , get the profiles from every single email that we upload into Meta. Now we've got a custom audience of which now we can target all these people for like pennies. Yeah . And you probably already know this, but maybe people who are watching don't know this remarketing is a hell of a lot cheaper than cold traffic. Yeah. And, and so like, you, you guys, and you haven't really done any advertising yet, right?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: No, I think that's, that's again, sort of the really intro , you know, we haven't done any sort of advertising in this new day and age, right? Mm-hmm . Advertising was very different back then. It was, there was a different focus on pr Sure . There was a different focus on promoters, whatever, whatever. So , uh, not, not digital advertising as we know it now,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: But you guys Yeah. So you guys are in an insane position, I would say. Yeah . You guys ,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And again, that's, that's what made this opportunity so interesting for me is that it's such a strong brand. It's got such a great , uh, reputation in this market, but , uh, there's so many things that are just that really haven't been done yet. Right.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: You guys, you guys, how many, how many locations do you have in Miami now at this point?
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: So we have one, two, and three. Uh , we just, we just in the middle of a sale of two others, but then we also have three pending openings,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: So three now, three coming. Yeah. So what you guys should do, man, I mean, and I assume Kiki's the most successful of the three, right? For now. Yeah . Yeah. For exactly. For now. What would be so easy for us to do, and again, any other restaurant owners listening, take this strategy. If you're able to do something like you guys have, like you have this email list, or you have DIO capturing data on people coming through, we now have the ability to build upon that list plus capture data, people visiting you plus use already what you have the data, right? Yeah . Cross collaboration, cross marketing across all these different locations is , is one of the easiest things in the world, right? Yeah. Uh ,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: And that's, that's the opportunity . That's, that's the challenge and the opportunity I'm working with now because Kiki has such a big list mm-hmm . But then, you know, Habibi's brand new , uh, Casablanca, which we just bought last week is brand new-ish to us . Do ,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Do you know the , the email open rate you guys are seeing? I know may maybe not. I , it's
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Actually quite high for the co for the industry. I think we're at about seven or 8%. Okay. Um, and that's a little bit of a point of pride where we started at about two, two and a half . And that, that has a little to do with, with why we, my decision to do to it right now. And you could challenge that for
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Um, but yeah,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: I , I'll have the team look into it 'cause I'm really curious. But , um, so let's talk a little bit more about like, man, like how, how do you get better at what you do? Because , uh, a a lot of restaurant owners, I'll be honest, they , they ask me questions and I'm like, Hey, I , you know, quite frankly, I'm , I'm the marketing guy. I don't know the operations, like you do the , the , the brand approach, like you do the, the little things that go so far in store and beyond. Yeah. Um, where did you learn some of this stuff? How do you get better on a regular basis?
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I, I, I'm really blessed to have had some really great mentors throughout my career. And I think I, I still always know that I'll have my own, eventually have my own restaurant group or my own restaurant projects. But I think every time I thought I had a weakness, whether it be marketing or branding mm-hmm . Or operation, I kind of went straight into that weakness and tried to find a job or a career or a project that would really strengthen it for sure. Um, and so, you know, with Lifehouse, we scaled from three to 50 something restaurants nationally, but I recognized that, you know, Miami's gonna be home and I really wanted to understand the Miami market better. And so when the Kiki opportunity presented itself, it was that I was like, wow, I could really understand what it's, what , what it takes to be number one in Miami
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Um, and,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: And you guys are a number one, aren't you?
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, in my eyes we are, right? I think, yeah , it depends how you measure that, but I think I would consider us to be a top brand for sure.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Okay. I think I said the number 40 million a year earlier. I don't know where I heard that. Is that right around where you guys are doing, would you say more or less? I
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Don't know. I don't know if I can comment on that, but
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah , it's , it's up there. It's up there guys. It's up there. It's not like a hundred thousand, 200,000 a month. It's way up there. So , um, yeah. That's incredible man. Well , I think, I think you made the right choice. Um, I think a , a lot of restaurant owners I speak to also on a regular basis, they haven't done the work to learn the things they need to learn to be successful like you have, by the way . Yeah. Because a lot of, a lot of owners we speak to maybe worked in the restaurant as, you know, back of house as a server, as a host or hostess, and they've done maybe every job you can imagine they've been , became a manager and then they open a restaurant and it, and it, they fall flat on their face and they wonder why. One thing you said earlier too is you guys have, what, like 40 employees, like in an office doing like finance operation stuff too, right? Yeah . There's way too many restaurants that I talk to on a regular basis that are doing not your numbers, but let's just say, you know, like half a million a month . And it's like the office and like the admin work is like non-existent. It's like they're, they're trying to get like a server to like
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah .
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Be their marketing team and they're ,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the tough thing, you know?
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: It's crazy to me,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: 10 years ago, restaurants were just, it was all about getting good food and good service, and now it's Instagram and newsletters and marketing and, you know , it's business detail and et cetera . So I think what's been asked of a typical restaurant manager or whatever is just getting stretched, stretched further and further out. Um, which makes it exciting and interesting for sure . But challenging.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: It's, but it's, it's, it's interesting. So like, okay, Juan, I mentioned earlier too, he told me the reason he's been successful is because, I mean, he's a Michelin star chef, but he's, he's a businessman. He's like, I understand the business, business. This is a business, you have to treat it like a business, right? Um, I have some friends in the music space and they tell me the same thing. Hey, yeah, I'm an artist, I'm a musician, but this is a business. This is a brand.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had a , I had a sit down recently with , uh, a , a restaurant bar that was not doing so well and they needed some advice and we had about eight people at the table. And I was like, okay, can everyone tell me why you're here, right? Mm-hmm . And someone was like, well, because I love the Latin American community, or , uh, I just think this neighborhood. And I was like, none of you have said that we're here to make money. And that's, I think that is also gets lost on restaurants. It's so many times it's, it's about passion and love and we wanna take care of our friends, but we kind of lose sight of the fact that it's a business. That's true.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: You know ? That's very true. Interesting. So how do you keep your employees motivated and how do you go about your hiring process? By the way, I'm kind of curious.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: So I think there's different, just psychologically it's proven that different employee , different people get motivated by different things. Yeah . Some might be , uh, might really look for praise from their bosses. Some look might look for sort of awards, financial compensation. There's a lot of, I read a lot on this just to make sure that, that I'm , I'm approaching it the right way. And so I think even when I first hire an employee, one of the first questions I ask is like, where do you want to be in a year or two? How can I, what can I do to make you successful? Because if they tell me I'm here and I, if I'm a , I'm a bartender, but I wanna be a beverage director, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna give you some projects to work on that I know will get you ready for that next job. Mm . Nice. Um, and I , and I know that that person will stay motivated on that. I think also understanding that, you know, we, we have lives be away from work. So, you know, we had an employee today that, that kind of called us because he was in a car accident and he had to pay some insurance bills and stuff like that. And, you know, we'll step in and make sure we take care of that employee because he's someone we really value and frankly, we can't have him be distracted at work when he is got all these other personal issues.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: For sure. Um, real quick, what you just mentioned, like understanding your, your employee's goals and helping them work towards that. Yeah . Right. Uh, what kind of like meeting cadence do you work with on , with your employees? Is is it like, 'cause I've heard lots of different opinions about this. Yeah. How do you, how do you approach it?
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: So there's how I've approached a lot of different ways in a lot of different companies, what works best for Kikis. And that, I think that's also important to understand is that if you've got different generations, you've got different age groups, you've got different demographics, different work schedules, personality types . So what works best for Kiki is we do an all hands where everyone is there on Wednesday. That's why I was a little late today.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Every Wednesday.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Every Wednesday. Wow . It's owners, it's marketing, the whole team, it's promoters and we all sit down and it lasts about two hours and we get it all out
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: There. Wow. And all hands every single
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Week. And a big reason for the office, and a big reason why all of our projects are around the Miami River is because we just find it best to meet in person to talk. So to talk it out, wait ,
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: Real quick. All hands, meaning everyone in the restaurant and in the office? No.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: So it's gonna be everyone , like managers and above. Okay, got
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: It . Yeah, not got
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: It . Servers, bartenders, stuff
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: Like that . Okay . I was like , that is, wow. . So we've
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Got, we've got that there. And then on the restaurant level, we run a pre-shift, like most restaurants do before service. Um, but we also obviously leverage technology, right? Like we, we share our pre-shift notes or we work , we share our meeting notes online. Mm-hmm . We use Slack to communicate WhatsApp, whatever, whatever.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Nice, nice. Um, how many, how many, how many direct employees report to you?
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Um, I mean directly probably, probably about 30, 40, right. And then 30 or 40
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: Direct , oh my
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: God .
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Managers. So 30 or 40. They're you're , you're their direct boss. Yeah. How do you manage that?
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: I , again, I think, I think hiring people that you don't need to micromanage, right? So I like the reservations manager. I just, I just hired, she knows way more about the job than I do. So I'm, I'm, I'm learning from her. Wow . You know what I mean? Our gm a Kiki , I could never do her job. Do you,
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: How often do you meet with all these employees though? You're obviously meeting , meeting them , encryption, not doing one-on-ones, I'd imagine, right. We
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Have some one-on-ones, especially in the beginning, or if there's a project that they're struggling with, I'll put 'em on a little bit of a plan where we'll, yeah. You know, like one person, I have a 15 minute touch base every morning at 9:00 AM because that's what they need right now. They need to check in with me and they need to get
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: My time . For sure, for sure. Um,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: But, but I think also, although they d they might report to me, everyone kind of helps each other out. And I think every cross training is also really big for me. Where, you know, the GM understands what marketing's doing. Marketing understands whether bartender does because that way we can kind of all hold each other accountable. But
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: That's, man, that's a lot of employees. Yeah. .
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're busy.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: That's so, and , and , and what's your day look like? I mean, how , when's your day start, when's it end? Like what kind of routine you work? Are you in
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Just workwise or or personally, yeah .
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: All the above. Are you also in office? Are you sometimes at the restaurant? Yeah . Is it different every day ?
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I , um, I start my day pretty early at like five or 6:00 AM and that's Wow . When I do like my personal work, right. Journaling, meditation, got it. Kind of getting my, getting my head straight for the workday , um, workouts, stuff like that. And then by nine or 10:00 AM I'll go into the office. I block the first two hours of my day to organize my messages. So for sure all my emails on my slacks, on my calendars, on my notes. Every meeting always has 15 minute break afterwards. 'cause that's when I'll send my emails out or my notes for
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Um, I am OCD about organization. So if you look at our Google drives or anything like that, there's, there's, it's spotless.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: You seem like that kind of guy. you , you, you seem like, I think every time I've seen you , your hair has been perfect and like you , you know, you perfect shave and Yeah, yeah , yeah . You , you're, well you put together.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: But , um, and so then the second half of the day is usually meetings, especially 'cause the restaurant teams are working late, so they don't wake up until a little later. Wow. Um , and then, yeah, on the weekends, I think the , the beauty of the job is hopefully you're, you're working at , for a restaurant group where you enjoy visiting the restaurants too. So for sure , uh, whether it's organically because some friends wanna stop by or I'm just driving by and I'll, I'll pop in. Nice. But same thing, you hire strong enough managers that hopefully they can do the job and you just need to make sure to get any, any things out of their way to make their job easier. Mm-hmm . Right ? That , I think that's, that is the job, is to be more of like an offensive lineman to a bunch of quarterbacks. For
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Sure. I like that. I like that analogy too. Yeah. I , um, I, I have this terrible problem where I , I'm like listening to like five audible books at once at all times. Yeah . Uh, I just, I like to kind of hop around and , and one book I came across recently, I'm forgetting even the name of it. It's a book on management. And , um, I'm always trying to like, sharpen my own accident and figure out where I can be a better manager or leader or whatever I'm focusing on in the moment. I got like a couple sales books I'm doing too. Like, yeah . All the above, whatever. But , um, this book in particular, it was, it was talking about just how, how many companies actually just waste so much time in meetings. And , um, and so I think even at our company, we , we probably gotta cut back a little bit, to be honest. Like, it's just crazy. Some of my managers, I look at their calendars and it's just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. I'm like, you don't have time to even work. You're just sitting in meetings all the time. And so I think if you have the right team, like you just said, I like, that's why I like that analogy. You're working with a bunch of quarterbacks, people that can manage themselves, do their own things. But at the same time too, there's, there's obviously moments where, you know, you , you know, you gotta get in there and talk to someone and, and, and work with them. I know you're probably not in the restaurant doing the training with like, the servers and the staff there, but can you talk to us a little bit about what that training looks like? Inhouse?
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, I might not be there, but I would dev , like for Habibi, we developed the training manuals.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Oh , okay. Got it. Oh , nice . That
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: By them . So , um, like opening a restaurant, there's about a month worth of trainings. You know, in the beginning, you , you work on your software trainings and you kind of do some of , like the HR stuff. What kind of points
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: Sale do you guys use ? Again, we're
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Using Toast. Okay. Nice . Um, and then two weeks leading up to the opening, you're, you're going through steps of service, you're quizzing people on recipes for sure. And then the last week you , you have what , what's called mock training, right? So you don't, you , you're not actually accepting any money or cooking any food, but you're kind of going through the motions. Um, and then I think the big thing is for restaurants is actually continued education. Right. So I think for sure, making sure that you're still quizzing them, that you're still training them, that, that you're still presenting some new ideas, some new initiatives. Mm-hmm . That I think is what takes, when you look at like, the really great restaurant groups, especially on a national level, they usually have some system of continued training and education and spot checks and stuff like that.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: For sure. Um, another guy had on the podcast, like two years ago, actually one of our podcasts that did really, really well , um, with a guy, his YouTube name is the Restaurant Boss. Okay. . And he was talking about how interesting it is to just sit in your restaurant and just watch and see and observe what your staff is doing. And he talked about this for a while , but what he was saying is like, you should have a protocol , um, and an SOW for , for everything. Yeah . Everything should be documented. Um, there's a, there's a program we actually just got recently called , um, train . Yeah . Have you heard of Train ? Yeah. Oh, really? Oh, nice. You guys use it.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: We don't use it because, you know, again, with Lifehouse, we were so focused on scale that I developed all of it, or like most of it Wow . Ourselves. But , uh, yeah, I think they're a great platform, especially if you're a small group, you know, that's a little limited on resources and really need to kind of ,
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: Dude, so we, we actually use it. Uh , we're at 65 employees now, and it's, it's been life changing for us. Yeah. Because you can see when your employees have gone through whatever they need to go through. Yeah . You can, let's just say, what I use it for all the time is, let's just say I don't mention the sales team anymore, but let's just say my sales manager comes to me and he is like, Hey, this sales rep isn't doing a great job this month. Yeah . I've talked to him about A, B and C, and , uh, I'm just not seeing much progress. And he is now asking me maybe for some feedback I might prescribe, Hey, tell 'em to go back to the train and watch videos. A, B , C on sales discovery. Yeah .
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Whatever. That's the thing that it's awesome with , with all those SOPs or sows, whatever you wanna call 'em. It's, yeah, it's the retention, right? Mm-hmm . So I think we've gotten better at that, but that's something that we're constantly working on. 'cause you'll, you'll spend so much time with the documents, and then you'll put them in front of it and you'll ask people to read it. But then, you know, we, we have a system of Quizlets, we have daily quizzes. We do retraining, like you said, if , if we see someone constantly making some mistakes at the POS or something like that, we'll kind of send 'em back to get trained on it for
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Um, but Well, 'cause
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: The train , you can see if they've watched it, right? Yeah . So it's, it's kind of, and you can't really cheat it . Yeah . So it's, it's nice. The problem with us is being, you know , the software space now is product changes every three weeks. So it's like a constant grind to keep this thing updated. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, man, it's, it's, it's really, really nuts. So, man, three stores now three more coming. Uh, you've got such crazy experience with everything you've done prior to that, and I know it's still in the idea stage, but, but can you tell us about what you're working on or thinking about?
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: What I could tell you is that I th my personal belief, I think there's a lot of people that have like a restaurant idea and then they look for space for it. I'm, I'm a big believer that like the real estate should dictate the , uh, the concept that you do. Mm . Um, I think different buildings have a certain beauty to them, and, you know, something might scream wine bars , something else might scream all day cafe.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: I see what you're saying. And then
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: I think , um, I'm , that's a good point. I'm , I'm a big believer in developing a sense of place, right? So when we opened up Tero in Little Havana, which was a rooftop Latin American, we really wanted to echo like the gentrification of the neighborhood and the melting pot of that neighborhood. Obviously with Kiki when they, when they opened it, and it was a waterfront location, and it's had that, you wanted to feel like you were a sense of place in Miami, but also on a Greek island somewhere, but also on the water. So I think that's sort of the next thing that I'm thinking through. And then after that, I think taking a look at the talent that you have, right? For sure . So certain projects are open because the chef is really talented and he cooks great Mexican food . So you do a Mexican restaurant, certain others have a really great bartender. So you on that ,
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: So working with what you have basically. Yeah, yeah . Or ,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Or what you can get. Hopefully.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: Well, tell me, well tell me this. Okay. So, so a lot of people I've spoken to, and we talk this all the time, I've talked , have had tons of YouTube videos about this. But like I said earlier, marketing is a truth accelerator. Well, guess what? Um, you also have to have somewhat of a presentable online presence for people to consider you. Mm-hmm . Right ? You want your Google My Business to have a photo that's not seven years old. . Yeah. You know, like, or you know, like, come on guys. Really, you wanna have some decent reviews? Hopefully , uh, you want your Instagram page to look like you've done something to it, at least in the last couple months. Yeah . Right. Before you run ads. Um , some of these guys, they have such a hard time just , just getting anything presentable online to just look somewhat presentable. Right . You're a branding expert. Uh , anyone who's maybe struggling to enhance their brand. I , I guess what , what would you tell that kind of person? Like what I think , how would you describe bettering the brand experience?
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: I think the problem is so many people are looking for like the silver bullet to fix it all. So you sit there and everyone's like, what's our problem? And they're expecting one answer. And so, yeah. You know, anyone that's ever worked with me on a project is familiar with my, I have like a 42 step pro a promotional schedule. So it's developing a draft menu to identifying 30 different marketing channels. I have creative sizing guides for 18 different, you know, wow . Pieces of art that, and like where you're putting it. So a newsletter file is gonna look different than the Eventbrite event page file.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: And you, and you made this.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Probably, probably made it 10 years ago and then constantly updated it as I went through it. Wow. Um, so I think that the answer, so that's the answer to marketing, is, I , I don't think one Instagram story or one Instagram post is obviously gonna fill your restaurant. I actually think
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. You're
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Gonna get three people that read a good review, four people that look at your Instagram story, five people that get your newsletter, and then all of a sudden you look around and you have 30 people. Right. Um, on the branding level, I think one, the first thing that comes to mind is if you try to please everyone, you're gonna please no one, right ? Mm-hmm . And so I think everyone looks around and they're like, oh, they're doing sushi. We should do sushi. Oh, let's, yeah, they're doing ladies night. We should do ladies night. You know, and and they just spread themselves too thin. Yeah . Like , true. When you sit down and you ask yourself like, who are we? What are we, what's our customer? And you stay with that, and you say, no, just as much as you say yes, or you , you focus on the things that work. If you've got the right concept, then that should work. I think a lot of times you look at the right, you people have this great idea, and then it just gets diluted as they go through openings and they read one bad review or, you know, whatever, whatever. They kind of don't stick to their guns as much. For sure.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: For
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Sure. So I think that's, that's branding and, and again, branding. I think it's, it's taste, touch, sound, you know, smell. It's the menus. It's literally everything. Every , everything that you're seeing needs to be sort of like, thought
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: About. No, it , it , it is true. And I've, I've felt that in your guys' venues. So menus real quick, let's talk about that. Yeah . . So, so we, our product is a , it's a digital menu. And I know, I know, like even us, we've had conversations about the paper menu, the tangible menu versus the digital menu. Um, we now have QR codes in the restaurant, which is great. Yeah. At least at the bar. Yeah. Um, talk to me about how, how that happened and you guys, 'cause that was at one point, like never gonna happen. Yeah. Well, and now you guys have opened up. Yeah . What changed?
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, and I don't know if I ever told you this, but like before Covid , I had experienced opening up restaurants like in Hong Kong and in Asia, and so ,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Oh wow. I didn't know that.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: If you go over there, they were doing QR codes way before. Like we, we started to really adopt it over covid and stuff like that, right? Mm-hmm . So I understood the potential and what it could look like, you know, if everyone was really, really open to it. Yeah. Obviously Covid accelerated that, or, or, or really got people a lot more comfortable with the idea. I still think that on a brand level, you know, if you're spending a thousand dollars and stuff like that, there's something powerful about the tactile feel of a menu mm-hmm . But you can't ignore the data and you can't ignore the opportunity. Right. Like you said, we have these wifi capture screens and we'll have whatever , whatever, 5,000 people a week, and we'll get 50 to whatever, 250 emails from that
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: But if you think about someone scanning and the four people on the menus and the , and , and the way you could then get them on a retargeting level. Yeah. That's, at some point the money has to outweigh your branding or has to , has to , has to . Like, it's for sure . Gotta play a role in it. So we're starting to get creative about it, right? Like we , we do acknowledge, like at the bar, you don't need a huge menu for sure . So like , that's , that's a thing. There's a lot of other examples where 60 Vines is like a brand that I love where they, the , the , the wine list and the drink menu is on, is in front of you, but then the food menu is a QR code. And so every diner gets the, the tactile, tangible experience, but then when they, when they wanna get the food, they open , they scan a QR code and they get there. So we're looking at that and saying like, oh, maybe we can run some drink specials or whatever at the menu. Or maybe we offer people both, so that for sure when we clear that giant menu, they could still go back and check on , on their phone . So, for sure, I think we're, we're thinking about a way to have the two opportunities sort of live together mm-hmm . In , in a thoughtful and tasteful way.
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: I love that. I love that, man, that was a great explanation. Yeah . Thank you, . That's awesome. No, I think , um, but I think you're to , you're approaching it completely, right? And I think it's like you said earlier, right? Like a , a lot of people in the restaurant space, they're there for the passion and they sometimes forget this is, this is still a business and , uh, the data should, it should wildly outweigh the, the negative ideas about the QR code menu. One thing I I, I hate even saying a QR code menu because it has such a negative connotation, I think for a lot of astronomers . Hey, one, one covid , right? Like, Hey, this came as in large part, large part because of Covid. Yeah . Let's just be honest, right? So people have this bad taste in their mouth about it. The other thing is, people are so used to, I mean, man, Mila still does this. You go to Mila, it's QR code menu, and it's, it's like that PDF crap menu, right? Oh my God. Like, gotta zoom in and like, I'm only 32 . I think I have good eyes, but I can't see what the hell I'm looking at. Yeah . Like, you know what I mean? And so that drives me nuts. And I know it drives everyone else nuts too. And that is such a bad experience. Um, and one thing that, that I, we have spent a lot of time on, and I , I'll just be fully transparent, we've spent close to a million dollars on the product now at this point. Wow. Almost a million. And I only learned this actually this morning , um, which I was shocked. I thought it was a lot less . So , so yeah, I asked, I asked , uh, our head of finance, and , and long story short, we're almost at a million and so much time and energy has gone into the menu because it truly really matters. And I'll be honest, when we first started the business and start building the software, I was like, it's, it's okay because the data will outweigh the look. But we've learned No, no . The , the, the branding and the look and the appeal and that experience. Yeah . We thought, oh, we have , we have to just be better than the PDF . No, no, no. People hate the PDF . People despise that. PDF you gotta be way, way, way better than the PDF looks wise . The data is great, but let's just be honest, a lot of restaurant owners, they don't understand data. Right? So, so I learned that the hard way. And so we've redone the menu several times, it's been very expensive. And , and now, and now I think we have, I think like four different templates. Yep . Um, of which now you can choose and select from. I think even for you guys, we're gonna do a couple other new updates where I'm hoping we can do this, actually, I'm hoping we can actually do like the floral print that you guys have. Yeah, right . Then there
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I was , I was pushing for that too.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: I , I would love to make, we'll make that happen eventually. Yeah. It , it shouldn't, it shouldn't be too difficult at this point. Um, but there's, yeah, I've , I've learned that though. I've learned that, that like in this industry, well, the ones, the brands that truly have made an impact, like you guys, the , the brand is, is its most important thing. Marketing and all these other things will not work if the brand is not there. You gotta have the cool factor what you guys also have, by the way, at personal experience, this , I was actually wondering, wonder whether or not I wanted to mention this on the podcast today, . So I was actually going to Kiki's, like, I forgot which New Year . It was one of these New Years . Yeah. I'm losing track of which years it was. Which year. Anyway, man, I had a group of eight. We had made the reservation like a month in advance . It was New Year's . And , um, one guy in our group had cargo pants.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Oh
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the bouncer would not have it. And everyone was. And it didn't matter what we did, and you know, what are we gonna do? Like, you know, leave , leave our buddy at the door and bouncer even said, the seven of you can come. He can't. And it's like, what do , what do we do? You know? Um , so, but I've been back to Kiki several times, but some people, and I noticed, you know, you guys are still extremely busy. You guys have that cool factor. You guys are probably one of the very few restaurants that can do that and get away with it. Honestly,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe I, you know, honestly, it's, it's almost like an American thing because in, in Europe, especially New Year's Eve, if you show up in shorts, you're not getting it anywhere. For sure. So I think , uh, I, I do, I am proud that like many things we kind of, it's protecting our brand, right? For sure . Like , we knew that you let one person in, then the other person's gonna say, but look at this guy, let me wear my hat. And next thing you know, for sure , you just have a very different look. Um, so we do think that, you know, a night out with us is , uh, an experience. It is an elevated experience. We do want it to be memorable. So we kind of, we ask that, that you dress the part. Right. Um, so, so
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: I get it. I totally get it. Um, question for you, you mentioned like technology earlier. I'm a big tech enthusiast. Um, I've also unfortunately spent a lot of money in tech, , , fortunate or unfortunate. We'll see. Yeah. But , uh, I, I personally obsess over ai and I, I think AI is truly going to really transform a lot of industries, specifically the restaurant space. Yeah . I know you guys are kind of old school in , in a lot of areas, but , uh, talk to me about new tech you guys are doing Yeah . Things you're thinking about. What's, what , what , what's the future look like for you guys? You know ,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I think I , I like to think one of the reasons that they hired me at Kiki is because I'm a big proponent of embracing technology, and I kind of came from a background that really leaned on it. Mm-hmm . So, you know, we use chat GPT to help with a lot of our writing and SOPs and for sure. Job descriptions and whatever, whatever. Um, I think we leverage a lot of tech to main , make sure that we maintain a really strong local SEO. Um, we love Yext for that. Nice. Um, I think reporting all around has been great. So, you know, whether it's later or Sprout from like social media management has been really important to us. Um, all the way to, you know, every , everything from Google AdWords to SEO, to , uh, you know, different , uh, website vendors. I think we're always looking and we're always, I , I mean, honestly with AI right now, every month there's a new app or software or whatever, so maybe to a detriment, I'm always testing it out to see like if it's better or worse or like what , what we could do differently. For
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: Sure . For sure. Do you guys think you'd ever, you know , I've already seen it actually. It's kind of scary. Do you guys think you'd ever , uh, put a robot in the restaurant, serve your food,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: ? I mean, you
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Know, do you ever see that happen?
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: I think if, if you're, if you've ever been a diner and you've complained about the price of your burger or something like that, I think it's because it's getting more and more expensive to run restaurants and for sure to , to reach to , to meet the expectations of the diners. So I do think that that's a future. I think frankly, a lot of Jo , like my job as far as, 'cause what is AI is connecting the dots, right? That's what it is . For sure. It connects the dots faster. And so I think the reason I'm successful is because I've experienced that connects the dots, right?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: So I think , um,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: There's, there's certain restaurants in California, by the way, that are fully operated through Yeah . Robotics, literally ,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: There's a , there's a great spot in DC that just opened that's doing Chinese food, that , that seems like a home run.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: It's pretty nuts, man. I mean, it's, it's one of those things where like, I almost like chuckle and asked you that question because it still seems so like foreign and far away, but it's, it's really not. Yeah. I mean, and , and here's the truth. It's like if, if employee costs , if you're looking at 50, 60, 70,000, 80,000, maybe a hundred thousand employee, but instead you could buy a robot for 30 grand that could do the job, it's tempting. Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I think it, it, again, it depends on what you're looking for when you're going out to eat. Right? For sure . Like if you're looking for , uh, a pretty simple, consistent meal mm-hmm . Food sustenance, I think that, that you might be in trouble with, with robotics and stuff like that. I think if you're looking for an experience and you're looking for, you know, the beautiful girls and you're looking for the atmosphere and you're looking for the sparklers and Yeah . Wa waterfront, the , the food and, and what you're paying for, that's just the price of admission. Right? Yeah .
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: True.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: I think that's where we hope that with our concepts, we , we kind of have some staying power.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And , um, I know we touched on it, it earlier, how does your hiring process work? Do you , do you guys , um, I mean, I , I know staffing is tough for a lot of restaurants. Yeah. Has that been an area of, of toughness for you guys as well? Is that not so much, I mean, how do you guys manage that? How do you recruit? What's that look like? Yeah,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, almost the same like , uh, obsessive compulsive approach that I have to organization or anything like that, right? We, we recruit across different channels , uh, friends and family, our networks. And then we have a , a pretty thorough interview process where, 'cause it's a two-way interview, right? We don't want someone to come in because we didn't give them an honest opinion of what this is. Mm-hmm . Because we're not for everyone. We are a tough job. We are very much a get stuff done right away, you know , for sure. We , we, we don't sugar coat things, but , um, the, the loyalty and the camaraderie of our team is honestly second to none. So we, we make sure that you meet with all the people that you're gonna be working with. We might assign a little project to see how you actually, because everyone says that, you know, they, they say great things, but then you actually ask them to do some work. Yeah . And something, something doesn't fit
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: 100% , um,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Because , but you know, spending the extra five days in the interview process I think has greatly reduced our turnover and, and retention
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: For sure. For sure. Yeah. We, we had , um, we hired a ton of people last year and it was the biggest area of opportunity for us was just processing applications. Yeah. Like, literally, I mean, it's, it's so easy to Ms. Good talent or to accidentally hire bad talent. Yeah. And I think a lot of restaurant owners in general, this is not an area of expertise for them. Yeah. Right? Yep . Um, there's a book I personally read years ago, which I loved, I highly recommend to you if you haven't read it, it's called Who. Okay. Um, I forget the author, but if you just search who you'll find it. Yeah . And I was, it was so awesome. And what, what I learned from that, that always stuck with me is, is creating employee scorecards. Yeah . And so when you look at your like organizational structure, you , you have these scorecards and you're literally putting together like the map of how the machine will function your organization. And it, it , it always has been so helpful for me. And our whole organization does this and for every single person we bring on, they have a scorecard and we have an employee handbook, but I'll be honest, nobody reads it. Right . Maybe , do you guys have one or no?
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have one. I mean, again, you have to have one Right ? For legal purposes. But , um, yeah , it's, yeah, I don't think, I don't think our, our culture is held in the employee handbook. The other thing I was thinking of , uh, is I think it's like a lot like building a basketball team, right? Mm-hmm . Where like if you have four scores, but no one's rebounding or playing defense, it's not gonna work. So yeah , even recently when I got to Kiki, I looked around and I was like, we've got a lot of people that were like pure salesmen, you know, were great shoulder to shoulder team building guys, but we don't have anyone that's doing admin. Like when I need someone to work on to like fix the POS or do whatever, or for sure reply to a customer cam complaint, those guys are just, that's not their strength. And so we brought in a really strong guy that, you know, might not be the guy that's in the middle of the bottle service throwing up the signs, but he's in on his computer, he's making sure that we're we're cleaned up and tight. And, and that guy has become for sure that guy's made those people so much better at their jobs. And same thing, you know, with marketing, we, we, marketing is such a vast thing that, you know, I might hire someone and I notice that they're really great at copywriting, but might not have the right eye for design or , or graphics and, and we'll kind of pair that with someone else.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. Yeah. Man, I , I , I , again, for us on the employee handbook too, like we don't, no one reads it, right? Yeah . Like, it's not part of our culture either. But this , the scorecard thing has been interesting because everyone keeps one and has one and, and they, we refer back to it and , uh, KPIs on as far as what they should put on a regular basis. Yeah . This is the kind of stuff where I, I literally, it's so rare to see owners in the restaurant space doing this kind of stuff, but I swear if they did, it , make all difference in the world. Um, so we have just a few minutes left, but I guess with your all experience, with everything you've done, man, like what are as, as least , at least where we are now today, what are some of the problems that you see in the restaurant space that you feel like people don't really talk about enough or are aware of?
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's the sexiest answer, but I think that we kind of got away from what, what really made restaurants special in the beginning. And that's the people, right? Mm . And so obviously talking to the QR code or , or the marketing guy that, that, that's not your focus. But I think, I think at the end of the day, a lot of these restaurants are also failing because they're worried about all these other things, but they're not worried about like, really making sure the guests feel special. Like if you're, if I'm your server, believe me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you why you're here. What's the occasion for Sure . I'm gonna ask Danny Meal is, there's gonna be a connection there that, you know, if you, if you've ever read , uh, Danny Meyer's book, like he preaches that, just making sure, like you, you , you make a little special connection. So, you know, I'll give you an right now with Kiki , uh, and Habibi , we're looking through our reservations and we're Googling you, we're looking up your Instagram handle, we're looking at your spending history and we're saying, oh, you're from Kansas City, you know, we've got, we've got a , a great cut on our stake that it's gonna remind you just of home or , uh, you know, we noticed you had the lamb chops of Kiki last week. Yeah. We just have a special Ed habibi that you're enjoying. Just that little, letting them know that they're seen is, is I think makes all the difference. And you go to a lot of these restaurants and like, especially with service charges, because people aren't like really working for their tips like that anymore. I think a lot of that just hospitality is going out the window.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: I , I think you're totally right. And it's so funny 'cause I , I spoke with a , a food influencer that said the same thing recently. She goes to like a restaurant every day or something crazy. a lot of work. But like she said , the exact , she said the exact same thing. And I also was, I'm reading another book. Like I said, I have five different books at the time . One, this book I'm listening to is called Never Lose a Customer Again. Mm . And it's, it's a general book on customer retention, but it applies to all industries. Sure . And he said the exact same thing. He goes, not enough businesses make their clientele or customers feel special. He literally used the words you just said. Yeah. Have you read this book or No? No, but I
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Mean , listen , sure .
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: You love this book too. , you ,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: You Seven Habits of Effective People kind of preaches that like one way
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: Or
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Another, another at the end of the day, it , it , it it almost is that like they all talk about the same thing and that's making a genuine connection.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: Well , a hundred percent. It's, it's not even like what the book talks about too. And I'm , it sounds like you're agreeing with them is it's not, yes, you need good product, yes , you need great service and this and that, but there's that level of like specialness Yeah . That you've created in that experience. Because it's interesting, especially like in more so maybe more so industry than the restaurant space, like, like an agency business. When someone buys from someone there , there's that level of excitement right. Up until the purchase. And then right after there's this level of, oh that I made a mistake. Yeah. Or was this the right choice or whatever. And there's this level of doubt. And so if anything goes wrong, they're so hypersensitive. Um, we've seen it where luckily we have , we have a great retention rate, but there's oftentimes , you know , a client that, not often, but every once while a client will come through that we're like, yeah , maybe this wasn't the best fit. And it's like, we kind of feel it, and then they kind of feel it in months. It's always like, month three, something's gonna happen. Uh, and it's, we've really, really instilled our team that we, we, if there's that kind of situation now, we just take , don't take on those clients because it's just, at the end of the day , you can't help everyone. Right, exactly . Especially in the restaurant space. You just truly can't. And that's just the truth. Right. But, but making your clientele feel special. And I , I completely agree with you man. I, I think it's just, it feels like such a transaction in some restaurants
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: And vice versa, if you flip it backwards, a lot of this good, like just the good service can overcome if your menu's just okay, or if your design's not great, you, you , every review you ever read, it's always like, the hostess was rude and the food sucked, and the room is cold. Like, it's always like, it waterfalls into that experience where if you have that great service, they might not even pay that much attention to, you know, something going wrong with the drinks or whatever, whatever. You know what
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: I mean? Absolutely. So , so one more question for you. Um, you mentioned like, hey, you , you've , you've had a lot of failures and , and you've learned from these failures. Um, again, that's the only way you learn, right? Yeah . So like I'm right there with you. I'm , I've failed in every way I can imagine. Yeah . Thank God I did. 'cause now I'm here too, but I, what is the greatest failure you had and what you learned from it?
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: Oh man. Big question.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: I know . Um , ,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: I would say that when I was, when I was in my late twenties, I, I actually took a shot at, at doing my own startup , uh, it was a tech play coworking. We raised like just under a million dollars in seed money. And I was, it was at the time of like Adam Newman and WeWork and whatever, and I was like, I think it was my first, it was my ego death that that was it. Where I thought I was like, so cool because I raised money and I was the tech CEO Yeah. And I was so focused on PR and interviews and marketing and I figured like the sales would come or et cetera. And what I didn't pay enough attention to was the, the bottom line and, you know, the finance side of it. And I would say now I'm less like cavalier in like a marketing spend or whatever, if it doesn't make sense, right. Like you, you see with alcohol brands all the time when they wanna sponsor a bar or do whatever, and I'm like, who has ever bought that tequila? Because they had a free tequila drink at that For
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Sure . Photo
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: Shoot or whatever. So I , um, I think that, and, and back to the ego death, I think it was that too, where it was like, I, I don't really, it's, it's not really a , like, I don't have anything to prove to myself anymore. I'm , I'm kind of just really passionate about creating really great experiences for other people. Mm-hmm . You know , and , and I think that's that's
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: Awesome. Why you should do it . That's , that's a great answer, by the way. Yeah. That's that's awesome, man. I mean, this is , this has been, this has been really awesome, man . I'm , I'm so glad we did this. And again, I've been wanting this for a long time, so I was , I was pumped to do this. Um, people who want to continue following your personal journey , um, whether it's what you're doing now, all the new projects you have coming, if they wanna learn about your concepts you're working on now and also what might be coming later. Yeah. Um, how do they find you online?
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess my personal Instagram is fine. It's , uh, Peter, LITV. And then , uh, the website, I think there's a , there's a , uh, landing page for my personal website, friends family.com . So my consulting company is, is friends and family.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 2: And Nice.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: Uh, hopefully we get that going soon.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: Hell yeah, man. And we'll really appreciate it. This was awesome. And uh , I'll see you at Papa Kiki soon. Thanks man. , thanks .