Welcome back to the show.

My name is Adam Lamb and I'm a career coach for Culinary Professionals,

and I'm with Jim Taylor, as always, my co-host from Benchmark 60, Jim.

Adam, how are you?

It's so nice to see you, man.

It's good to be back again.

Yeah.

And just to let viewers and listeners know we're gonna be

doing this episode of turning the table a little bit differently.

We've got one of our trusted partners here with us and we've also got,

Shannon from VP of Smoothie King, who's actually using this particular platform

to really make some fundamental gains in their system and will be hearing

from both of them in just a little bit.

But Jim, I think it's a topic that you and I talk about all the time, which

is as, these systems start getting more powerful and we can't go anywhere

without seeing ai, ai, in another variation in another platform that

someone's trying to, tell us that we really need, if we're not gonna get

locked out of the marketplace, which is.

But anyway, fear sales, right?

Yeah.

But it seems like it's much harder to wrap our arms around as

an, as a restaurant operator for me.

There's only so much I can take of data that I can actually digest before

it all just becomes overwhelming.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation today.

I think we talked a little bit about some of this stuff last week

as a, just a, it just happened to be part of the conversation,

which is a good lead up to today.

But this, all this data in terms of how to use it, especially from

a marketing perspective I'm looking forward to, obviously we're gonna

be involved in the conversation..

Sure.

But listening to JR and Shannon talk about how to use some

of this data to really transform the marketing strategy I think it's gonna

be a good little discussion today.

And I'm also really looking forward to some clarity, like to

be able to have someone who's gonna pull the curtain aside as it were and

show the man behind the curtain in order to like, get in better, deeper

understanding of what's being produced.

How can I actually use this data?

Because I'm sure if I raise my hand, they're gonna be others out there in

the audience who are also raising their hands, saying very often I'm confused.

We're gonna have JR Hopwood from e vocalize and Shannon Gwinner from smoothie

King here right after these messages.

Welcome to Turning the Table, the Most Progressive Weekly podcast for

today's food and beverage industry, featuring staff centric operating

solutions for restaurants in the hashtag new hospitality culture.

Join Jim Taylor, benchmark 60 and Adam Lamb as they turn the tables on

the prevailing operating assumptions of running a restaurant in favor

of innovative solutions to our industry's most persistent challenges.

Thanks for joining us and now onto the show.

This episode is made possible by e vocalize.

E VOCALIZE makes complex local digital marketing push button easy for anyone.

Empower your franchises with programs that automatically optimize performance

and program spending across Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

All from one, easy to use collaborative marketing platform.

To find out more, go to Turning the table podcast.com/e vocalize.

And we'd like to welcome JR Hopwood from e vocalize, a solutions consultant,

and Shannon Gewinner from Smooth King

vice Pres, president of Brand marketing.

Shannon, is that brand.

Slash marketing or is it brand market?

Is it one because, and I might as well get this outta the way that I'm the

Canadian guy in the group and there's no smoothie king in Canada, right?

But I know the brand and I've, I fortunately have never even been to

Smoothie King and I know the brand, I was just curious, is it brand

and marketing or is it just, or is it brand marketing as one thing?

You could say it's probably either or.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah the, brand obviously is the, hero here and marketing is, as I

describe it, anything you can see that has a smoothy king mark on it.

Any copy, any text, anything that you see across all of our stores, social media, et

cetera, would be marketing, pr, et cetera.

Good to, thanks for clarifying that.

Cause like I said, it's got an incredibly strong brand.

Yeah, it's on the list of places to get to, especially after having me, welcome.

That's all right.

I JR I think you're going down I 10 right now, right?

I am.

So you might hear a semi in the background, but

that's just progress, right?

That's delivering smoothie

ingredients.

Exactly.

It's, the alluring life of the digital nomad.

Yes.

So welcome to the show, and perhaps you could kind and start us off, and

again I, don't mind being the dummy in the room and saying the, what's

e vocalized how is it being applied to the hospitality space and what's

your function within the organization?

Yeah, so I, I think we'll get into the use cases as

we go through the conversation.

So I'll put a pin in that.

But great.

Think about us as a, paid digital publishing platform that dynamically

publishes sophisticated marketing campaigns across lo multiple

locations by leveraging data, right?

So that's the sophisticated nature about it.

Anyone can log into Google or log into meta and, Put up a, paid digital campaign,

but it's very difficult to do it at scale.

It's very difficult to do when you have hundreds even thousands of locations.

And then based on the conversation we're gonna have today, it's even

harder to do that when you're trying to leverage all that data that you have.

And so our tool can automate most of that process and, allow

you to set it and forget it.

And you're running sophisticated paid marketing campaigns when, you're

not even having to push any buttons.

Yeah.

And, one of the things that we've heard from your team is push the sort of

catchphrase, we've heard a lot about vocalize, is push button easy, right?

I mean it, you're just simplifying that process cuz the depth, I mean

we talk to restaurant operators all the time and Shannon, I'm sure you

can attest to this, there's so much information and I mean there's confusion.

Where do you start?

What do you look at?

So you guys just simplify that whole process, right?

Yeah I the, resulting marketing campaigns

are not any less sophisticated.

In fact, they're more sophisticated than, what you can

do individually in these platforms.

And so we're just taking the complexity out of it, right?

We're making it push button easy because we're building in all of those.

Parameters we're building in the strategies, the

audiences, the data to use.

What it's gonna look like.

One of the things I'm sure Shannon will talk about is, the fact that a lot

of franchisees in, in that franchisee model sometimes they'll go rogue, right?

They'll go off brand or they'll go off logo.

And you no longer have control of that as, a brand owner, right?

And so that's one of the big things that we help do is lock those types

of corporate controls down so that.

It's not only push button easy, but it's also very difficult for

them to mess anything up and.

In all honesty, we're actually hearing from those individual operators that they

don't wanna be able to mess anything up they, know how to make pizzas and great

burgers and smoothies and, all that stuff, and they're focused on backend operations.

They're not marketing experts.

And, so that's what we help.

Help do.

On the corporate side though, we can help facilitate Shannon's team

to launch thousands of campaigns across all of their locations

with one push of a button as well.

So we really help both sides of, the house really be able to launch

the sophisticated campaigns.

But I think one of the things that it's most alluring to an operator is

that this is all happening in real time.

So it's not like we're waiting for.

Aggregation of data days or weeks or for or monthly meetings to make

decisions based upon what's happening, but an operator can be in the week

for the week and making decisions and changing up the marketing plan

based upon those assets that were already approved at the corporate

level, and to be able to drive that.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

That, that's one of the, use cases that, that we're really excited

about too is, the ability to launch campaigns in real time based on

things that are happening right now.

If I'm trending under for the week in terms of revenue, I.

Perhaps we build out a campaign that's looking at that revenue and it sees

that we're trending under, and all of a sudden it just triggers a campaign

for the Austin, Texas location, right?

Wow.

And, again the Austin operator didn't have to do anything.

They're, just trying to get more people buying smoothies.

And But the ads just happen automatically.

So that's what I'm really excited about.

I've worked with a lot of kind of individual operators in my career, and

they wanna do sophisticated campaigns.

But it is so low on the list.

And then you add the complexity that these channels add to

creation of, these campaigns.

And I, was, I.

A funny story.

I was in helping out a friend a couple of weeks ago in Google Ads, and I've

been doing this for over 20 years.

It still took me 20, 30 minutes to launch a campaign, and I, know what I'm doing

and so I, I think that's really what I get excited about is really giving the

power to those individual operators or giving the power to those corporate.

Marketing teams to launch these things at scale.

And that's really where the power is, and that's where you're really gonna see the

connection with the end user audience, is that localization, that personalization,

and we can help you do it at scale.

Quick question for you jar and, Shannon, feel free to chime on

this on this too, your comment about if there's a location that has revenue

that's down based on the trend or last year or whatever it is that this week.

If it's gonna the, sophisticated marketing and yet whatever it is,

help the right word terminology is gonna trigger a, campaign.

Is there some notification that goes to the operator about that?

Because I think if there's a, if I'm a GM of a restaurant or an owner of a

restaurant thinking about, okay, it's gonna trigger this behind my back without

me necessarily doing anything, is it gonna notify me so I need to add more

staff or get ready for more volume?

Or how does that part.

Get incorporated.

Yeah, exactly.

There, there's certainly notifications.

We're, actually building out even more notifications as, as well.

But yeah I, that obviously is a big thing, right?

Like you're, working on stuff and all of a sudden you're like, wait

a minute, I'm sending out ads.

Obviously you need to know that's happening so that you

can get prepared for the rush.

That's really what you should be preparing for, right?

Not having to worry about launching a digital marketing campaign.

So Shannon, does that type of stuff come from Smoothie King

to the team, or does it go from a vocalized to individual operators?

If you think about in the case of you're not

meeting your numbers for the day, you should already be staffed.

And then ultimately you find that maybe the trends aren't there and

then the ad gets triggered we don't really feel, especially in qsr, that

there's, a need to notify the operators because you, already, you, you go,

you always staff for the worst case scenario, meaning that you're really

busy from a staffing perspective, it may change for like full service or Sure.

Casual dining because those particular people are compensated differently.

So Sure.

For us, yeah, that's good perspective.

Yeah.

It doesn't necessarily have the same

impact.

JR I wanted to pivot back towards the data I'm assuming that let's make

sure that there is no assumptions.

So why don't you tell me what kind of data ev vocalize is specialized to aggregate?

Like where's, what's the information coming from, what's the information and

how does that get turned around into a solution that I can use at a unit level?

Yeah, a lot to unpack there, Adam, but just, to kinda start at the

highest level please I, love the metaphor of, using gasoline a as, as data, right?

Gasoline by itself just sits there, doesn't really do anything right.

It.

It's just in a, in your little canister or at the gas station

where it's got its power is when we're pouring that into an engine.

We're, putting it in the engine and then we have the output that is, is speed.

And I, I feel like data is the same way, right?

Like data just sits there in spreadsheets and data databases and

doesn't really do anything by itself.

It's when we pump it into some sort of scalable.

Machine that then the power is, unleashed from that data.

And, that's really what our platform is, designed to do.

And so that then brings us to what.

What kind of data?

The, short answer is really any if, you can send us data, our system can accept it

and we can trigger things based off of it.

We can populate, add, copy based off of it.

All, all those types of things.

It's more in developing the strategy for what's really gonna have

the, impact for, your business.

One of the, Cool things as we talked with Shannon with Smoothie

King is, the weather aspect.

If it's a hundred degrees a smoothie sounds really awesome.

If it's 15, maybe not as awesome.

Probably just as healthy though but, obviously the weather

impacts consumer behavior, right?

And so we wanna market to them completely different.

So as we talked with Shana, we started to realize that, hey, maybe we should

set up some threshold about weather data and temperature and all of that.

So that's something that we're doing.

But that's just one example.

The other example could be your, backend pos or inventory data.

E especially from a restaurant standpoint, if I've got a, cooler.

A refrigerator full of kale or chicken or whatever it might be.

Th those are things that might spoil, right?

And so if I can pipe in that inventory data with maybe some

information saying, Hey, this is gonna spoil in the next five days.

Perhaps I launch a campaign based on something that, that is made

with those ingredients, right?

And then p os data in terms that we talked about this a little bit earlier

but that revenue data or, p mix if my product mix is shifting in one way that

I don't want it to, or maybe I'm down on a particular category Those are just a

couple of examples, but really, Adam, it is really anything and, we encourage the,

a huge whiteboard session to just jot down what are those data points that you have.

Cuz there's some cool things that maybe we haven't even thought about that really

could be impactful to your business

or,

had the capacity mentally to actually wrap our arms around, right?

We know that it's gonna snow, but At that point, like what do you do?

Except batten down the hatches.

As opposed to, what you're saying now, you have a tool that empowers you to

actually be, for lack of a better word, on the offensive as opposed to the defense.

Yeah.

And one, one other one that I, didn't mention that I think

is a really cool one too, is you, everybody, I'm sure listening is has

an issue with hiring from time to time.

And staff turnover can certainly affect your business a lot.

And, that doesn't always happen when like people just maybe don't show

up or, and so you could potentially be feeding in coverage data, right?

Hey, am I understaffed on Saturday?

My under sap on the weekend and, the system could automatically launch

employment ads and, try and drive people.

To actually apply for jobs.

So don't just think about it from the B2C side.

There's a lot of cool data points that you could leverage on the B2B side as well.

That's really interesting.

Absolutely.

That's juicy because one of our good friends, Jensen Cummings

Always preaches that operators need to be both media companies and operators

such that they're owning the narrative.

And so the more I don't wanna say aggressive, but certainly the more we

can get our arms around that marketing, because all of it's telling a story.

And the more congruent it is, the better it is for the operator because people will

get the same message at the same time.

It can all be so overwhelming, like you said I'm just trying to

get the line set up, or we're.

Short a couple servers and the idea that this is doing it

automatically is pretty great.

And just as another point, one of the things that Jensen mentioned is what he's

been coaching his clients to do is either use a little video or a text-based system

so that when someone applies, there's instantaneous response back to that.

Applicant to say, Hey, we're really interested in what you're

doing, and here are the next steps.

So to be able to put that in a hierarchical logic tree, so it's

happening, like that saves me as an operator, huge amounts of time.

And not only time, but stress because I gotta sit down now, I gotta do another ad,

I gotta, where the hell am I posting it?

Like, all those are just really juicy, options.

And to be frank, something that I didn't think of.

Initially when talking about e vocalize, that marketing piece is so huge, and

especially with the content, but the fact that you can actually dial other

data in, man I, don't know anybody else that's out there doing that.

No,

definitely.

Question for both, again, Jared and Shannon along the lines of this,

so there aren't very many operators that I know that are marketers.

There are al probably almost as few.

Operators that are really, good with data and would know exactly

where to start and what to do.

Can both of you maybe just chime in a little bit on like

where does this process start?

What do you look at first?

How do you start to make decisions, sure.

How does that onboarding, for lack of a better term kind of work?

And Chan, I'm curious about your perspective from the onboard E as well.

You know how that goes.

Yeah as you've, all said the operators are busy and what

we wanna do is just make sure that they are spending most of their time

operating the business, serving the guests making great product cetera.

So we don't expect them to be marketers.

And because of that that's why we've partnered with the vocalize.

Cuz you know, when I first spoke to JR and others it was just very evident that

this tool could make a really big impact.

Locally our franchisees are unique and every location is unique where,

it's located, the owner the city, the weather, the demographics, et cetera.

And part of the opportunity here is to really, identify each

store and its unique situation.

So to your point, where do you start?

Usually where I start is I look at the stores that aren't

performing as well as they should.

And that could be for a variety of reasons.

Sure.

It could be they have construction going on in front of their store, all

of a sudden maybe they're a college location and the college is out for

the summer or something like that.

So we start there meaning the home office does and, I partner with finance and

we figure out what a store should be.

Producing from a revenue standpoint, and if they're not at that level,

then we look a little bit deeper.

We may call the operator and say, okay, what happened?

In some cases, their store manager quit.

Or there is a construction issue or maybe they've had an unusual weather pattern.

And maybe it's cloudy.

Maybe it's rainy and you'd think that's doesn't matter.

But it very much does.

And human behavior.

And then from there we figure out what solution we're gonna give them.

And a vocalized will be a big part of that because it's individualized to the store.

Yeah.

I can say I need we're hiring for x, y, z main street in tope, Topeka, Kansas,

versus just a general now hiring.

I can even put in a bonus if I wanted to in the ad for people who wanted to join.

So it's, very personalized by location.

And if I can just, if I can just jump in and ask one

question around kind of your loyalty programs, because from what I

understand, ev vocalize can also.

Use that data to again, drive and what does that actually look

like from a consumer standpoint?

Yeah.

The, loyalty aspect is, something that I'm, super excited about.

I've been in the digital marketing space for, 20 plus years, and that's been one

of the hard localization is obviously very hard, but also the ability to target

somebody along their customer journey.

And one of the things that I think is really cool is

building these buckets right.

Of, of different audiences.

And that way Shannon's team can basically just.

Fill those buckets and remove people from those buckets as

they engage with, the brand.

And she can speak to more specifics think really the opportunities are endless.

As long as you have a way to see what those customers are doing and how

they're engaging with your brand, we can then just set up these buckets with

particular messaging to target that bucket that is specific to what that

consumer is doing at that particular time.

And as, as I mentioned, as they engage, They'll move to the

next bucket and the next one.

And the next one, and that's, it's super exciting to build that, journey.

But Shannon, I don't know if you wanna kinda talk about more specifics about

targeting messaging to those buckets.

Yes for sure.

Part of, like I said, with now hiring that's, somewhat of a, simple message.

But as it relates to getting people in the door through to download our, app,

which is essentially our loyalty program.

We, have done things along the lines of we wanna introduce a

happy hour in the afternoon.

The, most important thing to me, I think, which is a game changer for

the industry, is the POS data and using the POS data to help drive.

Activity and, triggered basically events.

And whether it's I'm, up or down for the day, or I have

an inventory issue or problem.

And I know JR touched on that briefly, but that is a bigger deal

than and I think everyone listening can understand from an inventory and

a Just a perspective of trying to keep your, losses as low as possible.

Sometimes you just don't sell as much as one thing as you thought.

Or maybe your corporation sent you more than you should have had.

Maybe they mis forecast.

And, so that is something just to help franchise.

Marketer or franchise operators just be more profitable at the end of the day.

So I think e vocalize has it's multifaceted, meaning you have the

opportunity to use it for business driving situations, but you also

have it to increase profit and or help to reduce turnover by

getting more qualified applicants.

So it's, again, it's just very multifaceted.

Yeah.

And, Jim I, just wanted to go back to your, earlier question

about how do we start, right?

What does that implementation look like?

And so we, we have some verticals that, that we have identified and, we have

brought in our, digital strategy experts.

Experts and, talked with people within those verticals, right?

And so we have built templates within particular verticals that

we have tried and true tested.

And, it gives us a best foot forward, right?

But, We, before we actually just say, Hey, we're just gonna implement these.

We work with the individual organizations to say, Hey, these are the five

that we see time and time again.

But what's specific to your business?

You know what a, as Shannon mentioned, weather is, big for,

Smoothie King, but maybe weather is not as big for, another brand.

And so that's really not all that helpful, but it's this other thing over

here that we haven't even thought about.

We'll strategize with each individual organization that we work with

to understand what their business goals and business needs are.

Go through that kind of full strategy and, then apply blueprints

or, templates to those objectives that they're trying to achieve.

But Right.

But we don't start from scratch necessarily.

We've got a starting spot.

But then we're always customizing to make sure that we're really

driving to those business needs.

JR to that point, say you had, Real estate agents as

clients and the interest rate dropped, then you could potentially if people

were waiting for a certain payment.

Then all of a sudden the interest rate dropped.

You send out an ad, that person gets more clicks and more more leads.

This tool can be applied to many industries.

And it's just at face value.

It's, it may look like it solves one thing, but the more creative you

are, the more things it can solve,

I think.

And Shannon, if I could just ask from your, from an operator's perspective

you go through the, selection process.

Okay?

We're gonna go with e vocalized.

The deal is signed.

There's the ideation process, the whiteboards up Jr.

And what, data points do we want to collect?

Start to finish, how long before that platform's ready to deploy?

Shannon, what was your experience?

We're

actually going through it right now.

All right.

And so it's about six weeks.

That's pretty

quick from soup to nuts.

And primarily I think it could probably be cut down, but just due to the fact

that we have so many franchise owners and there were some some things on the

Smoothie King side where we had to fix some Google ad accounts and things like

that that's, the part that really takes more of the, time than anything else.

And, just talk about

Smoothie King.

Sorry.

No, go right ahead.

To jump in there talking about Smoothie King.

So we've got an idea, Jr you've done a good job I think starting to give people

a bit of an idea about how scalable, what a vocalize does can be and how many

different sort of avenues there are.

But Shannon, for those that don't know, or for those that maybe are,

listen in Canada You from a scalability perspective, smoothie King's huge.

It is.

We have 14 over 1400 units worldwide.

About 600 or so individual franchise owners.

Yeah.

And every single one of those people gets love.

Yeah.

So when you're sitting there saying we're gonna look at a

couple of locations with finance that are underperforming you're not saying,

okay, these two are underperforming and these two are great and everything's.

Fine.

It's there's hundreds here and hundreds here

that's a big yes.

And I hope

that hundreds are performing and there's 10 that aren't.

But no, you're right.

It's definitely I, just can't say it enough that every owner has

their unique personality, their unique situation, unique real estate

positives and negatives, to be honest about how we can help them.

And the one thing that's constant in franchising is that it's always in flux.

Always.

There's always change happening.

So we have to be the steady provide tools such as vocalize

where they can rely on it.

And we have a lot of enterprising franchisees that wanna

do the work on their own.

So this tool will enable them to

do that within certain.

Parameters.

Yeah, parameters.

They get a sandbox and anywhere in the sandbox they get to play.

Correct.

And to not only to celebrate Smoothie King's growth and consistent high quality

product and offerings because we have one here in Asheville that I like to go

to but I don't want anybody listening to get the wrong impression about that.

This is just a Q S R tool.

Granted 1400 locations, that's a juicy, that's a juicy account.

And there's lots to play with, theoretically, right?

And I'm thinking that probably all those data points that are being driven

Shannon, in a little while there's via evaluation period, six months, nine

months, where you might go back and change things, continue to dial it in.

So it becomes a much more powerful tool.

JR am I correct in also saying that this particular platform is also driven by ai?

There's a lot of AI elements in involved.

The, one that I'm super excited about is the ability to dynamically shift budget

based on what is actually converting.

And it sounds so simplistic everybody says, oh, I'm gonna se

spend 70% of my budget on Facebook and the other 30% on Google.

The world doesn't necessarily work that way.

Like you might get 90% of your conversions from Google, but

because you're spending 70% of your budget there you're, missing out.

You're missing out on potential conversions.

And so one of the, really cool things that we can do is we're constantly

on a daily basis evaluating what.

Is driving the most conversions and we start to shift budget that way.

And it takes the, individual operator we keep talking about the

individual operators they don't have time to think about creating ads.

Think about.

The time it takes to optimize ads, and what works and are we AB testing.

Yeah.

And what messaging resonates and all that kind of stuff.

Channels is a part of that testing.

And so we take that part out as well.

And we're constantly adding to that.

We, also have some generative ai copy creation as well for those organizations

that do wanna allow their franchisees to create copy just to assist them.

But.

We're, also finding that a lot of organizations wanna lock that copy down.

And so we help generative AI helps us create the strategy

for copy on the front end.

But we lock things down afterwards.

But that is something that we have built into our platform as well.

That if there is an open text field for headline, that generative AI can look

at your location in business and kind of suggest some copy to put in there as well.

So that's how we're, leveraging these new buzzwords pretty effectively.

Wow.

And I'm gonna jump in and defend those marketers who

don't want their copy to be changed.

I think as mentioned earlier brand, marketing and brand standards, it's

extremely important to continue to talk in the same voice, the same personality and

the same tone no matter what you're doing.

It's.

I think the flexibility for the operator is that they have the tool.

If they work with someone like myself, we can come up with.

Several blueprints as like I would call solutions for business problems

that we could populate in, vocalize with and then they can deploy them.

But to Jr's point the, analysis is extremely important and effective within

a vocalize cuz you don't get as much real time data in a traditional per a purchase

of whether it's meta, TikTok, et cetera.

So it's often delayed.

Correct.

And just to put a point on it as the VP of brand marketing for Smoothie King growing

at a hundred to 200 locations per year, not only your responsibilities building

the brand, but also protecting the brand.

So as you say, there may be components of this that get.

Maybe limited or you get to be very creative about what that sandbox might be,

because I'm sure that you've got franchise franchisees out there who are constantly

coming up with great ideas that may not necessarily be, they may not be right

now, but they're not that's not a No, it's just a, and there's a pipeline for that.

But there's probably built in to e vocalize of

opportunity for franchisees to.

To talk up to ownership and management about what they're seeing in their

market and what would really serve them.

Correct?

Oh, ab, absolutely.

The last thing you wanna do is squelch enthusiasm.

Because a franchise buys into a brand because they love it.

And they're extremely excited about being part of it.

But so that's why it's not really the role of the vocalize.

It's, really more on the brand team is coming up with solutions for.

And anticipating what they might need.

And we might not, always have the answers, which is why you said it's more

of a two-way street on communication.

Sure.

But we'll try to get ahead of it as best as we can.

And worst, case is we don't, but the, a vocalized tool is very quick to put

in a new blueprint and get it going.

So we don't foresee that's gonna be an issue, and I think it'll

be very timely and, nimble.

Which is fantastic cuz it's it, doesn't sound like they

just sold you a solution and you've got your, 12 or 12 hours or three

weeks of training and then that's it.

See ya.

Oh, no, not quite the contrary.

We've been meeting probably once or twice a week now for six weeks.

I think we're on our fifth week now, and for sure.

No it's, definitely side by side management for a little bit.

And then obviously we take over once we learn the tool and

and learn how to use it best.

But the team's been fantastic and have really shown us some other opportunities.

We're looking forward to deploying it very shortly.

And JR given where the, where he vocalizes right

now and the marketplace, I.

Is there a an avatar for a perfect client for you that has X amount of units or

maybe it's a restaurant company like Noble House in in North Carolina that may have

six or seven or 10 different locations all doing different things, whether it's a

coffee shop here or et cetera, et cetera.

So what are you looking for in so far as the marketplace to,

to appeal to a certain segment?

Yeah I, think our, platform really shines when it's a

distributed kind of system, right?

When you have numerous locations that are just very, either difficult to manage at

the corporate level, or it's difficult to manage what those individual franchisees

are doing, as we just talked about, right?

That number.

For us can really be any number.

Obviously there's some costs that probably would factor in there.

But I, would say it's really anyone who is struggling to localize their

marketing because they have too many locations, which makes it very

difficult for them to manage that.

That could be.

Six to 10 because they just have a one person marketing team and,

they just don't have time to do it.

But, maybe it's a a 1400 location brand who does have multiple

people on the marketing team.

But they just don't have time either or, they don't have the capabilities.

And It again, to go back to your actual question, it really could be anyone with

that distributed marketing kind got it.

Need and, need for

scale.

And, it seems to me that This may be just ingenious for hotel companies who

have lots more data points to plug into a system, but may have 10 or 12 locations.

Doing anywhere between three to $20 million.

It seems to me that would be ideal.

And to be able to play around with some of that rooms data of when they're peeking

out and stuff that might be for, a data geek like me, that sounds exciting.

For, a data geek like me, that vertical is very exciting as well.

And we, are exploring a lot of verticals of which that may or may

not be on a whiteboard somewhere.

Yeah.

Nice.

So one last question that I have and maybe both again Jared and Shannon, you can,

maybe we'll take a swing at this, but, so Shannon, from a marketer's perspective,

What's your advice for, people?

There's so much information, there's so much data, there's so many places

to start and so many things to look at.

Obviously you've found a good partner and vocalize that's gonna help, with

streamlining this, but what what's your recommendation for, people who are either

restaurant operators or maybe there's some marketers listening to us right now?

I guess my advice would be is that you

don't boil the ocean, right?

You distill your opportunities and or solutions to your issues down so that, for

instance, we are doing a an introductory kind of 10 to 20 store test where we

see whether or not it's manageable.

I know the tool.

I know a vocalized can work, but the last thing I wanna do is go to my CMO

and say we should do this, and then I have to hire five people to do it.

That's not realistic.

From my standpoint, it's really more about when you look at an individual location

what, are the what are the particular.

Problem areas and or opportunities based off of whatever your

measurement tools are.

So we use a survey tool, it comes back and tells us our friendliness

scores, our likelihood to return scores, all sorts of things.

And so we have key indicators, and if those key indicators are low, then we

go after that particular key indicator.

Right?

And, part of that could be an a vocalized solution, and part of

it could just be pure operations.

So that's why I think that with this tool, stores will come in and out because

you might have a store that isn't doing as great, but they change a manager

and all of a sudden it's wonderful.

And then you may have a store that all of a sudden has a different

particular issue or problem, and then that one kind of gets plugged in.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

We'll see.

We're.

This is definitely a tool that we would like to hand over to field marketers

and or owners at some point, but I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that

unless I felt good about the tool, the ease of use and the results,

Got it.

And, JR for the similar question for you, what's your advice to people who

are in marketing or operations that are.

Knowing that there's too much data to understand, they

don't know where to start.

Whether they're a small multi-unit or 1500 locations.

Where, what's the recommendation from you?

Start by going to the office supply store and getting

a really nice, big whiteboard and, start just jotting down.

I like, because you'd be surprised the data points that you have access

to, that you're not leveraging or that could have a super impact to, the

bottom line to the to the business.

And so the, strategy and I'm biased I, come from the digital strategy world.

That's, I.

It's so important to sit down and talk about what are we trying

to achieve here as a business?

Yeah.

What are the data points that could help us get there?

Yeah.

And then how can we leverage those data points?

And, then our tool is just helping you in enact that strategy.

But without that strategy we're, just a tool.

We're just like the gasoline sitting there.

The, reason the engine works is because a bunch of engineers strategized how

to build an engine, we've strategized how to build the engine, but you need

to tell us where you're gonna go.

And that only comes with kind of some initial strategy up front.

And our team absolutely works with you to, help you do that.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank

you.

Amazing.

We're just about out of time and so I just wanted to make sure that I expressed

my gratitude to JR Hopwood Solutions consultant for e vocalize and Shannon

Gwinner, the VP of Marketing for.

Smoothie King and I think after this is done I'm gonna head right over

there cuz it's hot in Asheville.

Please do.

But, first I will download the app so I make sure that I get my points.

Yes,

please.

Thank you for having me.

It's

been, yeah, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you.

And I'm just curious if you all would be willing to come back, say in

about six months and talk to us about what that implementation was like.

Traction or, no traction to the franchisees.

We'd love to look under the hood and give everybody an idea of what a real

world example of this looks like.

And I think we, I'm sure we'll be talking about things that we didn't

even think of here in this session.

So if you're willing to do that, we'd love to have you back.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Be,

it'd be our pleasure.

JR.

Absolutely.

I'll probably be on I 90 by that in six months.

If, you can make it closer to this side, it's a little bit quieter.

But thank you very much everybody.

And we'll see you next week on Turning the Table.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Turning the Table with

me, Adam Lamb and Jim Taylor.

We're on a mission to change the food and beverage industry for the better.

By focusing on staff mental health, physical and emotional wellbeing.

By proactively measuring and managing staff workloads.

Join other hospitality professionals co-creating the hashtag new

hospitality culture by subscribing to our weekly newsletter at ww dot.

Turning the table podcast.com/news.

In every edition, you'll find innovative solutions ready to test and validate

in your operation this weekend.

Plus, listen to exclusive bonus content just for you.

Connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at Turning the Table Podcast.

If you found value in this episode, please consider leaving us a review

on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.

Give us a star rating.

It helps other hospitality professionals.

Just like you find the show, or better yet, grab the show link

and share it with a friend or colleague who you wanna see succeed.

Thanks for stepping in and speaking out for an industry craft and

fraternity that serves us all.

Remember, retention is the new Cool y'all.

This podcast was written, directed, and produced by me, Adam Lam and Jim Taylor.

Turning the table is a production of Realignment Media.