Anthony Valletta: So here's the fight today with Jen. I'm gonna tell you that we have more guest data than this industry's ever had. And we know our guests less than we ever did. More dashboards, more profiles, more lifetime value scores, and less actual knowing. She's gonna tell me that it's a rich man's complaint. She's building an amazing franchise. She can't stand in every store on a Friday night. So she needs the data precisely because her gut doesn't travel to hundreds of rooms. And she's right that I get to be romantic about this because I've only got 30 company rooms in a car. So that's the split. Is data is data how knowing finally scales, or is it how replaced knowing and never noticed? Jen, awesome to have you on. Thank you for joining the return.
Jen Dodd: Thanks. I'm looking forward to it.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, we'll have some fun. So let's let's start where I I do believe you are dead right. And I'll say it first is like a win intuition doesn't really travel. You can't put your gut in every store on a Friday night. Walk me through what the data lets you see that you'd be basically blind otherwise if you didn't have.
Jen Dodd: Everything, only everything. So yeah, you
Anthony Valletta: Ha ha ha.
Jen Dodd: know, I've done this for a a long time as you know, more than thirty years. And when I started, it was at the time we did not, you know, have computers and you know, iPhones and iPads and all the things that we do today and goodness didn't know AI would exist. But we still had to wake up in Florida and know what was going on in California. So back then it was much more of a rigorous you know, detail hour by hour of what took place. I mean, I'm sure you remember things like the Red Book. But even more
Anthony Valletta: God yeah.
Jen Dodd: than that, it was, you know, shift by shift. What happened, when, if, how did we handle? So I think the data at that if I just sort of break it down to its purest form, it's about the customer experience. So everything that we do when we unlock the door. in our restaurant and retail is to invite the customer in. And if that customer comes in with faith that they have money and a grumbling belly and that we can feed their need, then we better be ready to do that. So the data should show. Did you open on time? Easy to see. POS turned on at the same time. and then were we ready to execute those sales? Easy to see. Things like What was that transaction count? You know, did we have any, I'm sorry, we have to 86 this item? All that's there. But also ordering, forecasting, how we move food and beverage in and out. and then what did we do once we were prepared? Did we waste an excessive amount or did we, you know, utilize the product properly, learn from our mistakes? then over to employees. I mean, how was the shift staffed? Was the customer taking care of because our staffing was there on time? and how are you doing with turnover and training protocol? I mean, literally data is I call it like the skeleton in the body. It's one of the most important systems that I couldn't use my mouth right now, or my neurological systems or my circulatory system without that skeleton. And so I think it's super important. Long answer.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, and I think we agree.
Jen Dodd: Ha ha ha.
Anthony Valletta: No, listen, there was so much goodness in there. I think most of it generally, I totally agree with you. And I think, especially at your scale, I mean, data is not optional. It's the only guy eyes you really have to your point in a lot of these systems that are being done. And I think here's the argument that I always struggle with is the data tells you, and you mentioned a few of them, what the guest did, right? Or or what the employee did to set up the restaurant for success to then take care of your guests. But They never really tell the why. It's never what like they needed from you that night. It's the map, right? But not necessarily the room. So if that's the case, then where is it broken?
Jen Dodd: Love that. Mm-hmm. I love that. That's a really good point. I think I learned that when I was at Applebee's. And w the way I learned it was actually I was tr new there and I was training, standing on the line, you know, and I was watching the general manager, the training gym that was training me, and he had on drive-thru headphones and he had the hospital hospitality associate wearing a head f a little earbud phone as well. And I mean this was years ago, but he was saying a word to the hospital of that he wanted him to use while he was seating the guests and presenting the menu. A young man was the hospital that night, and I was so I grabbed a headset so I could hear it as well. And this young man did a wonderful job taking those words that were selling words, confident words, helping words for the customer to guide them through the menu. And what was shocking is we did that for a solid week and measured it. And 76% of the time the guests ordered what the hospital told them was great, however, he was wording it to tell them that. I was pretty taken back by that. And you've heard some of my origin story, how I fell in love with the business because I realized we could be the best part of people's day and disrupt their humdrum potentially life or a hard day. But this taught me even more about that, that people want. To be guided. They don't, you know, they don't want to make one more decision. And this was before AI, Anthony, or before social media had us doom scrolling all day. They were already exhausted. And so today we're seeing where people are just burned out, you know, like, my gosh, decision overload. So they want to be guided in a confident, helpful way. I don't know what the percentage would be today if we ran that same experiment, but my guess is it would still be high. That if you are loving that customer, And helping them and and if you're loving your product and describing it in a romantic way around how beautiful it is and you're gonna enjoy it, people trust you and believe that. Of course, then that comes down to not breaking the faith cycle. That the kitchen or the bar has gotta do a great job delivering what you just said. And that's can be seen easily through other data sets.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right, but I think the interesting thing is that the example you use, you were right next to him in the restaurant to be able to put the headset on and live inside those four walls. But at scale, especially at your position, right? We can't do that every single day. And we try to collect the data to figure that out, but but ultimately that doesn't tell you the experience that you just went through, right? Unless you're just going side by side. So do you think all the data that we're collecting, all this information that we have? Is it making operators or franchisees really know the guests? Or is it making us just kind of know our numbers? I think there's a difference. And that's that like the struggle of the dashboard and all the data coming out versus knowing that that guest at that time heard that gentleman
Jen Dodd: Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: passionately speak about something, that doesn't come out in any data. That's just the day of. So, like, what's
Jen Dodd: Mm that's true. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: how do you manage the two? And and do you think, again, my original point, like, It feels like we have so much information on our guests, but yet we rely so much on that to take away from that simple moment with a headphone, which the Red Book, I love the reference to, because it's like I remember those, right? But
Jen Dodd: Ha ha
Anthony Valletta: there was something about the analog component of a of a guest that I feel like is being lost with the data. How do you feel about that?
Jen Dodd: I think you're right. It can absolutely be lost. And so then that comes down to listening to the hum. You know what the hum is. Like if we get quiet right now, we'll hear the air conditioning running in the background or whatever, a power voltage. We'll we'd we'd be able to really get real quiet and hear that. And so the hum is what's not being said out loud through the data. That comes down to operations leaders that are in the stores, you know, watching shifts. I'm always a big surprise shift person. Love to go in and be unannounced. I mean, not to get ya, but to just validate ya, to be able to high-five you, hopefully. That's the goal. There certainly have been some times it turned into a not validation, but then that's a coaching moment. and then and then I coach every area supervisor, every director to do the same thing. I hit back in the you know, I've I've done it all. Even like before it was not okay. I'd drop off a little cassette player by the drive-thru menu board and go back later and pick it up and see what I heard. Can't do that now. Now we have technology, you don't have to do that. But yeah.
Anthony Valletta: That's a good one though. I like that.
Jen Dodd: Yeah. I might have been the only person doing that. But at the end of the day, it you it shows up in your in your success metrics. You know, I'm huge about scoreboards. I love, I'm I'm a big sports fan, but I love let's just use football. You know, it we all love it. And one of the reasons we love it is not just to see somebody get tackled on the field, but we can see everything. How many minutes are in the quarter, how many yards were gained or lost, you know, who how many punts, whatever. We can see the yardage of the punts, we can see it all. and so I think our business is the same way. You know, let's have a scoreboard where we're measuring and we've got it in front of everyone because then it's easy to spot. You know, if you're using QSR as an example, or in your restaurants, which I love your restaurants, and you're using the, you know, three or four servers that are on the floor. Well, who had the high highest p average check or PPA? who sold the most of the the LTO that we have right now? And that tells you who's doing what the kid was doing in the headset. how did who got the second beverage? That tells you a lot about speed of service in a full service restaurant. Because if you can't get that second beverage or or even a third one if the person wants it, then you're really not taking care of your tables if you're barely getting one beverage to the table. So I just think there's a lot of metrics that we should bring through with wisdom and you can connect those data sets in a way that's holistic that presents that scorecard. So I think all leaders should have that. What is your scorecard? How are you looking at the game, whether it's in a quarter or the end, and see how people are doing.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah. I mean, listen, in scorecards, you see them everywhere. I mean, there's plenty of tech companies. You and I have probably been pitched on about 10 of them this week alone that have all
Jen Dodd: Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: the next best scorecard, right? And I think that's right. I mean, it does give you the anecdotal component of what's working. The thing where I think it doesn't work is that and I'd be curious if you could find a time maybe that that proved this wrong. I don't know that the scorecard has ever changed something that one of my operators did for a specific guest. Like I don't know the scorecard about drink times or about You know, expo times, things of that nature, actually change the moment where I walked up to Jen's table and I engaged. And because of data I had in my head, I decided to change the experience for Jen that night. To me, that only happens in the four walls. But yet we we seem to overanalyze and emphasize the data piece. Whereas I wonder we should be overanalyzing those anecdotal, qualitative, non-scorecard metrics, and that might actually drive better hospitality. So how do you manage the two of those side by side?
Jen Dodd: It's another good point. I mean, there's so many ways, right? repeat your repeat business. We own our own data at Main Squeeze Juice Code, so we can see everything. We see, you know, who came one time and never returned, how frequently the guests are returning in our top quartile. I mean, that's critically important. So not suggesting everybody has to go out and build their own data set now, but we just happen to be blessed by the fact that we did have have our own built early on. So it's important. And from that we it's amazing what we can see on the one the customers that are in that bottom quartile and their frequency. And then we've held focus groups around that several times where we reach out to people in that bottom quartile and we seek to understand what is it that's keeping you from returning more frequently. How could we get that done more? And we learned things like subscription model, which is now being rolled out and tested. So I think You need to listen to the hum. You've got to talk to those customers in every way that you can. which might include, you know, even getting old school and getting out in the restaurant and walking the tables yourself, especially if you have a store that's underperforming and not meeting your standards, go spend a weekend there and you know, and see yourself what's happening. the other thing I think is important is listening to the staff. It you know, I'd love I remember the old days again, I keep talking about the old days, like I'm a hundred, but when we did like employee surveys and it was all confidential and we we did the survey, we put it in the envelope and another employee rode with us to the post office to see that we mailed it out so that it would be, you know, absolutely confidential. And of course we can do that now through so many means, QR codes and and all these digital ways, and we do do that. And that's important because that employee is also your customer. You know, we're in franchising, so we have three customers. The franchisee is our first customer, their staff, and then the end user, which is of course the guest that comes into the restaurant. So we need to be listening to all three of those constituents in order to hear what's working and what's not working. And and that gets through the clutter, I think, and helps you the bull crap, you know, get some of that out of the way so you can get down to the meat of the solution. Yes, then you should compare that to your Google reviews and You know, what you're seeing when you do your customer service scoring methodologies. And there's a lot of ways to do that. And some of them are a lot of fun. But you just gotta make sure you keep your ear to the ground.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, and I think that's the key. And I think you I I think one of one of the reasons you've been so successful in your career is exactly what you just said. You see these people that use the de the dashboard and they make the decision. They don't do the focus group to actually get in room with the guest, because that's the most important thing. I can tell you it's someone's churning, but if I can't tell you why, what does it matter? I mean, I can
Jen Dodd: Right.
Anthony Valletta: I can try to send out some marketing blitz that basically is irrelevant, but that's the key. And I think to your second point, sometimes just gotta get in the restaurant on the weekends and just see it firsthand.
Jen Dodd: Yes.
Anthony Valletta: And the thing I'm curious from from all of your your experience, like that in the room purity, which is what I believe, and I'm I'm I have the luxury of doing that and because I have less restaurants than most, where does that fail a growing operator or an operator of of of your size? Like where could the advice of that purity of being in the room actually hurt somebody at scale?
Jen Dodd: know, I don't think it could hurt. because if you're role modeling that as a leader, then you are exhibiting that in you know what you require from every level. So, you know, I grew from within as an hourly employee up through the ranks to a C suite by the time I was in my twenty I was twenty-eight years old. But the company that I grew in that did that was militaristic around we all had the same protocol and the same reporting methodology to validate that. And so it's something I've just always kept with me. I think that there's as long as you're there's a lot of chains who have lost it, to be clear, we see that. But then there are the ones who've never lost it. Look at or recovered it. Look at what's happening at Chili's as an example. I've talked about them a lot because I couldn't be more impressed with what Kevin Hockman and the team have done. And as you might have heard, we have a boat and they have the best pier on the water here, so we eat there frequently in the summers, especially. And I can't tell you the staff is so aligned. They know what they're working on. I knew this week when they rolled out a new training, or last weekend they rolled out a new training module and we the bartender was working their way through the five steps of the training module because they were talking about it with the people at the tables around us. So at the end of the day, it's all about how you as a leadership team cascade and then pull back up your lessons and validate, okay, we might have missed it here. Also early on, you know, I learned pick two to three things a week. you know, or months or whatever. There's th people cannot go out and kill it all in one day. So don't overwhelm them by asking them to boil the ocean. Pick your top two to three areas of focus that you know are crucial to the mission and then just repeat that over and over and over until the data set shows that we've got it. I've spoken a lot about habits and that's another key thing is that Tony again, Tony Dungey, who took the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl, he talked about relentless h habits. He would make sure that they just practiced the basics to the point of nauseum. And the reason why he did that is because you're then it becomes part of your subconscious brain. Like you didn't, if I ask you to cross your fingers right now, to cross your hands, my computer is not stepping, and do this, or ask you to, you know, clasp your hands, your one thumb is always on the top. And mine happens to always be the same. And or which shoe you put on first in the mornings. You guarantee you put the same, the right, the same right or left on every morning. And you don't look at your foot and say, okay, I'm about to put my shoe on that right or that left foot. It just happens. And it's been happening since you learned to put your shoes on because it's back here on the subconscious brain. Sorry, this is getting real technical. But that's what Tony talked about as well, is that when you push the basics to the point that it's autonomic, then the brain is freed up. to deal with the surprise, the bus that pulls up, or the customer that happens to be having a bad day wants to take it out on us, or the cook that made a mistake because they're having a bad day. You can take care of all those things if you free up this part of your brain to be able to just jump in and lead without the other part falling apart because it's automatic. Does that make sense?
Anthony Valletta: Makes perfect sense. And I I gotta imagine listeners are gonna write that one down. That's a good one. I guess my my my last question, I think you're 100% right. I agree with you on that. I wonder with the amount of data we're pushing out, the amount of AI automations that we're doing, that freeing up that mind in your eyes, right? That can free up for when a bus comes in or something happens. Are we also losing some of the ability to have the natural kind of inkling to say, okay, I can sense the dining room? Right. There's that something about back in the day we didn't have any of this information. You just walked in, you just felt it. It just felt good or felt bad. There was no in between.
Jen Dodd: Yeah, you just know. Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: And I wonder some of that feeling now, because so much of it is being pushed to us and automated to the point where I don't have to think about it. It's just this little system is telling me, here's how the restaurant's looking right now. Do you think we're in danger of potentially losing some of that restaurant feel with all this automation coming on?
Jen Dodd: Absolutely at the lower levels particularly, area manager and up. But shame on us as leaders if we allowed that to happen. Because you know, I I do I use AI and I think I use it pretty well. And I mean I ask it very complex, objective, challenge it, compare them to each other, beat it up, you know, I'm like, no, that's not deep enough. Tell me this. How did you validate that? So at the end of the day, I think I get real rich answers from the LLMs that I employ. And I But I treat them un except for the beating up part. I don't beat up my staff, but I do the LLMs. But I treat them just like I do the team and that well tell me more how you arrived at that answer and challenge that data and show me how that data's coming to life. If I tell you again back to the scoreboard that we had a hundred and fifty yards that we ran this game, well you can go watch the tapes and validate that. So I think that's really important. So the team can't become lethargic and nor can the leader. And it's easy to sense that when people are starting to just throw an answer out there. It's something that if you're paying attention to the data points, you'll know. And I did talk lately about the movie Pressure, which I think is a great movie. I really would encourage everybody to watch it or at least do the research on D-Day, how they made a decision to go to D-Day with President n future President Eisenhower, who was in charge of these combined forces and all the military branches. And what it took was a meteorologist that had been right all the time. For twenty years, he had never missed a you know a a a weather call because he looked at the data when the temperature, when the atmospheric readings, when all that was there. In the past, this happened with the weather. But he was using predictable weather states before Hawaii, California, you know, whatever, France. But at the end of the day, this one was in the UK area. Of course, Normandy is where they took the beaches. So he di there was un unpredictable weather. And Winston Churchill told Eisenhower you have to get somebody from this area and the meteorologist that I would recommend is this guy. Well, the two didn't agree because this guy was so determined to compare his past data sets. And this guy saying, dude, you don't understand. You're not from this area of the country. And I'm telling you, it changes in a millisecond. So after this battle, they finally combined those two forces. Think about that. The AI data. Set the past, the predictable, what we think, and then the unknown based on your gut, based on what could happen in this part of the world or on this weekend on this Friday night. And when those two combined, they actually found a slither of a window where it was really wild that the weather was gonna give them about a two-hour window. And they were able to take every beach because the enemy did not expect them to come out in that kind of weather. And it was incredible. And of course, sadly, we lost lives. But n it very few lives. And the history books say that it took Hitler two weeks to even realize that they had taken all the beaches. It was that big of a surprise. I mean, my goodness, how much do we need to know about our business and beat our competitors, if you will,
Anthony Valletta: Right.
Jen Dodd: or at least win the war ourselves with the combination of the data with your gut?
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, I think that's, I mean, the gut is always right. And that sliver to your point of past and present, I think is so valuable. And I think, you know, really we discussed today, yeah, I think the the lie I was trying to argue with today is that data is you know, data is knowing. And that if we collect enough about the guest, the name, the birthday, favorite, whatever it may be, you know them, but you really don't, right? There's that gut component, that one-to-one that you don't really get to receive. You know about them. And knowing is what happens in the room to your point with the headphones or or side by side with the employee. In the thirty seconds a person needs to be there, they never put in a survey. so data data is a story of what already happened, knowing is kind of being there for the part that hasn't to your point, which I really like that last story. So Jen, I always love chatting with you, I always love your insights. Thank you so much for joining us. it was really a pleasure.
Jen Dodd: Thank you for having me. Love you back.
Anthony Valletta: My pleasure. this is the return. Did you earn it?
Jen Dodd: Thanks. I'm looking forward to it.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, we'll have some fun. So let's let's start where I I do believe you are dead right. And I'll say it first is like a win intuition doesn't really travel. You can't put your gut in every store on a Friday night. Walk me through what the data lets you see that you'd be basically blind otherwise if you didn't have.
Jen Dodd: Everything, only everything. So yeah, you
Anthony Valletta: Ha ha ha.
Jen Dodd: know, I've done this for a a long time as you know, more than thirty years. And when I started, it was at the time we did not, you know, have computers and you know, iPhones and iPads and all the things that we do today and goodness didn't know AI would exist. But we still had to wake up in Florida and know what was going on in California. So back then it was much more of a rigorous you know, detail hour by hour of what took place. I mean, I'm sure you remember things like the Red Book. But even more
Anthony Valletta: God yeah.
Jen Dodd: than that, it was, you know, shift by shift. What happened, when, if, how did we handle? So I think the data at that if I just sort of break it down to its purest form, it's about the customer experience. So everything that we do when we unlock the door. in our restaurant and retail is to invite the customer in. And if that customer comes in with faith that they have money and a grumbling belly and that we can feed their need, then we better be ready to do that. So the data should show. Did you open on time? Easy to see. POS turned on at the same time. and then were we ready to execute those sales? Easy to see. Things like What was that transaction count? You know, did we have any, I'm sorry, we have to 86 this item? All that's there. But also ordering, forecasting, how we move food and beverage in and out. and then what did we do once we were prepared? Did we waste an excessive amount or did we, you know, utilize the product properly, learn from our mistakes? then over to employees. I mean, how was the shift staffed? Was the customer taking care of because our staffing was there on time? and how are you doing with turnover and training protocol? I mean, literally data is I call it like the skeleton in the body. It's one of the most important systems that I couldn't use my mouth right now, or my neurological systems or my circulatory system without that skeleton. And so I think it's super important. Long answer.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, and I think we agree.
Jen Dodd: Ha ha ha.
Anthony Valletta: No, listen, there was so much goodness in there. I think most of it generally, I totally agree with you. And I think, especially at your scale, I mean, data is not optional. It's the only guy eyes you really have to your point in a lot of these systems that are being done. And I think here's the argument that I always struggle with is the data tells you, and you mentioned a few of them, what the guest did, right? Or or what the employee did to set up the restaurant for success to then take care of your guests. But They never really tell the why. It's never what like they needed from you that night. It's the map, right? But not necessarily the room. So if that's the case, then where is it broken?
Jen Dodd: Love that. Mm-hmm. I love that. That's a really good point. I think I learned that when I was at Applebee's. And w the way I learned it was actually I was tr new there and I was training, standing on the line, you know, and I was watching the general manager, the training gym that was training me, and he had on drive-thru headphones and he had the hospital hospitality associate wearing a head f a little earbud phone as well. And I mean this was years ago, but he was saying a word to the hospital of that he wanted him to use while he was seating the guests and presenting the menu. A young man was the hospital that night, and I was so I grabbed a headset so I could hear it as well. And this young man did a wonderful job taking those words that were selling words, confident words, helping words for the customer to guide them through the menu. And what was shocking is we did that for a solid week and measured it. And 76% of the time the guests ordered what the hospital told them was great, however, he was wording it to tell them that. I was pretty taken back by that. And you've heard some of my origin story, how I fell in love with the business because I realized we could be the best part of people's day and disrupt their humdrum potentially life or a hard day. But this taught me even more about that, that people want. To be guided. They don't, you know, they don't want to make one more decision. And this was before AI, Anthony, or before social media had us doom scrolling all day. They were already exhausted. And so today we're seeing where people are just burned out, you know, like, my gosh, decision overload. So they want to be guided in a confident, helpful way. I don't know what the percentage would be today if we ran that same experiment, but my guess is it would still be high. That if you are loving that customer, And helping them and and if you're loving your product and describing it in a romantic way around how beautiful it is and you're gonna enjoy it, people trust you and believe that. Of course, then that comes down to not breaking the faith cycle. That the kitchen or the bar has gotta do a great job delivering what you just said. And that's can be seen easily through other data sets.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah. I mean, I think you're right, but I think the interesting thing is that the example you use, you were right next to him in the restaurant to be able to put the headset on and live inside those four walls. But at scale, especially at your position, right? We can't do that every single day. And we try to collect the data to figure that out, but but ultimately that doesn't tell you the experience that you just went through, right? Unless you're just going side by side. So do you think all the data that we're collecting, all this information that we have? Is it making operators or franchisees really know the guests? Or is it making us just kind of know our numbers? I think there's a difference. And that's that like the struggle of the dashboard and all the data coming out versus knowing that that guest at that time heard that gentleman
Jen Dodd: Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: passionately speak about something, that doesn't come out in any data. That's just the day of. So, like, what's
Jen Dodd: Mm that's true. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: how do you manage the two? And and do you think, again, my original point, like, It feels like we have so much information on our guests, but yet we rely so much on that to take away from that simple moment with a headphone, which the Red Book, I love the reference to, because it's like I remember those, right? But
Jen Dodd: Ha ha
Anthony Valletta: there was something about the analog component of a of a guest that I feel like is being lost with the data. How do you feel about that?
Jen Dodd: I think you're right. It can absolutely be lost. And so then that comes down to listening to the hum. You know what the hum is. Like if we get quiet right now, we'll hear the air conditioning running in the background or whatever, a power voltage. We'll we'd we'd be able to really get real quiet and hear that. And so the hum is what's not being said out loud through the data. That comes down to operations leaders that are in the stores, you know, watching shifts. I'm always a big surprise shift person. Love to go in and be unannounced. I mean, not to get ya, but to just validate ya, to be able to high-five you, hopefully. That's the goal. There certainly have been some times it turned into a not validation, but then that's a coaching moment. and then and then I coach every area supervisor, every director to do the same thing. I hit back in the you know, I've I've done it all. Even like before it was not okay. I'd drop off a little cassette player by the drive-thru menu board and go back later and pick it up and see what I heard. Can't do that now. Now we have technology, you don't have to do that. But yeah.
Anthony Valletta: That's a good one though. I like that.
Jen Dodd: Yeah. I might have been the only person doing that. But at the end of the day, it you it shows up in your in your success metrics. You know, I'm huge about scoreboards. I love, I'm I'm a big sports fan, but I love let's just use football. You know, it we all love it. And one of the reasons we love it is not just to see somebody get tackled on the field, but we can see everything. How many minutes are in the quarter, how many yards were gained or lost, you know, who how many punts, whatever. We can see the yardage of the punts, we can see it all. and so I think our business is the same way. You know, let's have a scoreboard where we're measuring and we've got it in front of everyone because then it's easy to spot. You know, if you're using QSR as an example, or in your restaurants, which I love your restaurants, and you're using the, you know, three or four servers that are on the floor. Well, who had the high highest p average check or PPA? who sold the most of the the LTO that we have right now? And that tells you who's doing what the kid was doing in the headset. how did who got the second beverage? That tells you a lot about speed of service in a full service restaurant. Because if you can't get that second beverage or or even a third one if the person wants it, then you're really not taking care of your tables if you're barely getting one beverage to the table. So I just think there's a lot of metrics that we should bring through with wisdom and you can connect those data sets in a way that's holistic that presents that scorecard. So I think all leaders should have that. What is your scorecard? How are you looking at the game, whether it's in a quarter or the end, and see how people are doing.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah. I mean, listen, in scorecards, you see them everywhere. I mean, there's plenty of tech companies. You and I have probably been pitched on about 10 of them this week alone that have all
Jen Dodd: Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: the next best scorecard, right? And I think that's right. I mean, it does give you the anecdotal component of what's working. The thing where I think it doesn't work is that and I'd be curious if you could find a time maybe that that proved this wrong. I don't know that the scorecard has ever changed something that one of my operators did for a specific guest. Like I don't know the scorecard about drink times or about You know, expo times, things of that nature, actually change the moment where I walked up to Jen's table and I engaged. And because of data I had in my head, I decided to change the experience for Jen that night. To me, that only happens in the four walls. But yet we we seem to overanalyze and emphasize the data piece. Whereas I wonder we should be overanalyzing those anecdotal, qualitative, non-scorecard metrics, and that might actually drive better hospitality. So how do you manage the two of those side by side?
Jen Dodd: It's another good point. I mean, there's so many ways, right? repeat your repeat business. We own our own data at Main Squeeze Juice Code, so we can see everything. We see, you know, who came one time and never returned, how frequently the guests are returning in our top quartile. I mean, that's critically important. So not suggesting everybody has to go out and build their own data set now, but we just happen to be blessed by the fact that we did have have our own built early on. So it's important. And from that we it's amazing what we can see on the one the customers that are in that bottom quartile and their frequency. And then we've held focus groups around that several times where we reach out to people in that bottom quartile and we seek to understand what is it that's keeping you from returning more frequently. How could we get that done more? And we learned things like subscription model, which is now being rolled out and tested. So I think You need to listen to the hum. You've got to talk to those customers in every way that you can. which might include, you know, even getting old school and getting out in the restaurant and walking the tables yourself, especially if you have a store that's underperforming and not meeting your standards, go spend a weekend there and you know, and see yourself what's happening. the other thing I think is important is listening to the staff. It you know, I'd love I remember the old days again, I keep talking about the old days, like I'm a hundred, but when we did like employee surveys and it was all confidential and we we did the survey, we put it in the envelope and another employee rode with us to the post office to see that we mailed it out so that it would be, you know, absolutely confidential. And of course we can do that now through so many means, QR codes and and all these digital ways, and we do do that. And that's important because that employee is also your customer. You know, we're in franchising, so we have three customers. The franchisee is our first customer, their staff, and then the end user, which is of course the guest that comes into the restaurant. So we need to be listening to all three of those constituents in order to hear what's working and what's not working. And and that gets through the clutter, I think, and helps you the bull crap, you know, get some of that out of the way so you can get down to the meat of the solution. Yes, then you should compare that to your Google reviews and You know, what you're seeing when you do your customer service scoring methodologies. And there's a lot of ways to do that. And some of them are a lot of fun. But you just gotta make sure you keep your ear to the ground.
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, and I think that's the key. And I think you I I think one of one of the reasons you've been so successful in your career is exactly what you just said. You see these people that use the de the dashboard and they make the decision. They don't do the focus group to actually get in room with the guest, because that's the most important thing. I can tell you it's someone's churning, but if I can't tell you why, what does it matter? I mean, I can
Jen Dodd: Right.
Anthony Valletta: I can try to send out some marketing blitz that basically is irrelevant, but that's the key. And I think to your second point, sometimes just gotta get in the restaurant on the weekends and just see it firsthand.
Jen Dodd: Yes.
Anthony Valletta: And the thing I'm curious from from all of your your experience, like that in the room purity, which is what I believe, and I'm I'm I have the luxury of doing that and because I have less restaurants than most, where does that fail a growing operator or an operator of of of your size? Like where could the advice of that purity of being in the room actually hurt somebody at scale?
Jen Dodd: know, I don't think it could hurt. because if you're role modeling that as a leader, then you are exhibiting that in you know what you require from every level. So, you know, I grew from within as an hourly employee up through the ranks to a C suite by the time I was in my twenty I was twenty-eight years old. But the company that I grew in that did that was militaristic around we all had the same protocol and the same reporting methodology to validate that. And so it's something I've just always kept with me. I think that there's as long as you're there's a lot of chains who have lost it, to be clear, we see that. But then there are the ones who've never lost it. Look at or recovered it. Look at what's happening at Chili's as an example. I've talked about them a lot because I couldn't be more impressed with what Kevin Hockman and the team have done. And as you might have heard, we have a boat and they have the best pier on the water here, so we eat there frequently in the summers, especially. And I can't tell you the staff is so aligned. They know what they're working on. I knew this week when they rolled out a new training, or last weekend they rolled out a new training module and we the bartender was working their way through the five steps of the training module because they were talking about it with the people at the tables around us. So at the end of the day, it's all about how you as a leadership team cascade and then pull back up your lessons and validate, okay, we might have missed it here. Also early on, you know, I learned pick two to three things a week. you know, or months or whatever. There's th people cannot go out and kill it all in one day. So don't overwhelm them by asking them to boil the ocean. Pick your top two to three areas of focus that you know are crucial to the mission and then just repeat that over and over and over until the data set shows that we've got it. I've spoken a lot about habits and that's another key thing is that Tony again, Tony Dungey, who took the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl, he talked about relentless h habits. He would make sure that they just practiced the basics to the point of nauseum. And the reason why he did that is because you're then it becomes part of your subconscious brain. Like you didn't, if I ask you to cross your fingers right now, to cross your hands, my computer is not stepping, and do this, or ask you to, you know, clasp your hands, your one thumb is always on the top. And mine happens to always be the same. And or which shoe you put on first in the mornings. You guarantee you put the same, the right, the same right or left on every morning. And you don't look at your foot and say, okay, I'm about to put my shoe on that right or that left foot. It just happens. And it's been happening since you learned to put your shoes on because it's back here on the subconscious brain. Sorry, this is getting real technical. But that's what Tony talked about as well, is that when you push the basics to the point that it's autonomic, then the brain is freed up. to deal with the surprise, the bus that pulls up, or the customer that happens to be having a bad day wants to take it out on us, or the cook that made a mistake because they're having a bad day. You can take care of all those things if you free up this part of your brain to be able to just jump in and lead without the other part falling apart because it's automatic. Does that make sense?
Anthony Valletta: Makes perfect sense. And I I gotta imagine listeners are gonna write that one down. That's a good one. I guess my my my last question, I think you're 100% right. I agree with you on that. I wonder with the amount of data we're pushing out, the amount of AI automations that we're doing, that freeing up that mind in your eyes, right? That can free up for when a bus comes in or something happens. Are we also losing some of the ability to have the natural kind of inkling to say, okay, I can sense the dining room? Right. There's that something about back in the day we didn't have any of this information. You just walked in, you just felt it. It just felt good or felt bad. There was no in between.
Jen Dodd: Yeah, you just know. Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Valletta: And I wonder some of that feeling now, because so much of it is being pushed to us and automated to the point where I don't have to think about it. It's just this little system is telling me, here's how the restaurant's looking right now. Do you think we're in danger of potentially losing some of that restaurant feel with all this automation coming on?
Jen Dodd: Absolutely at the lower levels particularly, area manager and up. But shame on us as leaders if we allowed that to happen. Because you know, I I do I use AI and I think I use it pretty well. And I mean I ask it very complex, objective, challenge it, compare them to each other, beat it up, you know, I'm like, no, that's not deep enough. Tell me this. How did you validate that? So at the end of the day, I think I get real rich answers from the LLMs that I employ. And I But I treat them un except for the beating up part. I don't beat up my staff, but I do the LLMs. But I treat them just like I do the team and that well tell me more how you arrived at that answer and challenge that data and show me how that data's coming to life. If I tell you again back to the scoreboard that we had a hundred and fifty yards that we ran this game, well you can go watch the tapes and validate that. So I think that's really important. So the team can't become lethargic and nor can the leader. And it's easy to sense that when people are starting to just throw an answer out there. It's something that if you're paying attention to the data points, you'll know. And I did talk lately about the movie Pressure, which I think is a great movie. I really would encourage everybody to watch it or at least do the research on D-Day, how they made a decision to go to D-Day with President n future President Eisenhower, who was in charge of these combined forces and all the military branches. And what it took was a meteorologist that had been right all the time. For twenty years, he had never missed a you know a a a weather call because he looked at the data when the temperature, when the atmospheric readings, when all that was there. In the past, this happened with the weather. But he was using predictable weather states before Hawaii, California, you know, whatever, France. But at the end of the day, this one was in the UK area. Of course, Normandy is where they took the beaches. So he di there was un unpredictable weather. And Winston Churchill told Eisenhower you have to get somebody from this area and the meteorologist that I would recommend is this guy. Well, the two didn't agree because this guy was so determined to compare his past data sets. And this guy saying, dude, you don't understand. You're not from this area of the country. And I'm telling you, it changes in a millisecond. So after this battle, they finally combined those two forces. Think about that. The AI data. Set the past, the predictable, what we think, and then the unknown based on your gut, based on what could happen in this part of the world or on this weekend on this Friday night. And when those two combined, they actually found a slither of a window where it was really wild that the weather was gonna give them about a two-hour window. And they were able to take every beach because the enemy did not expect them to come out in that kind of weather. And it was incredible. And of course, sadly, we lost lives. But n it very few lives. And the history books say that it took Hitler two weeks to even realize that they had taken all the beaches. It was that big of a surprise. I mean, my goodness, how much do we need to know about our business and beat our competitors, if you will,
Anthony Valletta: Right.
Jen Dodd: or at least win the war ourselves with the combination of the data with your gut?
Anthony Valletta: Yeah, I think that's, I mean, the gut is always right. And that sliver to your point of past and present, I think is so valuable. And I think, you know, really we discussed today, yeah, I think the the lie I was trying to argue with today is that data is you know, data is knowing. And that if we collect enough about the guest, the name, the birthday, favorite, whatever it may be, you know them, but you really don't, right? There's that gut component, that one-to-one that you don't really get to receive. You know about them. And knowing is what happens in the room to your point with the headphones or or side by side with the employee. In the thirty seconds a person needs to be there, they never put in a survey. so data data is a story of what already happened, knowing is kind of being there for the part that hasn't to your point, which I really like that last story. So Jen, I always love chatting with you, I always love your insights. Thank you so much for joining us. it was really a pleasure.
Jen Dodd: Thank you for having me. Love you back.
Anthony Valletta: My pleasure. this is the return. Did you earn it?
