Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / One Organ at a Time: Chris Demery's Approach to Restaurant Technology Implementation | Restaurants & Franchises Series

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One Organ at a Time: Chris Demery's Approach to Restaurant Technology Implementation | Restaurants & Franchises Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and
• 0:17
  today's guest is Chris Demery, chief technology officer at
• 0:21
  Blaze Pizza. They are a fast casual pioneer
• 0:24
  known for serving delicious custom pizzas using fresh dough
• 0:28
  that's fermented for 24 hours and baking them in an open flame
• 0:32
  oven in just a few minutes. They focus on quick service,
• 0:35
  quality ingredients and a fun customer experience.
• 0:39
  They've received praise for their innovative approach,
• 0:41
  expanding to hundreds of locations worldwide.
• 0:45
  Chris spent many years in the military working on a number of
• 0:48
  cutting edge communication technology projects.
• 0:51
  That was before switching over to restaurant technology and
• 0:54
  operations, where he has over 20 years of experience.
• 0:58
  He's worked at companies like Domino's, PF, Chang's and more,
• 1:01
  where he helped build digital solutions and improve service
• 1:05
  delivery. He is an expert in off premises
• 1:08
  dining and digital integrations, helping restaurants stay ahead
• 1:12
  of rapidly changing customer needs.
• 1:15
  Now, under his guidance, Blaze Pizza has been rolling out new
• 1:17
  tech to enhance ordering, loyalty programs and overall
• 1:21
  guest satisfaction. Before we get into all that good
• 1:24
  stuff, today our episode is brought to you by my company,
• 1:28
  Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  Add Back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 1:55
  today, the CTO of Blaze Pizza, Chris Demery.
• 1:59
  I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
• 2:01
  Thank you, Anthony for having me today.
• 2:04
  All right. So Chris, before you found your
• 2:06
  way to the restaurant business, you were working on some pretty
• 2:10
  interesting military projects and you were on the fast track
• 2:14
  to become a general. Can you maybe talk about one or
• 2:17
  two of those interesting projects that you delved into?
• 2:21
  Sure. The my last year in the
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  military, I was working for the Under Secretary of Defense for
• 2:27
  Acquisition at the Pentagon and I my primary role was helping
• 2:34
  manage contractors that were building weapon systems.
• 2:40
  So one of them was the Abrams tank.
• 2:44
  Little known fact is there's over 20 miles of CAT5 cable
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  within an Abrams tank and the tank isn't that big.
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  And I was also working on working with contractors that
• 2:58
  were building submarines, nuclear submarines.
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  So when you think about complexity and compared to the
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  restaurant industry, some of those weapon system programs
• 3:10
  were very, very interesting and significantly complex when you
• 3:16
  think about what it costs for a single tank or a single
• 3:19
  submarine. So I have no idea how much they
• 3:22
  cost today, but they cost a lot back when I was working on them
• 3:25
  and it was fun. I wouldn't trade it for
• 3:27
  anything. How many miles of CAT5 cable?
• 3:31
  20 miles. In a single in.
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  A single tank, yes. So CAT5 cable, for those who
• 3:37
  don't know, it's like a data communication cable.
• 3:40
  Like my computer doesn't have one of those ports anymore, but
• 3:43
  it is a way that you can sort of hardwire yourself into the
• 3:47
  Internet. That's right.
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  And it was, it was before fiber optics became more prolific.
• 3:55
  But yes, so there's a lot of cable in a tank, believe it or
• 3:58
  not. And all that cable is used for
• 4:02
  all of the. Computer system.
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  You know, these tanks are highly computerized systems, so
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  technology makes weapon systems better versus the old World War
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  One and World War 2 tanks that that people just drove around
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  sort of blindly. These are highly technology
• 4:19
  based solutions. If you could just imagine being
• 4:24
  able to fire while you're moving along at 50 miles an hour and
• 4:29
  keep keeping the gun stable. So there's a lot of technology
• 4:33
  that goes into tanks. I I just sorry, I know this is
• 4:38
  probably a relatively minor point compared to the the really
• 4:42
  cool tech that you built, but I can't even wrap my head around
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  how a single vehicle, even if you wanted to just lay the raw
• 4:49
  cable inside of it, how there would be room for 20 miles up.
• 4:54
  Well, it's pretty tight inside a tank, yeah.
• 4:57
  So the tanks are pretty big, but they still put a lot of stuff
• 5:00
  inside of them, so. OK, so you were on the fast
• 5:04
  track to become a general talk more about what that means.
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  So I was a regular Army officer. What what that means is I worked
• 5:14
  for the president of the United States from the perspective of
• 5:18
  my career. And when you're in, I was in,
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  you know, I hate to say it this way, but I was in the top 5% of
• 5:28
  my year group in the United States Army as an officer.
• 5:32
  And almost every year I would get promoted or every time I had
• 5:38
  an opportunity to get promoted, I would get promoted ahead of my
• 5:42
  peers, which put me in the top 5%.
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  And you have to be in the top 5% even really be considered for to
• 5:52
  progressively get additional responsibilities.
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  But I was in 13 years and I moved 16 times because the, the,
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  the branch of the military that handles personnel kept saying,
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  hey, you need to go to your next progressive job.
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  You need to go to your next progressive job because I was
• 6:12
  demonstrating leadership excellence.
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  Or I could have just been in the right place at the right time
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  when, you know, sometimes that's what happens in a career, but
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  it's a combination of those things.
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  I elected to get out because I was in the right place in the
• 6:29
  right time for a new career choice.
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  But the military was very good to me, helped helped me get my
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  master's degree in computer science, and I would have loved
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  to stay in and become a general, but I elected to make other
• 6:45
  choices. And what was that next choice
• 6:49
  that took you out of the? Military the When I got out the
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  A lot of what I did in the military is I supported special
• 6:58
  forces teams out of Fort Bragg, NC.
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  When you're doing that sort of work, what they show in all the
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  movies is probably 80% accurate, except it's even worse.
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  You get deployed all the time. You can't tell people where
• 7:13
  you're going, whether it's your kids, your wife, your mother,
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  your dad, or your friends. And so the life of people that
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  are in special forces and or support Special Forces is very
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  difficult. And it's a it's a choice you
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  make. And I thought for the longest
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  time I was just going to continue down that path.
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  But I did eventually realize there's a life outside working
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  20 hour days, you know, getting up at 4:00 AM and going to bed
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  at midnight. I, when I got my master's
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  degree, you know, I realized, hey, there's a life outside
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  work. And so I just went through a
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  realization that while I wanted really to be a general officer,
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  that there were other opportunities.
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  And I did go to something called Commander General Staff College,
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  which happened during the first Iraq War.
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  So all of the people in that year group missed the first war
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  that had happened essentially since World War 2.
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  And the discussion amongst amongst all of the officers of
• 8:24
  my year group were if I was currently a general officer and
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  I was looking for somebody to go to war with me, would I want
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  somebody that went to school or those that went to war?
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  And so our year group, they wouldn't let us go to war.
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  We all wanted to go to war, but we couldn't.
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  And so they kept us in school for that 10 month period.
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  And they didn't want you to go to war.
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  Why? I don't actually know.
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  The only people that got to go to to war from our class were 6
• 9:00
  chemical and biograph biological officers because everybody
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  believed there was chemical and biological warfare going to
• 9:10
  happen during that war. So they let them go.
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  And all of the other infantry, artillery signal, all the rest
• 9:19
  of the branches stayed, you know, we were the top 5%.
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  They were going to get us educated one way or another or
• 9:26
  continue our education. So they kept us and to me that
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  that hurt me as a career officer.
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  You said 80% of what you see in the military movies is correct.
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  What's the 20% they get? It's a lot worse.
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  A lot worse in terms of the extra hours or just the the
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  stress of the warfare that you're having to witness and
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  take part in. I think, I think it's a
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  combination of those things. It's the stress and you learn to
• 10:00
  deal with it. But you know, everybody talks
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  about PTSD. That's real.
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  People that experience those sort of emotional traumas, they
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  go through it. I don't, I honestly don't
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  believe a lot of TV shows express that very much.
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  You hear a little bit about it, but it's, you know, I had
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  friends that went to Grenada while I was at Fort Bragg, which
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  was a little skirmish. If everybody remembers Grenada.
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  And my friends that came back, they were different.
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  You know, they mentally, once you see things that get killed
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  in front of you, it's a it's, it's a lot different than just
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  working in a restaurant. How did that impact you
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  personally? It didn't really personally,
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  although I saw my friends change.
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  I had some of my team go to to that, to that skirmish, that
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  battle, but my team didn't really change.
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  It was really so that skirmish didn't really have an impact on
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  me as a a person or my team. I saw other people change.
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  It just kind of sort of cement cements in your head.
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  There are a lot of, a lot of things that are a lot worse than
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  having a bad day at the office. And so our our military forces,
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  they do that all the time. And so you should always thank
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  them for their service because they deserve it.
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  Agreed. Agreed 100%.
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  Can you say you saw them change? Can you put a finger on what
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  what was different? How they expressed events of
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  watching people die, it seemed to me to be more callous than I
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  personally would have communicated it.
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  It's it's like they were proud of the fact, you know, they were
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  proud of the fact they were defending their country, but
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  they were happy they shot people and so it.
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  Seems like there there's probably, I don't know if mental
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  disassociation is the way to sort of think about it, but
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  there there would have to be a process that the brain either
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  willingly or unwillingly goes through to rationalize the
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  events that took. Yeah.
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  I mean, you have to you, you absolutely have to or you
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  wouldn't be able to perform the next time you had to do that.
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  And you have to think through, it's OK that I'm shooting people
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  and I'm killing people. And so just think about it.
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  When those people come back to a life where it's not OK to shoot
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  people or kill people. That's part of, you know, I,
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  I've never had post traumatic stress syndrome, but I've seen
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  shows on it, I've seen write ups on it.
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  It, it's true. It's a real thing.
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  And I think the the the brain's ability to revert back to
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  normalcy becomes triggered and becomes more difficult for those
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  people. Back then, did you see, were
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  there ways for people to get help and cope with that, or was
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  it maybe even less understood than it is?
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  Today, much less understood than it was today.
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  That's my opinion. I mean, maybe it was well
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  understood then and I just didn't have availability of that
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  information, perhaps because of what I was doing in the
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  military. But people, I think people
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  thought about it differently. Yeah.
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  OK, so let's let's shift back to your career in hospitality.
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  What was the first foray into the restaurant space for you?
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  So my first foray was that I was working for NCR Retail Systems
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  out of Atlanta and NCR had a contract with Domino's Pizza and
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  they needed some help to have somebody go in and for lack of a
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  better term, recover the program management side of that
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  contract. So NCR had a contract with
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  Domino's to provide program management, which was my
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  specialty. When I what's program
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  management? Program management is the
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  ability to lay out a strategic plan of where the project, a
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  project or set of projects is going to do to accomplish the
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  overall goal of the business. The NCR had a contract with
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  Domino's and Domino's strategic plan was to get all of their
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  franchisees onto 1 technology platform so that they could
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  increase sales, become more profitable, make their
• 15:01
  franchisees more profitable. And so their program was
• 15:05
  standardized technology across all their franchisees so they
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  could become more profitable. So NCR had the contract to go in
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  and help them do that. And the NCR leadership felt that
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  they were at risk of losing that contract with Domino's.
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  So they, I was working for NCR at the time.
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  Once I got out of the military, I went to work for NCR and they
• 15:35
  said, hey, can you? We're going to reassign you and
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  you're going to work for us to recover this program with
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  Domino's Pizza. And so I did that.
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  That was my first foray into the restaurant industry.
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  I was learning about the Domino's Pizza technology
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  struggle and I successfully recovered that program for NCR.
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  Now, subsequently, Domino's said, hey, you're doing such a
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  good job, can we hire you? And of course I said yes because
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  they were going to pay me more money.
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  That's a good reason. So what was the, I don't know
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  what was sort of the, the fix that you had to come in and put
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  in place? Why was NCR at risk of losing
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  this contract from Domino's and and how were you able to save
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  the the risk? Was almost all companies that
• 16:33
  provide professional services have a bias towards their own
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  technologies. NCR does, Oracle does, Microsoft
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  does, you know, they want to promote their technology
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  services versus what's in my opinion best for your customer.
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  And so Domino's was the customer.
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  They wanted the best program management.
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  They didn't want necessarily, they didn't want NCR hardware
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  and software. They also didn't necessarily
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  want IBM hardware and software. They wanted what's what would it
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  help them achieve their objectives?
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  And so I went in and I, I'm a just a totally transparent
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  person. And if something's not a right
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  fit for your customer, you have to say it's not a right fit.
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  Here's a better fit based on what you've expressed to me.
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  It's similar to what I do today in the restaurant industry is if
• 17:35
  a guest doesn't want to walk into your restaurant, instead
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  they want your food at home, that's what they want.
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  And so you always work to accomplish, in my opinion, you
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  always work to accomplish what your guest or your customer
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  wants versus what you think is best for them or best for you.
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  So as I started working that program with Domino's Pizza, I
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  displayed that, for lack of a better term, talent and that
• 18:09
  transparency and said, I know I have hardware and software to
• 18:13
  offer you. And I know IBM has hardware and
• 18:15
  software to offer you and lots of people have it, but here's
• 18:19
  probably what's best for you. And they liked that approach.
• 18:25
  Yeah, it's customer centric. It's the way that it should be,
• 18:28
  but. That's my belief.
• 18:29
  It's customer centric, but you know, some professional services
• 18:33
  teams don't work that way. Yeah, understood.
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  OK. So from NCR to Domino's, there
• 18:40
  was a stop at PF Chang's along the way.
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  And then how did the opportunity at Blaze Pizza come about?
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  So I went from I rolled out technology at Domino's Pizza.
• 18:51
  Bain Capital owned them. I then went to Bloomin Brands,
• 18:55
  which was a Bain Capital company, and I went through a
• 18:58
  couple other places. But like you said, I was at PF
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  Chang's and the CEO of Blaze Pizza reach out to me and said I
• 19:07
  really need some help with technology.
• 19:09
  Now. I had worked as a peer and as a
• 19:14
  subordinate to the CEO of Blaze Pizza.
• 19:17
  Her name was Mandy Shaw and she, we, we stayed friends for years,
• 19:22
  even while we were at Bloomin Brands.
• 19:24
  And she reached out and said, I need some help.
• 19:26
  We need to grow up. Her.
• 19:28
  Her vision was to grow Blaze Pizza incrementally over the
• 19:33
  next three to four years by opening new restaurants.
• 19:37
  And she felt that their technology footprint was
• 19:40
  inadequate to do that. And so she said, will you come
• 19:44
  and join us in Pasadena as CTO? And it was, it was a good
• 19:50
  opportunity. It was for a friend as well as a
• 19:55
  Co worker and it was a CTO position.
• 19:59
  I had wanted to be a CTO in in several instances and this was
• 20:03
  my opportunity to become a CTO. And so you've been with Blaze
• 20:07
  for how long now? Just over 4 years.
• 20:09
  And in that four years, I don't know.
• 20:12
  Let's talk about maybe the first big project that you undertook
• 20:16
  when you first came in the door. The first big project was
• 20:22
  convincing all the franchisees they needed to replace their
• 20:25
  point of sale solution, which was at least they had had the
• 20:30
  same point of sale solution for 10 years, but it was a 30 year
• 20:33
  old point of sale solution from NCR and it would not allow Blaze
• 20:43
  to innovate their guest experience.
• 20:47
  So it it, it was old enough and difficult enough to integrate
• 20:52
  with if we wanted to go down the path to solve the guest
• 20:59
  experience dilemma, we couldn't do it with a point of sale
• 21:02
  solution. So my first big project was RIP
• 21:06
  out the old one, put in a new one.
• 21:09
  But you set, so there's the technology piece of that that
• 21:13
  you've got to sort of figure out and implement, but were you also
• 21:16
  having to sort of convince and strong arm the franchisees to
• 21:20
  get on board or was that something that could be mandated
• 21:22
  on them the. Well, that's an interesting
• 21:25
  question because I could have mandated it.
• 21:28
  It's sort of like, I mean, there's, there's, I'm sure
• 21:33
  there's a perfect analogy. My analogy is your insurance
• 21:36
  company could come in and say, hey, I'm going to charge you 300
• 21:40
  more dollars a month for insurance.
• 21:42
  And so take it or leave it. And your option is take it or
• 21:47
  leave it. And that's how the franchisees
• 21:48
  look at it. If if we don't help them solve
• 21:52
  their business problem and become more profitable, you're
• 21:55
  just a problem. And so the way I undertook
• 21:59
  solving the problem was I'm going to give them a new point
• 22:01
  of sale solution that allows us to innovate.
• 22:04
  And I'm also going to save them money and put more money in
• 22:08
  their pocket every month with every location.
• 22:11
  So having done this work at Domino's and at CKEI knew that
• 22:18
  to win over your customers, in this case the customer was the
• 22:22
  franchise, I have to provide them with a business model that
• 22:26
  is attractive to them and then I have to prove my business model
• 22:31
  and my ROI is accurate. And that took some time, but by
• 22:37
  laying it out correctly, it went very smoothly.
• 22:42
  So all of our restaurants are now or will be on our new point
• 22:47
  of sale solution. OK.
• 22:50
  So the strategy that you talk about makes a lot of sense to
• 22:53
  me. Rather than force this on
• 22:56
  people, let's make the business case for it.
• 22:58
  Let's get them excited and you know, on board with it.
• 23:03
  In order to do that, you've got to make the business case and
• 23:05
  you have to have stats and numbers.
• 23:07
  So did you introduce the new POS system to like a small select
• 23:12
  group of stores first so that you could collect data and then
• 23:16
  make a business case to folks? Almost any technology solution,
• 23:23
  you have to put it some form of pilot in place.
• 23:26
  So we put in a pilot with our corporate restaurants first,
• 23:31
  made sure all the systems connected, made sure all the
• 23:34
  pipes were flowing. My analogy in the technology
• 23:38
  industry is if your pipes aren't connected correctly, the data
• 23:41
  doesn't flow correctly and everybody makes decisions on
• 23:44
  data. And so in our corporate
• 23:47
  locations, we piloted, made sure all the data was flowing
• 23:50
  correctly, proved out that I was saving money on a monthly basis
• 23:55
  from a license fee and a hardware license and a software
• 24:00
  license fee. Then I became a salesman, went
• 24:04
  out, I picked a couple key franchisees that I knew had a
• 24:08
  lot of experience and said here's our agreement, we want
• 24:14
  you to put this in, I'll prove to you that you will save money.
• 24:18
  And it went almost Florida State.
• 24:22
  So give us some examples of how you were able to save the money
• 24:25
  and make them more money with this new.
• 24:26
  System. So the there's a, there's a
• 24:30
  hardware cost and a software cost.
• 24:32
  Every piece of technology you put into a restaurant.
• 24:35
  My job, if I'm going to do a business case, is to say I need
• 24:40
  you to put some money down. But because your monthly fees
• 24:43
  are going to be less, your ROI on this new technology is going
• 24:47
  to be 6 months or nine months. Most people from a technology
• 24:51
  perspective target around 2 1/2 to three years is is feasible.
• 24:57
  If I wanted to go fast, I had to prove it in that it was doable
• 25:02
  in less than six months to 12 months so that I can go faster.
• 25:06
  So I negotiated a cloud based point of sale solution that
• 25:11
  included hardware and software and there was an upfront cost to
• 25:16
  switch is it about $2700 which included the travel of
• 25:22
  installing the travel to install all the hardware.
• 25:26
  But I was saving 3 to $400.00 a month for each location that
• 25:30
  installed it and so their ROI was paid back in around nine
• 25:34
  months. What was the three or 400 a
• 25:38
  month that you were saving? What were you saving that on?
• 25:41
  Software license costs associated with the point of
• 25:45
  sale solution. So that they had been paying.
• 25:48
  Before or right, so let's say let's just say you pay 5 hundred
• 25:52
  $600 a month for a license fee. Now it goes down to $300.00 a
• 25:56
  month. You save $300.00 a month on
• 25:58
  license fee, but you had to put something up front, right?
• 26:03
  And so you look at the return with when am I now truly saving
• 26:06
  $300.00 a month? And it works so well is that
• 26:11
  some of my franchisees that had an option to do some installs
• 26:17
  later, they accelerated their install to get all of their
• 26:22
  restaurants on much faster than normal.
• 26:25
  So I thought it was going to be about a 2 1/2 year roll out.
• 26:29
  We did all of our locations, almost all of our locations in
• 26:32
  about 13 months. Wow, because and what's go
• 26:36
  ahead? Go ahead, Chris, because the IT
• 26:40
  allowed them to innovate and a a type of integration or
• 26:47
  innovation would be can my HR system talk to my point of sale
• 26:51
  solution? Yes, it couldn't talk to your
• 26:55
  old one, but this new one can talk to to your HR system.
• 26:59
  How long will that take? Three to four weeks, They're
• 27:02
  like can't possibly go that fast.
• 27:05
  Like no, it can go that fast. And we demonstrated it.
• 27:08
  So there was a combination of things around money and
• 27:11
  innovation that moved those franchisees along faster.
• 27:16
  And that was actually going to be my next question is what are
• 27:19
  some examples of what the new tech platform would allow them
• 27:22
  to do that they couldn't do before?
• 27:23
  So there's a lot of back office systems.
• 27:26
  We don't mandate food management systems, HR management systems,
• 27:35
  data analytics systems, so the old technology was a file server
• 27:41
  within the restaurant that had to pull data through multiple
• 27:45
  touch points. The new solution is a cloud
• 27:48
  based solution that uses Jason file formats, which is a
• 27:53
  specific type of file format that is very efficient.
• 27:56
  Most programmers today and most integrations today leverage it
• 28:02
  and so they could just integrate much faster with this new
• 28:06
  platform to solve their other business problems like invoice
• 28:11
  management, cost of goods management, people management.
• 28:17
  The old system you had to re remote into a restaurant and can
• 28:23
  manually configure people. Now I can have a system talk to
• 28:26
  a system and do it in milliseconds versus people
• 28:32
  taking days to do it. And so it just allowed overall
• 28:36
  business practices to improve. Now whether it was the old
• 28:40
  system or the new cloud system, either way you've got to have
• 28:45
  network up time. I understand that to help with
• 28:49
  that you put in some kind of a 5G backup network.
• 28:54
  Talk about that. Well, one of the one of the
• 28:56
  things around the restaurant industry is most CT OS fail
• 29:02
  around doing point of sale rollouts and it's typically.
• 29:07
  So this is my 4th 1. The typical issue is you you try
• 29:13
  to replace all the body organs at the same time.
• 29:15
  And so I was smart enough having done this several times that I
• 29:19
  replaced the heart which was the point of sale first.
• 29:22
  Then I started attacking the next most likely business
• 29:26
  problem. The next one is our new network
• 29:29
  stack, which we're dependent on off premises orders.
• 29:34
  If you're not connected to the Internet, nobody can order from
• 29:37
  you if they're sitting at home or sitting in their car or
• 29:41
  wherever they happen to be. So our next big project is
• 29:48
  adding backup capability to our network stack.
• 29:53
  Now everybody, not everybody, a lot of people would tell you,
• 29:57
  well you could just put in two Internet connections to a
• 29:59
  restaurant. You'd have backup, yeah, at a
• 30:01
  cost of about 200 to $300.00 a month.
• 30:03
  You can do that. But the restaurant industry is a
• 30:08
  penny business, penny profit, and so.
• 30:15
  You had to look for the most efficient way for the most.
• 30:17
  Efficient. So the most efficient is really
• 30:20
  I only need that second line when I need it.
• 30:22
  So when my primary Internet goes down, I automatically fail over
• 30:26
  to a 5G and I still get my Internet orders.
• 30:29
  Then I work on and my team helps my team gets that primary
• 30:34
  Internet connection back up and if it takes a couple days to get
• 30:38
  back up, I'm, I'm doing ordering and credit card processing all,
• 30:41
  all of that over a phone line, but I'm still profitable and I'm
• 30:46
  not losing orders. So for the network stack, part
• 30:50
  of the ROI is you no longer have downtime when you know, if, if
• 30:55
  1% of your business was off premises, if my Internet went
• 30:59
  down, that's fine. But when you're at 30% or 35% or
• 31:03
  40% and your Internet connection goes down and you lose 35 to 40%
• 31:08
  of your business and it could be for a day or two days or three
• 31:12
  days or a week. You just can't afford to let
• 31:15
  that happen very long. So that was the next big project
• 31:18
  that we're we're going through now is retrofitting all the
• 31:22
  locations with a more sustainable Internet connection.
• 31:29
  And you do 5G versus this the redundant Internet connection
• 31:32
  because it's more cost you. Only.
• 31:34
  You only pay for it when you use it.
• 31:39
  And you said that most point of sale replacements fail.
• 31:43
  And it's specifically because rather than going one organ at a
• 31:47
  time like you've learned to do, they try to replace the entire
• 31:50
  system in one fell swoop. And it's, it's just too much of
• 31:52
  A shock. Well, there's too many failure.
• 31:54
  Points no, no. Well, it's, I'll go back to my
• 31:58
  analogy of an M1 Abrams tank or an Abrams tank.
• 32:02
  They're replacing everything all at once.
• 32:05
  And that's a 30 year project, right?
• 32:08
  So in the restaurant industry, if you can't get something done
• 32:12
  in 6 to 18 months, you're overcome by events.
• 32:18
  And so you can't replace everything in your system all at
• 32:22
  the same time. It's too risky.
• 32:24
  You have your, you're in the process or the mode of I'm
• 32:29
  selling to my guests. I need to maintain my
• 32:31
  profitability so I can't replace all my organs at the same time.
• 32:35
  It's just too risky. A lot of a lot in my opinion of
• 32:40
  CT OS think they can replace several organs at once and so
• 32:47
  they try and so that they're not limiting their risk.
• 32:52
  I was replacing the heart. I didn't want to do the heart
• 32:54
  and the lungs at the same time. And so an example of the lungs
• 32:59
  if the heart is the point of sale is let's replace our credit
• 33:02
  card processor at the same time or let's, let's let's replace
• 33:07
  our network stack at the same time.
• 33:09
  And through years of project and program management, you just
• 33:17
  don't do everything at the same time.
• 33:18
  It's too risky because we're about selling food.
• 33:22
  If you take away the ability to sell food for multiple hours,
• 33:28
  you're not going to last. Yeah, I want to talk about your
• 33:34
  the first party ordering system that you're in the process of
• 33:37
  replacing. Again, before we do that,
• 33:39
  actually I want to take a step back and I and I wouldn't, I
• 33:42
  wouldn't want to hear more about the Blaze Pizza brand.
• 33:45
  For those folks who have never been in a Blaze like, what's the
• 33:47
  customer experience like? Well, I would say we should ask
• 33:52
  our customers, but what our marketing, what we're known for
• 33:57
  is what we call the walk the line experience.
• 34:00
  You come into a Blaze pizza and if you've never been with us
• 34:03
  before you go, you get in line and you pick your crust and your
• 34:09
  sauce and your cheese and then you get unlimited toppings or as
• 34:15
  many as you want for one price. So every, every pizza company is
• 34:21
  a build your own company. Domino's is a build your own
• 34:24
  right? But if you go order a large
• 34:26
  Domino's Pizza, then you do pepperoni, Italian sausage, ham,
• 34:31
  mushrooms, all of that. Every one of those toppings adds
• 34:35
  a cost. Typically ours is 1 price.
• 34:40
  You can add whatever you want for one price.
• 34:42
  So we are a build your own and 85% of what we sell or build
• 34:45
  your own, but our guests get to make their pizza their way.
• 34:52
  And because we make fresh crust or fresh dough every day, it's
• 34:57
  high quality tasting crust. It's lighter weight, if you
• 35:03
  will, than Domino's thick crust or what they call hand toss,
• 35:08
  hand toss crust. So it's a thin crust model and
• 35:12
  it's a very reasonable price. So we used to be primarily a
• 35:17
  lunch business. So you, you come in, walk the
• 35:21
  line, you have your food, in 9 minutes you could do a 30 minute
• 35:25
  lunch. With COVID that all kind of
• 35:29
  changed. We became more of a dinner
• 35:32
  business, a lot of off premises orders, things like that.
• 35:36
  So our guest experience has changed.
• 35:40
  We still like to focus on walk the line until you get to know
• 35:43
  us and then you can have us delivered.
• 35:47
  You come and pick it up, all of that.
• 35:51
  So since COVID, we've been refining that guest experience
• 35:56
  is since Domino's. My motto or my mantra has been
• 36:02
  the guests are always right. Give it to them where they want
• 36:06
  it, when they want it, how they want it.
• 36:08
  And so any time I'm working on digital or any time I'm working
• 36:12
  operational technology problems, it's around what does your guest
• 36:16
  want, not what I want. You know, as I'm hearing you
• 36:23
  talk, Chris, it strikes me that and tell me if I'm right or
• 36:27
  wrong here, your title is CTO, Chief Technology Officer.
• 36:31
  And I guess I've got it in my head as Chief technology
• 36:34
  Officer, right? You're worried about the cables
• 36:37
  and the hardware and the software, which you clearly are.
• 36:41
  But I hear you talking a lot about the customer experience,
• 36:45
  business operations, profitability, like very big
• 36:50
  picture kind of view. Is that unusual in your type of
• 36:54
  role? Most people that know me said
• 36:57
  you're not a technology person, you're a business person.
• 37:01
  And what I learned at Domino's is if you're just a technology
• 37:06
  person as a CTO, you're you're missing the whole purpose of
• 37:13
  being in business. And I think that's a a lot of CT
• 37:18
  OS are so technology focused, but you really need to be
• 37:22
  business focused. You have to learn the
• 37:25
  terminology of your business people because that's the only
• 37:31
  way in my opinion to be successful.
• 37:33
  I don't know another way to do it now.
• 37:35
  The technology should be seen as a tool to achieve all the
• 37:39
  business operational. We're in.
• 37:40
  We're in the food business. If you're not, we're a
• 37:43
  supporting branch. If I said branch, it's like I'm
• 37:46
  still in the military, we're a supporting organization, right?
• 37:50
  And I could do lots of things like you have to go do this
• 37:55
  technology thing and the franchisees say no or we don't
• 38:00
  like that choice. So I learned early on in
• 38:04
  multiple group, you know, multiple parts of my career, you
• 38:08
  have to compromise and meet in the middle.
• 38:10
  I've been very successful in the restaurant industry because I
• 38:12
  talk operations. Now having said that, I've been
• 38:15
  in two operational roles, one at Bloomin Brands and one at PF
• 38:19
  Chang's. And that role was help us roll
• 38:23
  out off premises. And the reason I bring that up
• 38:26
  is a lot of restaurant operators, or what I call 4 wall
• 38:31
  operators, they can handle what they see within their four
• 38:34
  walls. Once it's outside their four
• 38:37
  walls, they can't see it. And technology has to make
• 38:43
  what's happening outside your restaurant viewable or visible
• 38:47
  to you. Bloomin Brands, I had to sell a
• 38:52
  general manager on how many orders there are or possibly
• 38:58
  outside their restaurant. They're like, what are you
• 39:00
  talking about? Like how many tables do you have
• 39:02
  in a restaurant? I have 60 tables.
• 39:04
  How many seats? I don't know, 150.
• 39:08
  OK, how many seats are in a three mile radius of your
• 39:13
  restaurant? He's like 100,000.
• 39:15
  I'm like, just think if you only got 10% of those, you'd have
• 39:20
  10,000 seats a day. Think about all the money you
• 39:23
  could make. And they're like, yeah, but how
• 39:25
  do I do that? I'm like, I'm going to make the
• 39:27
  data available to you so that you can see what your guests
• 39:31
  outside your restaurant want from you.
• 39:34
  And then how are you doing to deliver it?
• 39:37
  Because if you can do it as well off premises as you can on
• 39:41
  premises, you'll be hugely successful.
• 39:45
  And so what's in that specific example there, what's the data
• 39:47
  that you're able to show him about those 100,000 to 10,000
• 39:51
  seats that he could have access? To what they're ordering most
• 39:53
  often, which all comes out of your point of sale system?
• 39:57
  How fast are they getting their product?
• 40:03
  It's just, it's really operational data.
• 40:05
  It's, it's manufacturing data. How satisfied are your guests
• 40:09
  around off premises? Typically off premises orders
• 40:14
  are colder, right, Because they travel in a vehicle.
• 40:19
  They don't taste as good because they're not as hot or they're in
• 40:26
  bad containers. So you you have to.
• 40:29
  Leverage technology to make that data available to everybody.
• 40:32
  I had the prior CEO of Bloomin Brands, Liz Smith told me you
• 40:40
  cannot provide calamari from Carrabba's to be delivered.
• 40:46
  I'm like, why? Because seafood whole is awful.
• 40:53
  And I said, why don't we let our guests tell us and our P mix
• 40:58
  percent of mix of sales of calamari was higher in
• 41:02
  restaurant. I'm sorry, off rest out of out
• 41:04
  of restaurant than it was in restaurant.
• 41:07
  Same thing with the bloomin onion.
• 41:09
  The, the president of Outback Steakhouse said bloomin onions
• 41:13
  are going to fail dramatically because they're, they're grease
• 41:16
  filled, right? And our percent mix for off
• 41:20
  premises for bloomin onions was higher than it was in
• 41:22
  restaurant. They're like, how do you explain
• 41:25
  this? I don't know.
• 41:27
  They're guests. Why don't you ask them?
• 41:31
  What do the guests have to say about that?
• 41:34
  All right, we want what we want. Old calamari is good to eat
• 41:41
  because I got it where I want it, right?
• 41:47
  So what we learned through a BCG study Boston Consulting Group is
• 41:53
  that your flavor profile and your quality profile is
• 42:00
  different off premises that it is in restroom.
• 42:03
  So it's OK if it's not quite as good, as long as it's still good
• 42:11
  and you're predictable and consistent.
• 42:18
  Customers are OK, they have an expectation that something can
• 42:22
  take. Out is going to be a little bit.
• 42:23
  Different than it is eating it on premises.
• 42:26
  As long as it's still good in meeting their expectations, hey,
• 42:30
  we're good to go. Here and so you know another,
• 42:33
  another example is the the then president of Bonefish Grill.
• 42:37
  I couldn't touch Bonefish Grill because it was all seafood.
• 42:40
  I was told that by the CEO and the CFO, the president of
• 42:44
  Bonefish Grill came to me on the side and he's like, hey, can we
• 42:47
  run a test in one of my locations in Tampa, FL?
• 42:49
  I'm like, well, as long as you don't get me in trouble with the
• 42:52
  CEO and the CFO. So we turned on Uber Eats at the
• 42:57
  Bonefish Grill in Tampa. And after three weeks, we had to
• 43:02
  turn it off. So the president came back to me
• 43:05
  and said, Chris, we got to turn it off.
• 43:07
  I'm like, but you're off premises sales are up like
• 43:13
  through the roof. It's like, yeah, I have too many
• 43:15
  Uber Eats drivers standing in my bar, so I'm not doing as much
• 43:20
  bar sales as I have off premises sales.
• 43:23
  So everybody loved the food, but they didn't have the right
• 43:27
  design for the location like Outback in Carrabba's had.
• 43:32
  So it's around all the data that impacts your ability to meet the
• 43:38
  guests where they want it. So seafood?
• 43:41
  Does it travel as well as sitting down in a seafood
• 43:44
  restaurant? No, but guests will still order
• 43:47
  it and buy it. And so Bonefish just abandoned
• 43:50
  this rather than trying to figure out, hey, is there
• 43:53
  somewhere else we could have the Uber each drivers hang out had?
• 43:55
  To start redesigning their locations.
• 43:57
  I don't know if they did it or not, but they, Outback and
• 44:00
  Carrabba's had separate areas built into their locations.
• 44:04
  Bonefish and Fleming's did not. I did the same thing with
• 44:08
  Fleming's, which is a prime dining location.
• 44:16
  People that travel and stay in hotels do not have a lot of
• 44:20
  options for a fine dining experience.
• 44:24
  They would order from plumbings and when you're selling a a
• 44:28
  $92.00 steak those off premises orders are pretty profitable so.
• 44:35
  That's interesting. I would be in the camp of people
• 44:38
  who would think nobody is ordering a $92.00 steak to have
• 44:43
  driven across town to their hotel.
• 44:45
  I mean, like I I used today's prices.
• 44:47
  I went into a restaurant the other night.
• 44:49
  I was in Las Vegas at a conference.
• 44:51
  Somebody took me to dinner and I think one of the steaks was 192.
• 44:55
  But the cheapest 1 I found was $92.00.
• 44:59
  When I was back at Blooming Brands, it was probably more
• 45:01
  like 64. So so.
• 45:05
  Even still, I'm thinking a steak isn't going to travel that well.
• 45:09
  Like I'm paying for a, you know, a premium steak.
• 45:11
  I I want it the way it comes right off the grill.
• 45:14
  But. You're telling me you're in your
• 45:18
  pajamas, you're sitting in a hotel room, you want room
• 45:22
  service, subpar experience, Or if fine dining is available,
• 45:27
  would you take it delivered? And they they, they would take
• 45:29
  it delivered. Now here's something
• 45:32
  interesting. As I understand it, you build
• 45:34
  out a first party ordering system three years ago, and
• 45:38
  you're already in the process of replacing.
• 45:42
  Why? We had at Blaze Pizza, we had a
• 45:48
  custom front end experience that was optimized for our guests.
• 45:55
  It's set on top of the Olo e-commerce platform.
• 46:00
  I inherited that project when I came here four years ago and it
• 46:04
  was, it's an expensive project. A custom front end is always
• 46:09
  more expensive than what we call a white label front end, which
• 46:14
  is it works well, but it's sort of generic.
• 46:18
  So there's certain things you can customize, but you can't
• 46:22
  100% customize it. It just became too expensive
• 46:26
  over time. When you do a front custom front
• 46:30
  end, everything that you built, you have to pay to change.
• 46:35
  So it just became too expensive over time.
• 46:37
  So we're moving into a very well known white label front end that
• 46:43
  also sits on top of Olo. Remember you don't replace all
• 46:46
  of your body parts at the same time.
• 46:49
  So we're keeping our e-commerce engine, just changing the front
• 46:53
  end a little bit. It will be very cost effective
• 46:55
  for us in our franchisees. And do you think that this
• 47:00
  platform then you'll have more longevity out of it because it's
• 47:05
  a white label, the platform that's probably doing a lot of
• 47:08
  its own development and updates on the back end?
• 47:11
  They do a lot of their development on the back end.
• 47:13
  It's a, it's a technology company that they have to keep
• 47:15
  everything In Sync. So they have to, they have to
• 47:18
  keep all their security standards updated.
• 47:20
  They have to do all of the the Google and Facebook and
• 47:24
  integrations that, you know, security and privacy are it's
• 47:29
  very expensive these days. So to make those changes,
• 47:34
  they're going to stay on top of it, whereas my team won't have
• 47:37
  to stand on. What's another technology
• 47:40
  project we haven't talked about yet that is coming up that
• 47:45
  you're excited about? Well, my, my end game, my
• 47:50
  program was speed of service. What I found at Domino's and
• 47:58
  it's still true at Domino's and it was true at Bloomin brands is
• 48:02
  that guests are becoming, they want convenience, but they want
• 48:08
  predictable convenience. As an example, Amazon, right?
• 48:15
  Amazon is tremendously convenient and they're very
• 48:18
  predictable. It's difficult to create that
• 48:24
  off premises experience, but if you can, those guests will
• 48:28
  always come back to you. So the first step in
• 48:31
  understanding the experience is how long is it taking me to
• 48:38
  produce food in restaurant or off premises?
• 48:45
  So all the foods produced in the restaurant, but how long has it
• 48:49
  taken me to get an order ready for Anthony?
• 48:52
  Is it 5 minutes or 10 minutes or is it 15 minutes or 20 minutes?
• 48:57
  In the I have a vendor, Fresh Tech KDS, that they help me
• 49:04
  measure speed and it's from when the order starts to when the
• 49:08
  order is ready to go into the hands of the customer, a fast
• 49:13
  casual guest. Their expectation is 8 to 12
• 49:19
  minutes. So if if you're taking 15
• 49:22
  minutes to produce it that guest, they'll be fine for that
• 49:28
  event. But their expectation was 8 to
• 49:32
  12. So next time they'll consider
• 49:36
  somebody else. But if you give it to them
• 49:39
  within their expected time frame, it's human nature to say,
• 49:44
  hey, last time it was a good experience, I got it within my
• 49:46
  expected time frame. It's high quality.
• 49:49
  I'm going to go back. And so it's you as an operator,
• 49:55
  if you don't know how long it's taking you to produce food
• 50:00
  reliably, all my operators tell me I can walk in with my phone
• 50:04
  and time how long it takes. I'm like, how often are you in
• 50:07
  your restaurant? Well, you know, I go in my
• 50:09
  restaurant like every day. And how often are you timing?
• 50:13
  I don't know, just a couple times.
• 50:16
  I'm like, OK, how statistically relevant is that in my for my
• 50:20
  Black Belt 6 Sigma experience, if I can get a million
• 50:25
  transactions recorded, the significance of my measurement
• 50:29
  is way better than yours on your phone.
• 50:32
  And so we can track it by day part, we can track it by 15
• 50:38
  minute increments. What that allows me to do is
• 50:43
  provide that data to the operator that says on Fridays,
• 50:46
  when you shouldn't be expecting a lot of business, it's taking
• 50:49
  20 minutes for people to go through your line, They're going
• 50:51
  to go someplace else. So until you understand speed,
• 50:57
  you can't understand how to solve your traffic problem.
• 51:02
  That's my philosophy. Chris, you talk a lot about the
• 51:06
  guest experience and trying to manage what their expectations
• 51:10
  are and it I heard you talk a little bit about sort of how
• 51:15
  things have changed since COVID. Do you see that level of change
• 51:21
  slowing down, accelerating, staying the same in terms of
• 51:25
  what the guests expect from you? Golly, I wish I could predict
• 51:33
  what the guests are going to change to next, but.
• 51:39
  Is this a constant like evolution?
• 51:41
  You cannot ignore the fact that your guests are changing.
• 51:44
  I don't know the next thing that's going to change my
• 51:46
  guest's perception or the dining experience, Is it going to be
• 51:51
  drones? Yeah, I don't know.
• 51:54
  But there are drones that deliver food today.
• 51:58
  Are all I know is you have to have the mindset from a project
• 52:06
  management perspective or program management is that we're
• 52:12
  not going to get it perfect, but you have to be able to react
• 52:17
  fast enough to change as you recognize your guest changes.
• 52:24
  So everybody said all the Blaze Pizza guests love to come in and
• 52:30
  walk the line. They love the walk the line
• 52:33
  experience. I'm like, well, what about the
• 52:36
  how do we know that? What if they they love Blaze
• 52:39
  Pizza, but they just want to come in order from their table
• 52:42
  and have it delivered to their table?
• 52:43
  Like why would anybody do that? Because I don't know, that's an
• 52:49
  experience. So let's test it, right?
• 52:52
  So why do people use kiosks at McDonald's or any place else
• 52:58
  because they don't like to interact with guests.
• 53:00
  So those are all projects that are on our horizon is how do I
• 53:04
  order from the table? How do I put kiosks in?
• 53:06
  So all of those have been proven.
• 53:08
  Those are just things in my arsenal to say franchise.
• 53:13
  If you think in your market these are things that you want
• 53:19
  to test your pilot, I have solutions for you because I know
• 53:23
  some go ahead. Have you tested or piloted
• 53:27
  ordering from the table or ordering from a?
• 53:29
  Key Yeah. And that's our new strategy
• 53:31
  going forward. I call it skip the line, right?
• 53:37
  So when you walk into a Blaze Pizza, there's no Hostess to
• 53:40
  seat you. There's just tables and a line.
• 53:42
  So if you want to skip the line, sit down at a table order from
• 53:45
  your table, we'll bring the food to you.
• 53:49
  What data can you share about the test that you've run?
• 53:52
  The average ticket is normally $2.00 higher.
• 53:57
  So and that's it's dine in, dine in experience.
• 54:02
  So if I walk the line, I'm going to pay in restaurant pricing.
• 54:10
  If I order from the table, I'm going to pay in restaurant
• 54:12
  pricing. But for some reason, seeing
• 54:15
  pictures of the food already made and my technology
• 54:20
  consistently upsells. Hey, I see you ordered a pizza.
• 54:23
  Would you like a salad? Oh, do you want a drink?
• 54:25
  It's very difficult operationally to get the people
• 54:28
  that are manning the line in the restaurant to go, Hey, by the
• 54:31
  way, Anthony, would you like a drink to go with that?
• 54:34
  Would you like a dessert? So my technology.
• 54:37
  Busy they're tired of repeating themselves they've had a bad
• 54:40
  yeah sure it's just the human element, the.
• 54:42
  Human element. So I don't want to take humans
• 54:45
  out of the restaurant. That's what makes us.
• 54:48
  But I want people to be able to make a decision about I don't
• 54:52
  want to deal with humans. I'm just going to order from my
• 54:54
  table. So one is average tickets
• 54:57
  higher, typically $1.80 to 2:30 higher, so I use $2.00.
• 55:03
  Tips are about the same, believe it or not.
• 55:08
  That does. Surprise me, I don't have to
• 55:12
  wait behind the other four people that were in front of me
• 55:15
  in the line on a Friday. I can just sit down and get my
• 55:18
  spot. And by the way, do you know very
• 55:21
  many people that use iPhones? Like everybody, right?
• 55:26
  And so people are used to using their phone for everything.
• 55:30
  So it's no longer a phone. It's an ordering device.
• 55:33
  It's a mobile kiosk. So kiosks also work.
• 55:38
  You know, somebody walks in the restaurant, there's 20 people in
• 55:41
  line. They go over the kiosk, they
• 55:42
  order, they go sit down. So it's all around, what kind of
• 55:47
  experience do you want, Anthony? Do you want to stand in line?
• 55:50
  You want to sit at the table? You want to order from a kiosk?
• 55:52
  What do you want to do? Well, I've got 2 crazy little
• 55:55
  boys. I want to sit down at a table
• 55:58
  and keep them corralled. You know, I, I can sort of play
• 56:02
  zone defense on them while my wife does the order and we're
• 56:05
  not up in the line having them like bounce into people.
• 56:08
  So that that's my choice. When I joined Blaze, I was a
• 56:12
  little surprised. We have a lot of moms with small
• 56:15
  kids that come in and because the kids like, I don't want what
• 56:19
  you're eating, I want my own thing so they can get it.
• 56:22
  And it's very cost effective. So we have a lot of young women
• 56:27
  with kids that come into our locations, which is not
• 56:30
  necessarily what you would get from a Domino's, right?
• 56:35
  Different clientele. Yeah.
• 56:38
  OK. Shifting gears, Chris, I'd like
• 56:40
  to hear about a serious challenge that you've gone
• 56:43
  through in your life. What was it?
• 56:45
  How'd you get through it and what were some lessons that you
• 56:47
  learned? So I'm a hunter.
• 56:51
  I do large game hunting and I used to hunt all the time with
• 56:55
  my father-in-law, but he was much older than I am and I
• 57:00
  wanted to go after an elk because I'd never shot an elk.
• 57:04
  So I contracted for this hunt in Idaho with a local guide and his
• 57:11
  wife. They gave me all the parameters
• 57:15
  around, OK, you have to be in really good shape and so you
• 57:18
  have to work out, you have to be able to do all this stuff.
• 57:21
  So I did. I did all the things.
• 57:23
  So it was a horseback hunt in Idaho, high country.
• 57:28
  And so I arrived, rode up the mountain with my guides to
• 57:36
  12,000 feet and gorgeous country.
• 57:42
  And but it was a late winter and the elk weren't at 10,000 to
• 57:52
  12,000 feet like they normally were.
• 57:56
  They were at 6000 feet. So the guide said OK, we're
• 58:02
  going to walk down to 6000 feet and I had just rode up 6000 feet
• 58:07
  on horses and I'm like, OK, let's go.
• 58:11
  What I learned after about 3 hours is there's no downhill
• 58:16
  treadmill. So I'd worked on the treadmill,
• 58:20
  I was running, I was working on the treadmill, but I'd never
• 58:23
  walked 6000 feet downhill on lichen and rocks and so.
• 58:31
  You were using different muscles.
• 58:32
  I was using what you were trained for.
• 58:34
  I was using my front thighs that I actually don't believe I've
• 58:39
  ever used before in my life, even running marathons.
• 58:43
  And so we got down at the bottom of the mountain and we didn't
• 58:50
  see any. We we heard some help, but we
• 58:51
  didn't get any elk. He's like, OK, we're going to go
• 58:53
  back. Like I can barely walk.
• 58:56
  So turns out I could walk uphill very well.
• 59:00
  So we walked up the hill, back to 12,000 feet, went to sleep.
• 59:05
  The next morning, I couldn't move.
• 59:08
  He's like, yeah, we're going to go out.
• 59:09
  We're going to go back to 6000 feet.
• 59:10
  I'm like, I can't walk. And it's the first hunt ever in
• 59:18
  my life that I tapped out. I said you know what, I'm not
• 59:27
  going to be able to move for like 3 days.
• 59:30
  I just, my legs were stiff and it's a waste of your time.
• 59:36
  I paid the full price and for the hunt didn't get an help.
• 59:42
  But it's one of the only times in my life I've I've tapped out
• 59:46
  of an event. And a funny thing about it is
• 59:52
  they took me down the mountain on the horses.
• 59:54
  I got in my car and I'm driving away in Idaho and I went through
• 59:59
  a small town that had speed zone, a speed limit.
• 1:00:03
  It was like 30 miles and I was going 40, I think.
• 1:00:07
  And a cop pulled me over and he walked up to the window and said
• 1:00:12
  driver's license. I'm like, sure, I was speeding,
• 1:00:14
  just give me a ticket. He's like, well, you appear to
• 1:00:17
  be pretty tired. I said, I just went on an elk
• 1:00:20
  hunt. I can't walk, so please don't
• 1:00:23
  ask me to get out of the vehicle.
• 1:00:25
  He's like. Oh, never mind, I'll just give
• 1:00:27
  you a warning. He showed mercy.
• 1:00:32
  He must have done it himself at some point.
• 1:00:35
  So. It's interesting that you choose
• 1:00:37
  this as sort of the big struggle.
• 1:00:40
  And I think what I heard you say is this is the first time in my
• 1:00:44
  life I ever tapped out of something.
• 1:00:46
  And you were a military guy. Fast track for general you've
• 1:00:50
  had and I don't know where this was sort of in your your career
• 1:00:54
  arc, but you've had success at multiple places of leadership
• 1:01:00
  along the way, different employers that you've had.
• 1:01:04
  This was probably pretty unsettling to the identity that
• 1:01:08
  you had for. Yourself.
• 1:01:09
  Absolutely. I don't.
• 1:01:12
  I'm very competitive. I so competitive sometimes, you
• 1:01:17
  know, don't invite me to a bar and challenge me to dance on the
• 1:01:21
  table. So I'll probably do it.
• 1:01:24
  You'll do it. I might take a couple tequilas,
• 1:01:26
  but I'd do it. And so I'm very competitive.
• 1:01:30
  So yeah, it was kind of unsettling in my industry for
• 1:01:34
  the with people I work with, I'm known to get projects done.
• 1:01:39
  And I would credit that back to probably the first few years at
• 1:01:43
  Domino's. And my military history is
• 1:01:46
  you're in the military to be competitive.
• 1:01:48
  You want to go do things typically, or at least I was,
• 1:01:52
  and I think that carried over into the restaurant career.
• 1:01:54
  I'm always looking for the next challenge.
• 1:01:58
  Not always, but I'm not afraid to turn 1 down.
• 1:02:02
  So this was a challenge that in your mind got the better idea
• 1:02:06
  and that was just that was a hard pill to swallow.
• 1:02:09
  I thought it was going to happen when I had to put in SAP.
• 1:02:12
  If you've ever heard of SAP software, I had never met
• 1:02:16
  anybody that did it successfully.
• 1:02:19
  And at Bloomin Brands, we decided to put in SAP financials
• 1:02:25
  with my peer later to become the CEO of Blaze Pizza, Mandy Shaw.
• 1:02:32
  And we sat down and we said this project's going to work or we're
• 1:02:35
  going to die doing it. And we came in exactly on time,
• 1:02:40
  $1 million under budget. And it's the only SAP project
• 1:02:44
  I've ever heard that's successful.
• 1:02:48
  If so many of them are unsuccessful, why do so many
• 1:02:50
  people use it? Well, if you could, once you get
• 1:02:53
  it installed, it lasts forever. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a
• 1:02:57
  well engineered product. Let me put it that way.
• 1:03:01
  Unless you customize it to fit your needs.
• 1:03:04
  But it is a very, very well engineered product.
• 1:03:09
  Any thoughts of trying the elk con again?
• 1:03:13
  I did do another elk con, but I went where I knew the elk were
• 1:03:18
  sort of at versus up and down. I was the so was the guy that
• 1:03:24
  the guide was flabbergasted that all the elk were at the bottom
• 1:03:27
  because normally they're up where they set up camp.
• 1:03:31
  And I just, you know, I picked that time of year that, you
• 1:03:33
  know, it was bad for them, bad for me, worse for me,
• 1:03:37
  apparently, because this guy was 10 years younger than I was and
• 1:03:41
  he, he looked like an antelope hopping around on the rocks.
• 1:03:44
  And I was like, Oh my God, this is going to kill me.
• 1:03:47
  You just you just had the wrong exercises in your your prep
• 1:03:50
  routine that's. You find an exercise machine
• 1:03:53
  that emulates walking downhill on rocks and lichen.
• 1:03:58
  I'd be interested in because I'd go back to Idaho.
• 1:04:02
  Go back to that same spot again. You conquer it this time.
• 1:04:06
  Chris, do you have like a, a recommendation for our
• 1:04:09
  listeners? Maybe a book or a podcast,
• 1:04:12
  another course or a framework that has been helpful for you
• 1:04:16
  and your career development that might benefit some other folks.
• 1:04:21
  What I what I do today in every organization I go to is if if
• 1:04:28
  you're not a familiar with the concept of agile, an agile
• 1:04:34
  philosophy, it it originated with software development, small
• 1:04:42
  team software development. It is now migrated to larger
• 1:04:46
  teams. There are things that are called
• 1:04:48
  agile that are prescriptive ways to run projects.
• 1:04:53
  That's not agile, that's like Kanban, project management,
• 1:04:57
  things like that. Read any book on agile around
• 1:05:02
  the agile mentality of how you change your project team to work
• 1:05:07
  the way the team is most productive.
• 1:05:11
  Right off the top of my head. I don't know the best reference,
• 1:05:16
  but I learned it early on when I was working at Domino's Pizza.
• 1:05:21
  There's a consultant out of the Ann Arbor area that teaches
• 1:05:24
  agile and the agile philosophy. Keep in mind it's not a project
• 1:05:28
  management technique, it's a philosophy of how you organize
• 1:05:33
  teams to manage projects if. Based on the makeup of your
• 1:05:39
  team. Based on the makeup of your team
• 1:05:41
  and the philosophy that every person on a team contributes in
• 1:05:47
  different ways and you jointly decide to how to manage the
• 1:05:51
  project. Now there's some guidelines you
• 1:05:53
  need to live within, but like one of the things I do every
• 1:05:57
  work day is I have a stand up, which is a 15 minute period and
• 1:06:05
  this is an agile philosophy. It's one of the 20 techniques
• 1:06:08
  you can use for project management.
• 1:06:10
  Every morning I have a cross functional team.
• 1:06:13
  We get together and sometimes we're on the phone for one
• 1:06:15
  minute and sometimes we're on the phone for 15 or 20 minutes,
• 1:06:19
  but the guideline is no more than 15 minutes.
• 1:06:22
  Tell me if you need my help today or this week.
• 1:06:27
  Cross functionally, people love it because they're like, I can
• 1:06:32
  get help from IT just by talking to Chris and there's no
• 1:06:36
  barriers. So you could be a manager, you
• 1:06:41
  could be an individual contributor, you could be
• 1:06:43
  whatever you are, but you're from a department that makes
• 1:06:47
  your organization successful. And people thrive when they
• 1:06:53
  understand they're not on an island and if they have a
• 1:06:56
  project, then they have a project need.
• 1:06:58
  How do you get it organized? And so a stand up is a is a way
• 1:07:03
  cross functionally to get a team to pull in the same direction.
• 1:07:09
  Chris, if we were to talk a year from now, what's something that
• 1:07:12
  you would hope to be celebrated? Buff, I'm still at Blaze Pizza.
• 1:07:21
  We have something called Project Incubator.
• 1:07:24
  Project Incubator is we're going to turn our restaurant
• 1:07:28
  operations in a direction we believe our guests wanted to go,
• 1:07:36
  which is a technology infused restaurant environment that
• 1:07:41
  allows guests to experience Blaze the way they want to
• 1:07:44
  experience Blaze. So it'll be all the options we
• 1:07:48
  talked a little bit about here. Our guests will realize that we
• 1:07:53
  can become predictable, we can become consistent and technology
• 1:07:58
  will help us get there. So that's what I'm predicting In
• 1:08:00
  a year, we will have some number of Blaze Pizza locations that
• 1:08:05
  are much more predictable than they are today.
• 1:08:08
  We're predictable today. We're just not predictable the
• 1:08:10
  way people want us to be predictable so.
• 1:08:15
  You mentioned hunting, What else do you like to do for fun
• 1:08:17
  outside? Work so I I used to be a scuba
• 1:08:20
  diving instructor, so a scuba dive hunt.
• 1:08:25
  I also like to build things with my hand.
• 1:08:28
  I'm much better at destruction then I am at fine details.
• 1:08:34
  So I just do a lot of a lot of that stuff.
• 1:08:38
  It's. Something you've destructed.
• 1:08:39
  Well I also show dogs, I'm AAKC judge so I like to go out with
• 1:08:44
  my dogs and watch them run around the field and chase lures
• 1:08:48
  and stuff like that. So I I have a lot of hobbies
• 1:08:51
  that's fun. Something you recently
• 1:08:53
  deconstructed. The kitchen in my house.
• 1:08:57
  I just moved to Atlanta in October.
• 1:08:59
  My wife and I said we're going to build a new kitchen.
• 1:09:01
  I'm taking it all apart now. We're waiting on the plans to
• 1:09:04
  come back from the builder. They're going to build us.
• 1:09:06
  I'm not going to build the kitchen but I destructed it.
• 1:09:10
  You tore it down. Yeah, Chris, just one more
• 1:09:13
  question for you. But before I ask it, I want to
• 1:09:15
  do 2 things. First of all, I'm going to
• 1:09:17
  invite everyone listening to hit the follow button on their
• 1:09:19
  favorite podcast app. Get more great interviews like
• 1:09:22
  we've had today with Chris Demery.
• 1:09:24
  I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch
• 1:09:26
  with you, Chris, or to continue to follow your story.
• 1:09:29
  What would that be? Probably LinkedIn.
• 1:09:31
  I do a lot of LinkedIn and associations.
• 1:09:35
  I think it's a fantastic tool for staying connected to people.
• 1:09:38
  So LinkedIn is good. I don't do well with cold calls,
• 1:09:44
  but you know, I go to conferences, I go to Mer tech,
• 1:09:47
  sometimes multi unit restaurant technology, FS tech, food
• 1:09:52
  service technology. So if you meet me in person, my
• 1:09:56
  rule of thumb is with a partner is if you look at if you look
• 1:10:00
  them in the eye in person, it's really hard to say.
• 1:10:02
  I don't know who you are. If you do a cold call, it's
• 1:10:04
  really easy to go, yeah, I don't know who you are.
• 1:10:06
  Sorry. Like so come and meet me in
• 1:10:10
  person is the best way. All right.
• 1:10:13
  The last question for you as you look to the future.
• 1:10:16
  What? Are the most exciting changes
• 1:10:19
  that you see coming to your industry?
• 1:10:26
  And that's a. Just pick one.
• 1:10:31
  Well, I think there's a lot of talk about AI and a lot of
• 1:10:39
  misnomers about artificial intelligence.
• 1:10:43
  The truth is what's happening in our restaurants is our labor is
• 1:10:50
  younger. Our leaders in our restaurants
• 1:10:52
  are younger. They don't have as much
• 1:10:54
  experience. So they don't have what I call
• 1:10:57
  situational awareness because they're they're doing hands on
• 1:11:01
  stuff because somebody called out or they're being forced to
• 1:11:05
  hit labor targets and they just don't have the experience when
• 1:11:11
  something goes sideways in the restaurant.
• 1:11:13
  Let me give you an example of something that goes sideways in
• 1:11:15
  a restaurant. I forecasted 10% of my orders
• 1:11:19
  were going to be off premises orders and 90% dine in.
• 1:11:25
  So I allocate labor to handle those volumes, but all of a
• 1:11:29
  sudden it starts raining outside and they get 40% off premises.
• 1:11:33
  If I don't know situationally that I need to redeploy labor
• 1:11:38
  because I'm in the back doing something, I'm prepping or
• 1:11:41
  whatever, you can lose a lot of business and things can go
• 1:11:44
  sideways really quick. I think there's a place for, I
• 1:11:49
  don't know the right term for it.
• 1:11:50
  I, I with one of my vendors, I called it the whisperer, where
• 1:11:55
  if AI could whisper something in the ear of that general manager
• 1:11:59
  that says, you know, we forecasted 10% digital, you're
• 1:12:03
  now at 40%. You probably should evaluate, do
• 1:12:06
  you need to change anything not to tell them what to do to give
• 1:12:14
  them the opportunity to make a choice.
• 1:12:19
  And so really all we're doing is we're surfacing near real time
• 1:12:23
  data. By the way, we did this at
• 1:12:26
  Domino's 10 years ago without AI, but AI has the potential of
• 1:12:32
  exponentially making this available to everybody, I think.
• 1:12:37
  Is this on your project development road map or is this
• 1:12:40
  kind of multi steps down? So I've introduced this concept
• 1:12:43
  to two of my partners, Q Beyond and Fresh Tech KDS.
• 1:12:48
  It said if I was the betting man, this would be what I would
• 1:12:51
  focus on and it could be five years away because you have to
• 1:12:55
  harness that compute power with your near real time data and
• 1:13:00
  that's a problem for every restaurant.
• 1:13:04
  Well, Chris, this has been a lot of fun.
• 1:13:06
  I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your
• 1:13:08
  time and your story with us today.
• 1:13:09
  I really appreciate it, folks. That's a wrap on another episode
• 1:13:14
  of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:13:16
  today.