The meez Podcast
Josh Sharkey (Entrepreneur, professional chef, and founder/CEO of meez, the culinaryOS for food professionals) interviews world class entrepreneurs in the food space that are shifting the paradigm of how we innovate and operate in our industry.
The meez Podcast
Alex Beltrani on Revolutionizing Restaurant Feedback with Tattle
#70. Join host Josh Sharkey as he welcomes an old friend and pioneering entrepreneur, Alex Beltrani, the founder and CEO of Tattle, to the show. In this engaging episode, Josh and Alex dive into the story of Tattle, a revolutionary tech company that digitizes the customer feedback experience for restaurants.
Alex shares his journey from the inception of Tattle to its impressive growth, providing insights into how his platform quantifies and drives restaurant success by analyzing customer feedback on service, quality, and consistency. With clients ranging from Chili's and Mod Pizza to Hooters and Dave's Hot Chicken, Tattle's impact on the industry is undeniable.
Tune in for an inspiring conversation as Josh and Alex reminisce about their early collaborations, discuss the importance of metrics and results, and explore the future of restaurant success through innovative technology. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, restaurant management, and the power of data-driven decision-making.
Where to find Alex Beltrani:
Where to find Tattle:
Where to find host Josh Sharkey:
In this episode, we cover:
(05:11): Where Alex's passion for helping others comes from
(13:56): How the definition of "the grind" has changed for Alex
(19:43): Raising capital
(22:12): Where Alex spends most of his time at Tattle
(27:24): Being a founder: Addiction? Or passion?
(39:09): Tattle 101
(1:02:08): Reminiscing on Tattle's launch party at Bark
[00:00:00] Josh Sharkey:
You're listening to Season 2 of The meez Podcast. I'm your host Josh Sharkey, the founder and CEO of meez, a culinary operating system for food professionals. On the show, we're going to talk to high performers in the food business, everything from chefs to CEOs, technologists, writers, investors, and more about how they innovate and operate and how they consistently execute at a high level.
[00:00:24]
And I would really love it if you could drop us a five star review anywhere that you listen to your podcast. That could be Apple, that could be Spotify, could be Google. I'm not picky. Anywhere works. But I really appreciate the support. And as always, I hope you enjoy the show.
[00:00:43]
Good afternoon or evening or morning, whenever you're listening to this. I'm excited about today's guest. He is an old friend of mine. We've known each other for many years and he was also a big help when I first had the idea for meez years ago. He started his own company, a tech company called Tattle, that digitizes the customer feedback experience and really it has grown into so much more than really just quantifying how restaurants are successful and all the attributes of success within a restaurant.
[00:01:16]
That's probably a terrible way to explain all the amazing things that his company does, but more than that, man, Alex Beltrani, the founder of and CEO of Tattle, is to me one of the best CEOs and entrepreneurs I've ever met. I haven't ever met somebody outside of the food industry that works and grinds as hard as this guy.
[00:01:40]
And he's also maniacal about following metrics and being results driven. And I've learned a lot from him. He's a lot younger than me, but has a wealth of experience in this world. And generally speaking, it was just really great to catch up and hear how he's doing. We don't get to catch up nearly as often anymore because we're both so busy, but we talked and reminisced about the early days of him coming into my restaurants back in the day.
[00:02:06]
And I was one of the first people to buy his software for my restaurant. And I actually had forgotten that we did the launch party for his company at my restaurant. I had hosted it. But we caught up on that and a number of other really great stories and it's been amazing to see his journey of growth and how he has taken his company from this small idea into this incredibly large company that is just helping so many restaurants and a lot of huge restaurants too.
[00:02:34]
You know, Chili's and Mod Pizza and Robeks and Dave's Hot Chicken and, well, everything between Quiznos, Hooters. We had a lot of fun today and we definitely, to be honest, just had a chance to catch up with friends. But we speak a lot about what it's like to try and quantify what is an indicator of success in a restaurant and his software, his application really helps restaurants do this by ingesting and synthesizing all the feedback they get from every customer on every attribute of service and quality and consistency and everything between and quality.
[00:03:05]
coming up with ways to analyze what the future might look like for that restaurant based on that feedback. So, as always, I hope that you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
[00:03:22] Josh Sharkey:
And by the way, welcome to the show.
[00:03:25] Alex Beltrani:
Happy to be here. Yeah, it's funny. I was, I was thinking about the show and I'm like, Josh has like sits in the middle of the Venn diagram of like, You know, chef. So like fully intimate, you know, experience in restaurants, and then you ran a restaurant, so owner, and then you were COO of Aurify.
[00:03:47]
So you were running multi content multi units and now you're running it. It's just like, I was looking at all your guests and like, holy shit. There's just so much relatability because you've just done so many things.
[00:03:59] Josh Sharkey:
It's a big ecosystem out there. It's wild. It's wild how small it is too. But it is, it is crazy. I remember, like, I totally remember the day you walked into my restaurant and you were, like, selling Tattle. It was very early days, by the way. Like, very early days. Like, sad and scary and dim. But, but good too, right? And I just remember, like, you know, like, Oh, I'm gonna use this. I don't care. Like, this dude's awesome.
[00:04:24]
And, you know, you came in, you helped set the thing up, and you were, you know, talking about it, and it was just you, I think it was just, I think it was you, and you had a, you had a prior CTO or something, and it was like, maybe it is you too.
[00:04:35] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, and at one point, it was just me for like a couple of years. I would always refer to Tattle as like the Royal We like, yeah, we'll, we'll fix that feature for you. Yeah, we'll get that to you.
[00:04:47] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:04:47] Alex Beltrani:
And they're like, it was, I started Tattle, I mean, probably 2011.
[00:04:50] Josh Sharkey:
Oh, that early? Wow. Yeah, because it was like 2014, I think, when I met you. The other thing I remember, which still to this day is so true, that, oh, I'm kidding aside, man, like, you were so helpful. Like, strangely helpful, overtly helpful, all the time. And actually, you are, like, that to everybody.
[00:05:11] Alex Beltrani:
I try not to think of my experience as unique, but I, I feel like it was, intensely painful for so long that I, I just lived like I, I lived in, you know, just like my dad would always say, like, he doesn't even have a pot to piss in.
[00:05:30]
He just keeps building this app thing. Like it was, you know, it was not a great, it wasn't, I wasn't in a great place for a very long time. So anyone that I see who's like, who has the itch or you can just see them like tussle with the idea of like, should I leave like my prescribed job with my, you know, repeatable income with my like ability to plan for the future.
[00:05:51]
And then there's another part of them that's like, but I have this idea. And like, that's a whole other part of them that like they haven't like encountered yet. So I, I love being helpful because it's maybe selfish. Like I, I do enjoy helping people and it feels good to do that. But then it's also amazing just watching people just like evolve over the years and do something that they always wanted to do, but didn't think they could do it.
[00:06:16]
And for me, that's like, I love watching people go through that because It's no, no one really helps you, helps you like you get people like maybe they redirect you off course for a little bit, but like no one's living your day to day like the struggle. So if I can do that for a little bit with someone like I know it when people do that for me, it went a really long way and I never forgot it.
So it's really just like paying it forward when it happens.
[00:06:40] Josh Sharkey:
Well, I mean, I vividly remember, first of all, I remember liking you right away because I, I come from, you know, the, the kitchen where, you know, 15 some odd years, I just worked 100 hours a week for basically no pay, like, it averaged out to like $4 an hour, and you just grind all the time because you, you love this thing and you want to get better, and I saw you grinding and I was like, wow, people grind outside the kitchen, too.
[00:07:06]
That's pretty cool. At least this guy does. And then, you know, I didn't leave a job, you know, I haven't had a job in a very, very long time because, you know, I left cooking to start, you know, my first business in 2008. But like, I started telling you about this idea. I was like, man, like, I need this thing.
[00:07:21]
It's not, no one has it. And I think I should just like sell my restaurants and do this thing. And you were like, fuck yeah, you should do that. And on top of that, I don't know if you remember this. But you, you're like, okay, you're gonna need a deck. And I was like, okay, that's, like I'm used to business plans in a restaurant.
[00:07:38]
You know, go to business plan. I don't remember that. And, and, and you, you built my first deck for me. Did I? So, like a, like a, like a template. You're like, here. And actually then you started putting in some of the things too. I'm sure I have it, I'm, on this call I might try to look, look forward, I'm sure I have it by the way.
[00:07:56]
And it was like a PowerPoint or something. And it was really, you know, janky, but you're like, dude, just, you need something that's simple. And I'm like, first of all, I had no idea that that's what you needed. Market size and all these things. I'm like, okay. And you just, you know, you went out of your way to like, to do that and to, to send that to me on top of like making some introductions.
[00:08:18]
By the way, I had dinner a couple nights ago. It's like New York tech weekend. Mike Monteiro was, uh, was at, at the dinner we were at. He's, he's one of our investors. I met Mike. Sort of through you, because I met Mike through this, through David Olk,
[00:08:31] Alex Beltrani: Who met, yeah, same person I met Mike through,
[00:08:33] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I am curious, man, like, what drives you to be so helpful?
[00:08:38]
Because I met a lot of people along the way now, in this new world of food tech, that they're like, oh yeah, Alex, he's, he's, he's awesome, he helped me with this, or he introduced me to this person, or he did this, and I'm like, Man, this guy's just like always helping people. Like, where do you think that stems from?
[00:08:54] Alex Beltrani:
This is really lonely. Like, it's awful. A lot of it. I mean, it's very rewarding, and you're so grateful when anything is going right. And you're so grateful that, like, you have a team of people that hopefully enjoy working for you, but, like, for the most part, like, I don't know, maybe, like, 50 to 60 percent is, like, extremely difficult.
[00:09:15]
Like, emotionally draining. So, that's one piece. And then the other piece is, like, I don't know, my parents have always been just, like, wildly supportive of anything that we've ever wanted to do. I feel grateful to that extent, too, where I don't know if that's always Like the balance of people growing up, but my parents are entrepreneurs.
[00:09:34]
So it was always like, what do you want to do? Like, is it risky? Like, um, do you want to get better? Do you want to improve? Do you want, so it's always like that kind of mentality. And I, I think some people have the itch, but they don't have like the disposition or just like, they just didn't grow up in a home.
[00:09:50]
Maybe that was that supportive. So I always feel that I, I have to pay it forward in some way, because everyone who has the itch like you within them has like a far. like less maximized version of themselves that they just like haven't tapped into.
[00:10:08] Josh Sharkey:
But you, you also sort of, you, you do oftentimes, at least I've seen like go above and beyond. Is that something that your parents also do or that you saw?
[00:10:18] Alex Beltrani:
I think, yeah, I mean, just being very supportive. Like I remember early days, Tattle, it was like Tattle was like, I started doing Tattle in 2011 and I was living in like an apartment with like you know, five other roommates in a small eight by eight room, no windows.
[00:10:38]
And like, I was like, I'm going to have to do this the next three years. I'm like, that's amazing, Alex. That's so great. Like, this is so excited for you. Like, this is going to be a really fun journey for you. So I. I always feel like they're bringing perspective that I don't, that I didn't have initially. I think that this job is more rewarding when you can help others be in your seat.
[00:10:58]
And cathartically, it's nice to be surrounded by people who like, are on a similar journey. Cause you can relate to each other far more. And I, I love having a network of people that I can do that with. It's like probably the selfish reward too.
[00:11:12] Josh Sharkey:
It's funny you bring this up because I was actually thinking about this recently, finding more ways to just be more helpful now, like just later on in my career. It is really rewarding, you know, to, to,
[00:11:23] Alex Beltrani:
Oh my God, it's the most rewarding. I mean, I used to look up like greatly to anyone that was helping me like, Oh my God, I can't believe this person. Like they, they actually have a product. They have a team, they have funding, they have customer like, Oh my God, they're growing.
[00:11:36]
Oh my God, like how I want to do that. How do I get to do that? So I, and then you do it and it's hard, but like, it's not as hard if you just keep doing it every single day for a very long time. And I think people at the early start, they always underestimate how long it will take, how hard it will be. And that's why I'm just so overly helpful because like that little piece of help could be like the dopamine hit they need for the next like two weeks just to get through something horrible. You just need to give that to people I think as they're on this journey.
[00:12:05] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, the right to learn or the, you know, entitlement to learn is something that you have to like earn. You know, you don't just get to learn, you have to, you have to work pretty hard to, to learn things, and to go out of your way to learn things, and I find that I also get really juiced and excited when I'm helping somebody, and I see that they're actually putting in the work, and then coming back, and following up, things like that, I think it's, it's such a different experience when you, when you help somebody, And then they just ask for more and they haven't really like shown.
[00:12:35]
And I think that that's something, you know, at least for, for folks, you know, like maybe younger or what have you, the more you want to learn, like the more you should show, like how you're taking the things that you've already gotten help with and applied them. Cause that also is like really exciting when you help somebody, you said that maybe you send them a deck, right?
[00:12:51] Josh Sharkey:
Like here's a template and then they, yeah. Do something with it and say, Hey, I actually showed it to this person as opposed to like, just keep asking you for more and more help.
[00:12:59] Alex Beltrani:
Wildly rewarding and also sometimes surprising. You're like, Holy shit. I know that. Like, oh, I know exactly what to do here. Like, I had no idea I was sitting on that information.
[00:13:11]
And then they were like, then you're like, wow, I think I might know things that I didn't realize could be useful to someone else. And you're like, holy shit, like, how do I give this away? Like, how do I give it, you know, how do I provide any guidance that could be useful? Like, how do I? And then, and then I think that gets really fun when you're like, wow, I, I know a lot.
[00:13:27]
Um, it's helping someone, they seem to enjoy it, and then there's, it's like a whole other rewarding aspect of the role that you had no idea when you first started that this could be the case.
[00:13:37] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Well, going back to what we were saying earlier, I remember, like, 2014, when you were, you know, grinding in Tattle, you were probably eating ramen every day.
[00:13:45]
You did that for quite a while. Chicken and beans, yeah. Yeah, um, what, how has, like, the, the grind, like, changed for you over, over the last decade? Because you still work your ass off, I know that, but, like, what, what's changed? What's changed?
[00:13:56] Alex Beltrani:
You know, it's so funny, like the different stages of your business, like, and then who you are and have to be within those stages, like it just, it's always constantly changing, but it's almost like outside of just like the roles, responsibilities, which are like whatever, they'll always change, but like your literal temperament and acceptance of things like changes dramatically.
[00:14:14]
Like that, I think is the hardest part that like is not spoken about enough. It's not like, oh, I have to recruit, I have to train, I have to fundraise. It's like, those are like. Those are like the above water, like, obvious, sort of, like, ever changing responsibilities, but, like, the toughest part is, like, beneath it, which is, like, Like, I have to speak non violently to people when I want to voice a complaint in a way that I didn't know how to do five years ago.
[00:14:40]
Like, I have to read non violent communication to understand how to make an argument without offending everyone. Like, I, so I feel like, The grind used to be in the early days, just keep the company alive, which still is, but like, get customers, get revenue, try to, try to bring in capital to give yourself some kind of time frame.
[00:15:00]
So like, that's a grind in and of itself, and you really are operating in like this unforgiving manner. You're just like, I'm working my ass off on doing whatever it takes to like, prove that I can exist. And then you hopefully can get to a place where like, you can decompress a little bit and then begin to plan.
[00:15:15]
Outside of like looking at every 30 days and it's like, it's going to be like, we're going to get that 10k check. We're going to, it's like, that's really, really hard. And I would say early days, like it's really tough to be so sensitive to everyone else's needs and emotions on the team when you're like not paying yourself, you're trying to, move the company forward and you're trying to understand deeply every single role and how you would scale that role into like a bigger system.
[00:15:40] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's so true. It's very difficult in the beginning and I've failed at this in several businesses to like think about the happiness, the morale, the efficacy of your team as opposed to the efficacy of like the results of the company and it's like, Oh, is my team happy? Are they motivated? Do they know exactly what they need?
[00:15:59]
Do they, you know, how do they feel like, like contributors? That's stuff that like early on, it's so hard to like think about because you're like just in go mode and it does have compounding effects if you'd get it when you get it right. And usually we start like later than we should, because now that's like, Almost all I think about, I mean, that's not, I mean, obviously there's so many other things we have to think about as well, product and growth and fundraising.
[00:16:24] Alex Beltrani:
Well, you're trying to maximize everyone else's productivity, their commitment, their creativity, whatever it is.
[00:16:25] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, it's like, it's like one of the most important metrics of success, you know, as you grow, it's just like, is your team happy and are they, do they feel productive? Yeah. You know what I mean? And do they feel like they can achieve the goals that you set?
[00:16:42] Alex Beltrani:
And you don't think about that early on. It doesn't matter as much early on, you know, and it doesn't, it's just like the whole company is fighting to live. Like. Yeah, yeah. Your thing right now, it's so, it's so tough. Yeah. Like we're just, We're, you're in like, you're, you're just putting your head down, you're trying to survive.
[00:17:00]
It's really tough to survive in like, just like a survivalist mode for a really long time and consider all the delicacies of how complex people are and their needs and their wants and their aspirations. It's so tough to balance that relative to like, like we have to get through the next six months. So, yeah.
[00:17:16] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. And I think that, you know, one thing that I find helpful to tell folks is like in the beginning when you launch. Even when you first start getting some paying customers, it's still an idea for quite a while, you know, for me You don't yeah, you know, you don't quite have a business yet, you know, and I think it takes quite a while to okay Yeah, now there's there's a model here that like yeah that works and we can and the other thing I think you know, it's funny because I heard the CEO of Nvidia say this recently He has some wild quotes.
[00:17:43]
Yeah, but you know, the one thing he said that like really resonated with me is like it doesn't get easier, it gets harder. And I think people, you know, he tells, you know, and I tell everybody the same thing. Don't start a business. I can tell everybody, don't, no, don't, don't do that. If I tell you that and then you can still go do it, cool, that's awesome.
[00:18:00]
But it's not just hard in the beginning. There's a, there's a different kind of heart, just like you have to be a different person as your, as your company grows, you know, it's hard always, it's just different kinds of heart. I mean, there, there are like lifestyle businesses that, that I think you can probably do that over time, I think do become way more manageable and that's cool.
[00:18:18]
That's actually, that's actually pretty awesome. But if you're trying to really, you know, scale something that's going to have like, you know, a massive impact on a lot of people or businesses, it doesn't get easier. It just gets harder. It's just a different kind of hard.
[00:18:31] Alex Beltrani:
No, it's funny you say that. So like. You know, for the first three to four years, it's how we're struggling to survive. We finally start hitting some patriot. We start bringing on big customers. We grow pretty dramatically like, you know, throughout 2019 and it's just like a ragtag team of people, like five people in the company. And we're like, Yeah.
[00:18:52]
Yeah. The ones like ragtag crew fighting to survive. Now we're successful and we are mostly backed by like angels, right? And like the expectation of angels is like, this is a nine to ten year journey. So like what unpronounced pressure might I be putting on you? Like year two or three into the rut? Like it's just, it's not warranted yet.
[00:19:11]
So like, that's always like, I feel like the heyday of a startup. And then I feel as though it gets harder in time because. The expectations of the business evolve as you bring on capital partners that have different expectations for how you need to grow. So like, I remember just feeling moving from purely angel backed, like investing in a dream, to moving to institutional investors was like, like grief, just because everything now you have to do through the lens of something that's a bit more critical. Like, are these the right people? Is this the right plan?
[00:19:43] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I was talking about this with Brandon Barton from Bite at one of the episodes, and I think this is also something that's really important for people to consider, is There's different instruments of capital, you know, and I, you know, venture capital is one avenue, but there's lots of others, not lots, but there are others, right?
[00:20:01]
Private equity, there's, you know, loans from, there's SBA loans and things, there's, there's different ways to get, to get capital, uh, family offices, whatever, whatever, whatever the, the, the case may be, but like, they have different trajectories, and you have to know what trajectory you're getting on when you, when you bring on capital.
[00:20:17] Alex Beltrani:
Which will dictate your pressure. No doubt.
[00:20:20] Josh Sharkey:
Because if you're, if you raise venture capital, the expectation is that your company should return their fund. And that means that when you raise venture from at least a top tier firm, they might have, they might have a, uh, a 500 million fund. Right. And then over time, they expect they'll have 10 percent of your business when there's an exit.
[00:20:40]
Right. So they want that 10 percent to be equal to 500 million, you know, right. So 5 billion exit is the expectation. So growing nicely and being profitable over the course of 10 years, And you, let's just say that you grow to, you know, uh, to become a billion dollar company. I mean, I think that would probably still be good for them.
[00:21:00]
But let's just say you grow to be a, you know, 300 million dollar company and you're very profitable. That's not the venture out for, for, for that type of fund. There's smaller funds, things like that, but it's just what you consider, because that means you just have to continually grow. And there are some businesses where that's important.
[00:21:14]
You need to be like, you know, like for me, for example, we, we, We're always growing, you know, but that's, for us, it's very important because actually there's a compounding effect of the improvement of the product as we, as we grow and get more, get more folks on, but there are some business where I'm like, you don't, maybe don't get venture, maybe get, you know, maybe get a different kind of capital because you could be profitable.
[00:21:32]
And I think that's important because you, you're right. It also adds on like, you know, a different type of stress where you have to commit like, okay, this is what it's going to be for the next 10 years or so.
[00:21:43] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, you kind of sign up for your level of pressure on the basis of who you've taken capital from in a lot of ways. That will dictate even, yeah, the type of partner and then just generally your capital constraints every time you do raise, like that, that literally dictates almost any, you try to fight it and, you know, keep the team insulated from those things, but that, that sort of dictates the decisions you end up making and like the game and the rules you play when you decide anything.
[00:22:12] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. So curious right now, like, you know, independent of maybe like fundraising, what do you spend the most time on in your business? Whether it's sales or product or?
[00:22:24] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, that's a really good question. Probably much to the team's dismay right now. We had a CSM leave on maternity leave for the past year.
[00:22:34]
You know, last or the next few months, a customer success manager, I volunteered to hop in and take all of her accounts just because, you know, it had been so long for me, it had been like maybe four years and we've just spent so much of the last like two to three years. Building out these like table stakes, enterprise features that like all of our larger competitors have, but we don't, which means that we've deprioritized innovation and new features that we think would be really compelling.
[00:23:02]
And I have felt like maybe I've been far from the pulse of the customers in a lot of ways. And if I am managing them, hearing their pains. understanding to some extent which bugs, chores, tasks should be deprioritized or prioritized relative to the most optimal path that customer success manager can take.
[00:23:23]
Like, I want to understand the reasoning behind what we'll invest in, in like, its most visceral way. So, For right now, that's literally where I've been spending most of my time and frankly like, kind of loving it. Again, much to the team's dismay, like I probably need to dial back soon.
[00:23:42] Josh Sharkey:
What is it that the team dislikes most about you being on the CSM?
[00:23:46] Alex Beltrani:
You know, we've been so used to doing the job for the same way for so long. We are able to evaluate success on the basis of how this job has been for so long. And we've just added a couple new features along with the head of analytics, which allows us to package the insights in a way that could be useful that like the only way to do it is through like manually creating through like Excel, some of these presentations and slides.
[00:24:11]
So again, it's not the responsibilities of the customer success manager to do any of these things, but it's an amazing opportunity if we can service some of the data, get some feedback on it and determine, should this go into quarterly presentations? Should this be inside the dashboard? Like things that sort of like for me, probably straddle the line between a few different departmental responsibilities.
[00:24:30]
So it's like, there he goes. You know, he's off again, you know, bringing so I think in a way the team loves to be like, wow, like customers are loving it. They're answering our emails or hopping on calls and I think the other side is like. Can this guy just do his job? Like, what is he doing in this department? Like we are in this department. Like, get the heck out of here.
[00:24:48] Josh Sharkey:
So it's probably I know. Yeah, I know the feeling. It's tough. It's tough. Yeah. But it's also, I think, good because, you know, no one's going to ever apply themselves the way that you do as the founder. That just
[00:24:59] Alex Beltrani: Right. And I don't expect Yeah. Yeah.
Don't expect them to. It's a level of probably neurosis that, like, they don't
ever want to live in.
[00:25:04] Josh Sharkey:
Well, you know, one thing that also, it took me a while to learn too, it's not just that like they, you know, like, yes, the founder's going to always work harder than everybody else. That's just It is what it is, but, but part of it is also like.
[00:25:15]
You know, when you have a job, let's just say that you're running, you know, customer success or you're running support or you're running, you know, whatever the thing is, like you're focused on doing that thing. And you, you feel like you might be stepping on toes if you do something else. So, you know, when you're the CEO or the founder, like you do whatever, you know what I mean?
[00:25:32]
And so that, that's a part of the, uh, of the struggle sometimes too, is that like, sometimes they're just like, I wouldn't even think to do that because I didn't want to sort of step on someone else's toes. And for you, it's like, I'll do it, you know, whatever it is that the customer needs, I'm going to do.
[00:25:46]
And that's a, it is a cool cultural thing to figure out is like, how do you get everybody on that sort of like. First principle thinking of like, how do you help the customer in whatever world you're in?
[00:25:56] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, for, for sure. And then also, yeah, sharing with the team, like justifications, we've been doing it, like, are we all aligned that I'm going to be mildly disrupted for the next three to four weeks, trying to elevate some part of our department to a point that can serve us and our customers and like, maybe in the roadmap three months from now.
[00:26:13]
So yeah, it's, you need, you definitely have to communicate it to everyone to understand why this is even happening. And then typically after that point, the hope is that It's generally accepted. It's viewed as less of a threat to the status quo and more of like, this is really good for the company and the department.
[00:26:29]
And then from that point, it's like, all right, cool. Like, it's less of something that's bothersome and more like, I understand what it feeds into and yeah, yeah, hopefully be accepting.
[00:26:39] Josh Sharkey:
Cool. We're going to talk about Tattle a bunch now, but, but before we do that, I wanted to ask you something that like, just, I'm just super curious because you and I both, I think grind a lot and work a lot and you know, I have two kids so like I'm, my day is kind of nuts because I'll get up before the kids and do some work, you know, exercise or something.
[00:26:57]
And then when the kids go to bed, I'm doing more work. And like at nights, I don't know when to call it quits. I'm like, so sometimes I'm like, it's like midnight 1am and I'm still working. And you know, usually for me, it's just like, Okay. At what point am I? So it's such a cognitive despair that like whatever I'm doing is going to not be nearly as good because I'm just way too tired.
[00:27:19]
But I'm curious for you, like, how do you like determine each day when to call it? Like that's it.
[00:27:24] Alex Beltrani:
That's it. I mean, I think to a large degree, any founder entrepreneur is like an addict to their work in some way, like it's a part of them in some way. So like, The hardest things I've had to do over the years are like decouple myself from work, like how do I do that?
[00:27:39]
And the things that I've had to do have felt like chores for years until like I start to enjoy those things. And then I'm like, you know what? Yeah, you know what? Maybe I'll play around the golf with my buddy. Like, you're right. Let's just call it at 4 p.m. on a Friday today because I'm gonna be working later on anyway, so like whatever, I'm just gonna get outside.
[00:27:57]
Like it's It's little habits I've had to really like wedge into my work to separate myself from work and then just also surrounding myself with people who aren't in tech really like just as much people that, you know, friends, family members who don't relate to this. I find that to be like extremely refreshing and now I feel like I gravitate to that more so just because it's just another great wedge to have.
[00:28:24]
So like calling it quits. Um. I think I know now that like, if I'm working past midnight, I'm going to be like a little bit slower the next morning.
[00:28:35] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. The sleep thing is a big one.
[00:28:38] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah. Big time. It's worse when you don't need a ton of sleep though, like you probably don't need a ton of sleep and you can still grind and you're like, shit, like this is not a reminder of how much, like there's no, there's no like speed bump here.
[00:28:50]
Like I'm just, I'm flying through and I need something different to remind me that like I need to stop.
[00:28:55] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, I need more sleep now than I did, you know, I'm in my 40s and it's, it's starting to hit a little bit. I know if I get like, like, two nights ago, I don't know why, but I just couldn't sleep at all.
[00:29:05]
I got like an hour, and I was just dead. And I had some important calls, and I was like, I hope I was
[00:29:11] Alex Beltrani: Wait, you got an hour of sleep?
[00:29:11] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah, I just couldn't, I just couldn't fall asleep. I don't know, I don't, that's not typical for me. You know, like, I, I fight for like, at least six, seven hours
[00:29:19] Alex Beltrani:
You're a zombie. The next day, it's like zombie,
[00:29:21] Josh Sharkey:
You know, like three cups of coffee. And I'm still like, you know, I think the thing that I struggle with, I don't know about you. And I think you're right. And I have a hard time admitting it, that there's like some piece of this. That's maybe an addict. I like to think of it more like,
[00:29:35] Alex Beltrani:
What are you talking about? Every founder is an addict from what I've seen, which is why, like, I feel like people gravitate to being a founder because work for them is like an unfulfilling quality of dopamine. It's like, All right, I'm working and I like to work a lot and I'm working at this company, but like I want to own the mission.
[00:29:54]
Like, I want to own the decisions. I want the responsibility. I'm like, I want more. This isn't enough for what I'm doing right now. Like, that's one part of the other part. It's like, this needs to exist. It's my mission. But like, I just feel as though it's like a inferior quality of what they need. And then they gravitate to something that's far more high octane that makes them feel alive and scared.
[00:30:13]
And like all the ways they want to feel that they're not getting from their current employer.
[00:30:16] Josh Sharkey:
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[00:31:24]
Yeah, I mean, let me, let me play the flip side of that because I think there's a lot of that that's right. But just so I don't feel terrible on myself at the end of this week. It's literally just how you are. You know, yeah, I think that there is part of it that is, you know, find when you find a purpose and then you're just completely driven to that purpose.
[00:31:46]
Now it is no matter what, there's like, there's a, there's a toxicity to this. Like I'm constantly. At all times, thinking about my business. When I was cooking I was constantly thinking about the dish and how to improve it and what if I, you know, oh, what if I marinate it with this and oh, you know, we should, we should actually like cook it a little bit slower and longer and oh, you know what, like, you know, kaffir limes are, we got these fresh ones and I would always be thinking about that at all times.
[00:32:11]
And now, and you know, with this business, it's not really much different and I'm starting to get to the point, I mean, I have two kids, I have a wife, and you know, this week was my son's birthday and my birthday. Mine was the day before my son's. And like, I'm realizing. You know, when it's for other people, I'll, I'll, I'll make time.
[00:32:27]
So it's like my, my sort of like hierarchy is like family, you know, kids, wife, business.
[00:32:34] Alex Beltrani:
That's amazing.
[00:32:35] Josh Sharkey:
Health, health and exercise, and then knowledge, and then at the very bottom is like enjoyment, and I don't know if that's necessarily, I don't know if that's good, but like, you know, even my birthday, my wife's like, oh, what do you want to do for your birthday?
[00:32:50]
I was like, oh, I, I got a big day actually, don't, don't worry about it. She's like, what? She was actually, you know, upset, understandably. Yeah. And because I just, I just had to do, I had a lot of work for, you know, we have some big stuff going on right now, and the next day, she's like, well, I want to, I want to do something special for you for lunch, and I'm like, okay.
[00:33:05]
I, you know, I'm, it's, it's the middle of the day, I don't, I just don't think I can, and, and she's like, dude. This is, like, I can't do anything for you, and you don't want to do anything for yourself, and I'm like, Well, you know, we have my son's birthday, and I'm making time for that, and I realized, like, is this just, like, what it is?
[00:33:22]
I don't know if you feel this way, but, like, I have a very hard time, like, finding time for, like, myself, outside of, like, the, the primary, like, Needs of like, I make sure I exercise, I make sure that, you know, that I, I read at nights and things like that.
[00:33:37] Alex Beltrani:
But I mean, Josh, do you ever consider that maybe you're living your like ideal day every day, like your ideal schedule?
[00:33:44]
Like maybe you're already doing it and maybe you don't need to have like a day to enjoy, which is like getting drunk and like doing something wild. Like maybe that's just not appealing anymore. Just like not enduring.
[00:33:54] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I mean the idea of like going out and getting, getting hammered with my friends is not really like, I don't really Enjoyment.
[00:34:01]
What about like a round of golf or like I don't play golf. I think the only thing that I would like to find more time for is, there's two things that I want to find more time for. Because I love poker and I love the game of poker and I'd like to be able to find more time to play. That's a competitive, that's competitive.
[00:34:16]
That's Yeah, but it's also just, it's, you know, it's fun, it's strategy, it's, it's so, there's so much strategy to it. Math. I mean, I love math. I really like fishing, and I'm, and I'm trying to get into fly fishing, so I want to, I want to find time for that. So I'm trying to force myself now to like, to find time for it, because I also think, I don't know what you think, but like, it's probably accretive to the other side of your life, too.
[00:34:36]
Like, the more personal, the more you take care of like, these personal things, the more that it probably helps your, you know, your, your professional life.
[00:34:44] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, completely. I didn't probably notice that over the last few years too. There's like a law of diminishing returns the more you work in many ways, whether like you just get exhausted or like the quality of your thought isn't as, as it is like clear or you take things too personally and like your ego gets tripped up in some of your decisioning.
[00:35:02]
It's almost like, yeah, yeah, in your formula should be it. Like all the things that you've added before your business, like, that's amazing. Just from like a priority standpoint, enjoyment being at the very bottom, like maybe you tested my, it's just like the sad, sick founder me, Josh, maybe you tested one quarter by adding in two hours of enjoyment done to see like, you know, yeah, I feel like the more healthy you are, the more healthy you exude to your team, to customers, and then everyone feels more at ease.
[00:35:28] Josh Sharkey:
I remember the day I like, caught up with you, I think you were in LA, maybe we were both in LA, but we, but I was like, you said something like, Oh, I'm going on a date or something. And I'm like, Alex is finally not 24/7 working. This is amazing. LA was, that's all you did for a long time was, was just, you know, just work.
[00:35:50] Alex Beltrani:
It was like, obviously everything is by choice, but like we survived off of. Like, I survived off of 40k in Manhattan for two years, which is ridiculous.
[00:36:02] Josh Sharkey:
Like, dude, I survived off of 30-40k in Manhattan for like 14 years. Like, then
[00:36:09] Alex Beltrani:
20k, I mean, we're not comparing, but yeah, it's like, it's tough life when you can't do much.
[00:36:15]
Like, you can't even afford dates. Do you want to go to a dinner date? You're like, Oh my God, that's like my whole month's budget on chicken and beans. Like, how do I pull this off?
[00:36:22] Josh Sharkey:
That's, that is the one benefit of like cooking in, in, in kitchens, especially in like New York is you can get paid crap, but still be able to go to restaurants.
[00:36:31] Alex Beltrani:
Right. Yeah. It's probably like a nice network community. Even yeah. Like even servers are now, they were like, Oh, come by this bar at like 11, like we'll all be there.
[00:36:39] Josh Sharkey:
I just remember you. I remember talking to you early on and be like, Hey man, what are you, like, are you dating or anything? He's like, I don't have time for that.
[00:36:46]
I gotta get this thing scaled and I work too much and I'm not paying myself anything. And, and, uh, and I remember that that was for a long time. It was way more than two years, man. You were. Yeah, it was.
[00:36:57] Alex Beltrani:
So I lived like 20K each year for the first two, hoping to get some capital raised. Then finally raised some capital, only 250K that we spread out for three years amongst a team of like five, five to seven people.
[00:37:10]
It's amazing. So that like whole period was like five years of. Like, I was constantly raising capital, like raising 5K, 10K, like, I don't know if we operated the first five years with having more than, like, three to six months of runway.
[00:37:25] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah.
[00:37:25] Alex Beltrani:
Like, at any point in time. I couldn't do that. I couldn't exist in that world.
[00:37:29]
I would. Really? I still exist in that world. I honestly govern myself by just, like, ascribing some kind of metric or number to everything so I don't spin out. Like everything at Tattle is typically really measured. I think it was probably annoying at first for everyone to be like, this is measured on this, this affects that, this and that.
[00:37:50]
But like once you know all those things, It's like, you don't feel as like emotionally impulsive anymore because you're like, you just see how the whole machine wants and you're like, all right, if I can, I can spin this small gear like a bit faster than it can affect the big year in two months up here.
And like, that's, you know, how I feel grounded. Yeah. Don't spin out.
[00:38:10] Josh Sharkey:
It's, it's commendable. It's funny for as, for as much as I am an entrepreneur, I'm also very like, I'm somewhat risk averse. So, so, uh, you know, like having runways I can, you know, is, is one of those things like tough thing for me to not know.
[00:38:24] Alex Beltrani:
Sometimes I wonder about like, maybe cause I'm not like, I think you've raised, I think you may have raised like more money than at all. At least 75 percent less of the time and maybe it's a function of like, I'm going to prioritize this more because for me personally, I need it more. And then, you know, maybe on the flip side, it's like, Oh good, we have four months.
[00:38:43]
That's great. Like a lot can happen in four months. And that's crazy. In some ways.
[00:38:47] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we need to talk about that more actually. Let's talk about Tattle. So, first of all, it's, it's amazing and insane to see how much this thing has grown from what I saw to what it is now. Essentially, you guys are just like finding ways to quantify and qualify like all this sentiment from customers.
[00:39:09]
What do you think has evolved most in the product over the last, since you, since you first started? Cause you know, when you first started, you were basically like digitizing the comment card. Yeah. Yeah. You know, which is a very, which was a very novel, but really helpful thing. It's turned into way more than that.
[00:39:23] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah. That's all I thought it would ever turn into. Frankly, I, I remember just like walking around, you know, like Brenner's village around Bark and just like literally collecting paper, comic cards. I mean like, Oh, this is going to be so easy. I'll just like take this piece of paper and I'll convert it to digital.
[00:39:37]
And like, this is going to be cake. Like, you know, I'll, I'll be, I'll wrap this company up in four years and you sort of get there. It takes a really long time to even get there. get to that first concept. And then once you're there, it's like, oh, wow, there's like more utility from this data point than I ever recognized.
[00:39:52]
Like this is a predictive data point, how customers feel today will end up impacting what they do in the coming month or quarter and the frequency of visit that they'll end up adopting at that point. So it was like, okay. So throughout the process, it's like, Not collecting enough feedback was like the biggest barrier.
[00:40:09]
Then once you start collecting feedback through like a digital media, and then it's like, all right, but what do we do with it? And then that became like the next three to five year journey. I'm like, all right, how do we categorize the information? Um, how do we service it correctly to a general manager? We might need to see something different than a district manager who might need to see something different than like the global executive team of a larger mid market enterprise brand.
[00:40:30]
So that, you know, that cattle's period, just packaging data for the right people to take. The action that they'd be expected to take within their role. And now the next piece is like, can you tell us like proactively what's coming and what to do? And can you directly coach us better on how to directly improve satisfaction and revenue?
[00:40:50]
And that's where I really do believe in like the next, you know, probably like year or so, like we're going to come out with a really compelling AI suite that will allow brands to operate like. You know, operational AI assistants or agents to coach their GMs on the basis of Tattle feedback data that we
collect.
[00:41:10]
And the brand standards that just any brand might uniquely have on how to improve speed or accuracy or how to build steps of their new LTO or new menu item, like all those things. Yeah. I think that's going to be a game changer for every restaurant who has trouble inferring from the data that we collect, or really like any data at all from all the platforms they collect.
[00:41:34]
And I think that's, That's what we'll probably eventually move into because it seems to be like one of the best or first applications for like AI in respect.
[00:41:43] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. I a hundred percent agree. And it's, yeah, it's not just like, it's very helpful for your specific data if you're a restaurant, but it's also a very helpful or any business really, but it's also helpful just in aggregate.
[00:41:55]
To understand pattern matching of things. And I think this is what's really, by the way, I didn't think about it when, when you first started talking about Tattle 10 years ago, either, because you think digitize the comment card, like, yeah, that's great. I'll get some feedback. I can digitize it. If you, I don't need to like have a piece of paper, but the interesting thing is actually that feedback is way more impactful.
[00:42:17]
A large scale, right? When there's statistical significance, because, you know, if you don't have enough statsig on a piece of feedback, then it could be, you know, skewed. It could just be like, one day, one thing, or, but when you have that at scale, not, yeah, not only can you have a much better sense of the true north of something, because, you know, you have, You know, when you have enough people like saying the same thing, but yeah, you, I mean, it's why it's part of why Foursquare sold.
[00:42:45]
Yeah, they were like a sentiment. The sentiment data is actually, I think, wasn't it like an investment bank?
[00:42:51] Alex Beltrani:
No, it was actually the, um, they became part of an alternative data set that hedge funds would buy on the basis of foot traffic and the foot traffic that Foursquare showed at Chipotle, Best Buy, Apple became what hedge funds would use to like bet for or against certain stocks.
[00:43:08]
It was like, it's funny, I, early days, I would call hedge funds and be like, would you ever buy our data? Like, would you use it? Like, what would you use it for? And they're like, we have one person on every desk now that's designated to collect alternative data. And use that for like how we would, you know, put up like a value in a stock.
[00:43:25]
So it's true. It's like these alternative data sets are, are predicted in ways that obviously will help restaurants, but they're informing of a lot of other things, but specifically foot traffic.
[00:43:33] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, and it makes sense why you have sort of moved into the sort of enterprise realm with these massively scaled businesses, because there's so much more impact. Sophisticated data point.
[00:43:42] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah. Definitely. And I think that's why we failed miserably the first five years. Yeah. At Tattle because we were selling into SMBs, you know, one to two unit locations. And generally what is prioritized on like their totem pole of priorities is not feedback. It's like my chef is out this week.
[00:44:00]
I'm. Flipping burgers or like the hostess is gone. I'm guiding people. It's all the things that became like, how do we stay alive as opposed to like, how do we look at our data and interpret what we should proactively do across our story? It wasn't, we didn't understand that we were selling into the wrong cohort of customers until we started working with Dig In and Coffee Bean Tea Leaf
[00:44:21] Alex Beltrani:
And I'm like, oh my god, they have a training manager. They have like teams of people that like take the data and then use this to dictate operational procedure and coaching. I'm like, oh my god, what have I been doing for the last three years? Yeah.
[00:44:32] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. But what's also like just the data itself is just far more valuable at scale. I think for a one, a one location group, you could make the wrong, you could make some myopic or short sighted decisions based on data that comes in because it's not a ton of data, you know? Like you, you only have. You know, so many people coming in that in your door, there's a lot of variability to that, so you don't have the same, like, you know, like a control that you can sort of measure against like 10 other of the same thing, you know, so
[00:44:59] Alex Beltrani:
Sure, the value only increases, I think, for larger brands, mostly because with the feedback data, there's like this micro and macro application, like if you're a okay. Part of the executive team, you want to put people in positions for them to be successful. So collecting a ton of feedback on your top to bottom performing menu items and understanding how each of these menu items impact, accuracy, speed, hospitality, to some degree, like knowing that we like we ran a recent we call it operational resilience formula that our head of analysts created.
[00:45:32]
But we, we did a deep dive analysis of every single menu item on one of these burger chains and we found, we wanted to understand, um, when guests give a five star accuracy for that menu item, what is the probability that they'll also give a five star for overall food quality? Okay. Meaning that when it's made pristinely, like, how much do guests still love it?
[00:45:50]
And we found that the burger that was actually generating the most revenue for the brands, the top line revenue, had a, um, probability of a five star food quality rating when made with a five star accuracy rating of like 28%, when all the other burgers were like 40 to 50%. So the team had like no idea that they were setting their internal teams up to fail because there was complexity in the build steps that made it very difficult for the burger to either be accurate or look the same as the picture that you use when you buy for off premise that more guests were dissatisfied and was like, we're just creating churn in our business.
[00:46:25]
We had no idea. Like, why don't we set the team up to make easier, less complicated burgers that guests will come back and love more often. It's like a GM can't do anything about that. They're just like, all right, you, you call the plays, I execute. But it's like, what if you call better plays for everyone to optimize the entire business operationally?
[00:46:41]
Yeah. And that's where there's like a ton of value at the enterprise side.
[00:46:44] Josh Sharkey:
I totally agree. I totally see it. And by the way, I do think it's also something that in aggregate can just help the industry, right? If you have enough of that. Oh my God. Yeah. And I would just like to understand like things that impact.
[00:46:55]
I did want to actually ask you a couple of questions just to see if you had some like insights into this, that like, just generally speaking, like if you, have you noticed, and you guys have collected so much data on customer sentiment and feedback over the last decade, like are there, I have a few questions and you can kind of take them to everywhere.
[00:47:12]
Are there any like really common blind spots? that restaurants have that they might not know about. And then why don't we start there? I have some other ones, but like, yeah, I mean, that's a great first starter.
[00:47:23] Alex Beltrani:
I think what was the most surprising part of like the post COVID era is that I believe restaurants maybe found a bit of simplicity.
[00:47:31]
Launching off premise or having more orders go to that channel when in reality, we continue to find that even today, any takeout or delivery experience is like 20 to 30 percent lower in guest satisfaction relative to the dining experience. And It's great that we're optimizing for these channels and we're making it more seamless, but we're actually putting guests in a position to reconsider whether or not they should come back at like a greater probability, which is not great for the economics of restaurants.
[00:48:00]
So my big concern is the more you digitize the experience in some ways from an ordering process procedure, you denigrate the overall experience. So I love the simplicity of kiosks. I think you need them. I think it's important. Probably average ticket prices have already proven to go up. I think speed will ultimately increase.
[00:48:19]
I think accuracy will probably increase in a way too, but you're, you're just bringing more of like aspect to the off premise experience in store, which I, I don't know what will come from that yet, but like off the bat off premises are far inferior ordering experience for guests and dine in. So the idea is to optimize as much as you possibly can to dine in because they'll come back.
[00:48:40] Josh Sharkey:
It's also an inferior food experience, no matter what you do. I mean, yeah. Every piece of food you, you make, like, every minute that it sits, is gonna be different.
[00:48:50] Alex Beltrani:
Completely. Like, which affects temperature of the food, and then ultimately, if anything is inaccurate, you're five miles out. Yeah. And like, you're like, no one's gonna rectify my missing tomatoes, like, what do we, we just gotta eat it.
[00:49:02] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah, which is so like, it's tough. I mean, some of this you just can't get around. Like, you're gonna have delivery, you have to understand that it's gonna be, it's gonna be different. You order fries for delivery. Right. Don't expect it to be nearly as good as it is in the store. But, It's funny, fries are the most underperforming menu item across basically all of our partners.
[00:49:20]
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Despite them being so popular. Yeah. And that's the thing, it's like, I mean, first, like, pizza is like the, is the king, right? It's totally fine for delivery. Some pizza Yeah, I mean,
[00:49:30] Alex Beltrani:
It's tough to eat bad pizza for the most part, which is why we have so many pizza brands in the platform, because you have to differentiate with better service.
[00:49:38] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unless you're doing like a Neapolitan style or like a high hydration, high heat type pizza, you're in a good spot. Yeah, you know the pizzas. Yeah, whatever. But, but, um, burgers, there's a ton of like delivery burgers, but burgers are, take a hit, man, when they get, when, you know, when they get delivered.
[00:49:56] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, you lived it. I mean, I don't, I don't think burgers are even in like the top 10 of our food cuisines. I think burgers I gotta look again at like how we categorize them, but I think like our steakhouses kill it for dining in off premise.
[00:50:11] Josh Sharkey:
You know steak is a great one because you can, because you can, if you're smart you can account for the carryover cooking and get like a perfectly, like a perfect steak when it gets to the, to the person and you know it's fine if it's not piping hot, but you could also reheat it and it's, you know, steak is a good one.
[00:50:27]
All right, so one blind spot. Yeah. I'm not sure that's a blind, I'm not gonna let you get off on that one. Cause that one is like, I think that's probably more known. That like, delivery isn't as good. But like, is there anything else that you've found? Even takeout, I think takeout is Let me ask a different question that maybe we'll kind of like, be part of that then.
[00:50:42]
Like, what are the biggest indicators that you've seen of things that catalyze Growth and revenue or decline in revenue based on customer sentiment.
[00:50:54] Alex Beltrani:
All right. So our head of analytics just did a deep dive last night. You know, he'll be presenting for, I think I'm like the op summit of one of our like 60 location brands, and they wanted to.
[00:51:05]
Promote how important feedback is to the restaurants and they wanted a few slides to highlight. It's important. So he was looking at the data So we collected their revenue data their Tattle Satisfaction scores across all their locations. We basically found that the stores drawing higher satisfaction are also driving the highest Year over year revenue growth at like those great stores.
[00:51:27]
Yeah, the idea is like Guests who are happy come back more often and therefore we grow more. So then it's like, like the level beneath that, well, what do we do to most impact? You know, guest satisfaction at our store. And I think that what we've seen is that every single location is extremely different.
[00:51:47]
Like for a 60 location brand like this, I think it's very customary for a multi brand to say, Hey guys, we're going to be clean, fast and friendly this year with an emphasis on clean. So everyone let's proactively focus on being clean the whole year. And the reality is like every location is different because the composition of the team's strengths are different.
[00:52:06]
It might be in like a different unique real estate. Like we've just found in airports, like no one, for the most part, like speed isn't as prioritized as being friendly to people, like maybe they're nervous, but in a hospital, like no one cares about friendliness at all. They care about like getting their food and getting out.
[00:52:21]
So it's like every store is made different and has
a different priority by which you should improve that one category that Tattle recommends for them. So whenever we recommend a category at the store level and they improve this category in any way, overall satisfaction goes up at an 84 percent probability.
[00:52:39]
So that's like the game to play. So it's like if you want to impact guest satisfaction, there's like a bunch of gears that wind it. And this is the most important gear that will increase your overall satisfaction the most. The hardest part is like, now how do you operationalize that?
[00:52:54] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, sounds like it's, it's dependent on the operating model and the type of like location that you're in and things like that, whether it's maybe urban or suburban or, or, you know, airport or, or, or not, but generally speaking, guest satisfaction drives revenue growth, which makes a ton of sense.
[00:53:09]
It's, it's so, it's like, It's a borderline cliche, that it's that simple. What's interesting is like, if you think about like, like we're in the product led growth world, at meez, and just like, build a good product, give it to people for free, and let them use it, and when you think about growth, there's like, there's acquisition, right?
[00:53:25]
There's retention, there's monetization, there's referrals, and there's, I forget what the, adoption. So there's, there's these different levels of like, how you think about like, what are the levers of growth? And the most important is Lever for growth, you would think is acquisition. It's like get as many customers as you can, but actually the most important lever for growth, and it's the same for restaurants, by the way, is retention.
[00:53:51]
Is because it doesn't matter if you gain, you think of it like the subscription service, like Netflix, I forget what those things are called, you know what I mean, like Netflix and Disney and Hulu, they all have like horrific retention, right? So they basically churn the same number of customers other than Netflix, all of them churn the same or more customers than they, than they retain every year.
[00:54:11]
And so it's like this leaky bucket, right? And it's the same thing for restaurants, right? Like you, if you can just retain every customer that you have. Then you're going to grow because you can also then start to do other things with them. And that means you gotta have a real like for me I think like consistency is the most important part of any restaurant any business really but like in restaurants if you can't give the same Product, you know each time it terrifies the customer like it terrifies me if I like order something I'm like, oh, I love that and then I go back and it's not nearly as good.
[00:54:42]
I'm like now I'm scared to go here again, because I'm like Is the third time going to be good or bad? Do you know what I mean? And like that, that piece is like, it's also hard to measure that if you don't have, you know, the data. Like how often is that?
[00:54:55] Alex Beltrani:
That's a really cool feature, by the way. Like to measure, like among guests who have come multiple times, like they're the Delta of their consistency.
[00:55:02]
Yeah. Cause it does put in this sort of level of fear of like, Oh my gosh, now what's going to happen next time. Right. And it's even cooler to do it amongst like, Alright, guess who came for their second time, versus their third, versus their fourth, like, to understand the average. Yeah. Maybe the average delta between each one. That's a cool perspective.
[00:55:19] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, the, I remember the other thing that we looked into, that I think is somewhat common now, but we looked into Aurify, is The impact of a menu item on, on retention, like we would notice sometimes that like, like there's the highest selling menu item, right. And it's like crushing it, but it turns out that like, it just sounds really good and people love it and they order it and then they never come back.
[00:55:42] Alex Beltrani:
Literally just went through that with the customer. I just told you they had no idea. That it was happening and the reason why, and I love that, like, we're finally into menu items at Tattle because you guys have been all over for years, we found that the food quality category amongst our customers was the most correlative operational category to overall satisfaction, but the problem was like, food quality can be like 30 different items for some of these restaurants, so we, we had to spend like five months building out menu item level feedback so we could actually see, like, which of these items should either be Like we actually created this new analysis called menu and it's we categorize menu items and what should be M magnified because guests love it.
[00:56:20]
Like magnify it, allocate more ad dollars, put it in your pictures, uh, E which is like edit eliminate, like either get it off the menu or reduce build set complexity because like no one's like, this is, this is Ross letting, and it's just like novelty. Like, you know, it's like eating a hot dog in a baseball game.
[00:56:37]
Like you, you know, it's maybe. great overall experience, but like the hot dog kind of sucks and you're just glad you get the game. And then U is like untapped, which is like guests love it, but it's just not correlating to an overall high score. Like what do we do with this thing? So it's, it's true. Like the more you can delve into those things, the more prescripted you can be for a restaurant brand.
[00:56:58]
The toughest part of that, I think we're learning now that most restaurants are like, They're mostly just looking at revenue, which doesn't tell the full story because you can't really fix anything and you don't know the other side of like retention, which is like everyone hates it.
[00:57:12] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, exactly. Man, I would love to pull that information into, so we have this whole, I'll show you this whole menu engineering thing we built, but like, because you have all the, All the actual, like, true, like, margin data, every single menu item in meez, like, we've built all these analytics of, like, yeah, I mean, so we have, like, the, the quantitative piece of, like, hey, this thing is more profitable than this, but this sells more, and it's, like, But if we could tell you, Hey, this is more profitable or send it to town, it's fine.
[00:57:38]
Like, you know, this is more profitable, but guess what? Like this actually drives, this one here drives the most retention of like repeat customers. And so if you could plot like the most profitable and drives the most repeat customers, that would be a huge insight to understand.
[00:57:54] Alex Beltrani:
So what we can plot is like X and Y axis data on the basis of, you know, and this is messy. I got to fix this up. This is like. Bit of reckless graphing here, but yeah, X axis is the menu item level satisfaction.
[00:58:08]
You can see here like lunch picks pulled pork are like performing extremely high and like the 90 to 95 percentile gets a little bit lowered here with like the slab of ribs, the kid's BBQ dinner, and then it gets really bad with other items like, you know, like these here.
[00:58:23]
So the idea, and what I want to put in the Y axis is like margins or any other data point from like an economic standpoint that would indicate like Guests hate it, but it has such amazing margins. Like what do we do to simplify or it would be better justification for edit and eliminate quadrant, which is like, we can't just like shoot it in the head.
[00:58:43]
Like we have to do something to try to fix it. And there's a basis to do that because margins are so great. So like everyone let's level and figure it out.
[00:58:51] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, I love that. So here, right, you see my screen? Oh, so much prettier. So like this has like, so this is pulling your actual menu item and because we have like all the yields.
[00:59:02]
Awesome. Yeah, and the thing is, is like most people have that but like no one actually has the margin data because like you have to have all the like, how much do I lose when I dice this onion, or chop this onion, or what's all the sub brands.
[00:59:10] Alex Beltrani:
You'd be surprised how many brands aren't aware of Dogstar either.
[00:59:12] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah, yeah. You know, obviously, you know how this goes, right? This one is, you know, most profitable, least profitable. But like, so if this insight was like, you have an 84 percent profit margin on this, that's pretty awesome. But if you could plot this, not just on the quantitative, like how much money are you making on this versus another one.
[00:59:29]
But which one is driving the most, like, repeat business or new business and things like that would be huge. You know what I mean?
[00:59:34] Alex Beltrani:
Massive. Yeah. It would be huge. That's really cool. That's funny we arrived at the same place, like, just with our own data. Yes.
[00:59:42] Josh Sharkey:
Yeah. And the data I'm finding is like the most, you know, we spent so much time on like, You know, you know, for us, like we live in the recipe world, and I think most like sort of back office systems live in the, in the purchasing world, you know, and like, right.
[00:59:56]
And that's like, which is good. We live in that world as well. But like, there's, there's a step before that, like, everybody forgot about, which is like, Hey, all your recipes live in these, in these very random formats and word docs and PDFs and spreadsheets and Google Sheets and PowerPoints. And you really don't actually know what any of that stuff costs you and your back of the napkin is so wrong.
[01:00:19]
And now that we're able to get like we spent so much time on this machine learning model to like ingest all this recipe data. It's crazy how much, you know, how, how fast it is to get this stuff in now. And so like sharing these insights is like, it's super exciting to like show someone like, Hey, this is actually what I'm doing. It's costing you.
[01:00:35] Alex Beltrani:
Do you also feel that you have to educate them on top of making their lives easier? Like it's just not enough to make their lives easier. It's like, I now need to teach you the science behind this whole thing.
[01:00:46] Josh Sharkey:
It's a great question because it depends on the group. Some groups are more tech forward, some groups are more operations forward, some are more, you know, like culinary versus, you know, I think a lot of people just like, tell me what to do, right?
[01:00:57]
Like, so you have my data, right? You know, the thing here, this chart's awesome. Can you just give me the 10 insights that I should extrapolate from this? Like, Hey, you should increase this menu item by, by 30 cents because it's, you know, in your area, it's actually like lower than most. And it's really people love it.
[01:01:13]
You should, you know, change the wording of this menu item because it seems like it has really high consistency. So people, people really like it. Yeah, I can do that.
[01:01:21] Alex Beltrani:
It's already deep. It's already doing that. It's boggled my mind. Really? Like, like very clear application for AI that I didn't think would be here for a long time.
[01:01:30]
I totally agree. Like we're, yeah, we're plugging in a model to start to understand, like, to start what we're doing. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but like, we're like, they don't let customers just like ask questions so we can understand what questions are you asking because then we can optimize for those questions. But it's pretty exciting, man, to see like where, you know, where all this is going.
[01:01:47] Alex Beltrani:
Yeah, definitely. There should be like a meez mascot, like hopping around. The scatterplot, being like, Hey, check this thing out. Like, like you'd have like a chef hat on and just like bouncing around.
[01:01:57] Josh Sharkey:
Oh my God. I'm just so like stoked to see like how far you've come and what you've built and what you're continuing to build, man. It's awesome. And I'm just really grateful for, for the friendship. It's been, I can't believe it's been a decade.
[01:02:08] Alex Beltrani:
I have to share something. So I remember when I first met you, I was like so much different talking to like a young guy. Who like, understands tech. I'm like, I met this Josh guy at Bark. And then you, I think, did the coolest thing ever.
[01:02:20]
So I've been building, like, I quit my job and my friends all thought I was nuts because I chose to quit my job to then campaign in Canvas. Like 3,000 restaurants every day, just knocking on doors. And I did that for like two years. I remember when we had the Tattle launch party at Bark. I don't know, Do you remember that?
[01:02:37]
That was, I actually, I wish that I could say I do, but I don't. I have a video of it that I can share with you. And for me, that was a very profound day because I, I had like trouble articulating Tattle to people and friends. They didn't get it. They thought I was nuts. And then, For that day, I had like 15 to 20 people that like were just like orbiting around what I've been doing show up and be like, Oh, I get it, man.
[01:03:03]
This is really cool. Like, this is great. Like, this is, but I, we didn't have the budget to do like that. You put on the whole show, like you like made the food and it was like a Tattle launch party that you sponsored in a way, just like very indirectly. And it helped us raise some money and it just helped people know like what the heck I was doing.
[01:03:21]
So that was, that was really cool. Yeah. I'll send you the video, it was meant to stay for me.
[01:03:27] Josh Sharkey:
You're like, I don't even remember that, man. You know, it's funny, I liked doing that. I think we're similar, like, I just, I like, I like helping, and I did, like, launch parties with a couple writers and other restaurants, and it is fun, man.
[01:03:36]
Well, yeah, it's been a decade. I was young back then, by the way. I was in my early 30s back then. Uh, and you were even younger. You must have been like 20 something.
[01:03:47] Alex Beltrani:
I was like 23, 24. Something like that, yeah. Crazy.
[01:03:54] Josh Sharkey:
Well, in a decade, we'll have another conversation about all this. I love it, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
[01:04:00]
Yeah, it was all my pleasure. Thanks for tuning in to The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z. com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[01:04:27]
Keep innovating, don't settle, make today a little bit better than yesterday, and remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.