¶ Meeting Serial Entrepreneur Lawrence Longo
Welcome to Give an Ovation , the restaurant guest experience podcast . I'm your host , zach Oates , and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover real strategies and actionable tactics to help you create a five-star guest experience . This podcast is powered by Ovation , the feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants .
It gives you the insights you need without annoying your guests with endless questions . Learn more at OvationUpcom . And today I am so excited I have someone who is just I mean , as someone with the last name Oates calling someone a serial entrepreneur is a real thing , and so I am excited to welcome Lawrence Longo on . He is the you ready for this .
Founder and CEO of Off the Menu , ceo of Prince Street Pizza , ceo of Irv's Burgers and a very busy man . Lawrence , welcome to the podcast . Thanks for having me , zach . So , first of all , where do you get all these hours in a day to be CEO of three companies and you do speaking and marketing and podcasting ? How do you have time to do all this ?
It's a great team around me . Hopefully , you know I'm hiring all the right people to help us paddle the canoe to get us from where we need to go . I think I love what I do , so it doesn't feel like work . So the only thing that I want to get away from my work for is my family and maybe to play hockey once in a while . I love that .
I see all those hockey sticks behind you . Love that . I love that .
I still walk with my hockey sticks . You can see them in the background .
I know I see all those hockey sticks behind you Love that man .
But it's like I tell everybody in the food business is that if you're in it to make a quick buck , you're in the wrong business . Truly , truly , you need to love what you're doing in order to be successful , and I think that's and just have a passion for people , have a passion for food and just doing things right .
I'm proud of the product , of everything I do . I'm proud of the brands , so it makes it easy . I hate that part of it just because I love it so much . If you don't love it , it's probably a miserable experience .
Well , okay , but you have got some pretty different things that you're doing and , by the way , I didn't even mention all the stuff you're doing . You've got even other projects you're doing . So and , by the way , I didn't even mention all the stuff you're doing . You've got even other projects you're doing .
I saw that you just had an award recently about one of the top bars in America . Yeah yeah , bar Next Door was one of the 50 best bars in North America .
Man , that's wild . So what's the secret to success in terms of how do you do so many
¶ Keeping It Simple: The Success Formula
things well when people struggle often to just do one of those things well ?
I think keeping things simple Any of the businesses that I run I'm not trying to do too much . We're keeping it simple . The bar next door is just a neighborhood bar with high-end craft cocktails . I had a location beside Prince Street and I was like what works best beside a pizzeria ? Well , it's either ice cream or a bar .
So I opened up a bar on the side of it and the idea was just create that third place , that place where you go before drinks , you go after work , you go after dinner .
It's a place where , hopefully , the bartenders know your name , they know your drink and it's a place that you can go regularly to Nothing too trendy , nothing that's going to be like the flavor of the week and just really great customer service and really great product .
I tell everybody , if you have one thing on your menu that's craveable , that people will keep coming back every week for it .
Oh , yeah , I mean there's a restaurant down the street and they have this dish that is unreal , like 11 out of 10 . And the other dishes they have are great too .
Like it's an overall great restaurant but that one dish is so memorable and it's so craveable that I love going back to that place , as long as I can get a reservation , because it's always booked up .
But I mean , like it's just like here in Utah , michael McHenry just does a great job building restaurants that have cool brands , cool vibes and super memorable food .
Yeah , yeah , that's it .
You keep it simple , you do those things right and with a craveable product , you should be successful the norm of a food entrepreneur , restaurateur , and that's why I think in your LinkedIn , I believe you call yourself a food entrepreneur , not a restaurateur , which I find interesting . But tell me a little bit about Off the Menu and how that started .
Yeah , off the Menu . So my background was in movies and television and content really comic books , graphic novels , children's storybooks and just really like content is king type of mentality and I created a show called Off the Menu . Never made it to
¶ Off the Menu: From App to Empire
air , I sold it a few times but I realized just because , like in my content days is that you really had to own the IP if you wanted to own the series or own the show .
And so what I did was I created an app called off the menu and what I did was I sourced all the secret menu items at all the restaurants across North America that had secret menu items and I emailed it to like 25 of my friends being like hey , I just created an app .
It was when everybody was like creating apps , right , but I just wanted to do it because I love food so much and I wanted to like create this world of off the menu . And I launched the app and it got in crazy amount of downloads and now I'm an app entrepreneur . But I raised a little bit of money and quickly ran out of money .
It was like , oh shit , what do I have to do ? Well , you have to have a real business . You can't just source secret menu items . And what problem are you solving ? And what I realized was restaurants closed down . 60% of restaurants are closed within the first two years or first 12 months , and then 80% of restaurants are closed within the first five years .
So basically , 80% of people getting the restaurant business aren't even making their money back . And I was like , well , how can I solve that problem ? Through secret menu items . And what I realized was secret menu items drove foot traffic into the restaurants . It created a viral , social kind of marketing , and those are things that could help restaurants survive .
When I first tried to , I was like , okay , well , I'm going to charge restaurants to be on the app . All the restaurants were like we're not paying you . You got to . Can you prove that you're going to have this foot traffic ? So I flipped it and I was like you know what ?
What I'm going to do is I'm going to charge the customers $20 a month and what they're going to get is they're going to get one free secret menu item every day at a restaurant in their area . So , instead of having an app that curated all the secret menu items , I turned it into a food club .
Oh , very cool .
Learning my mistakes now is I didn't need to do every single day . Somebody got a free item . I should have just focused on one restaurant , one item , and drove all the traffic there . But at off the menus peak , I had over 4,000 users in LA and it was a real business . I wasn't raising money , it was a business that was running itself .
But what happened was I needed to figure out customer acquisition strategy and how do I get people on the app . And one of the things was through experiences and I created this event called the Burger Showdown , which was a live event in 2017 or 18 .
And I had , like Marshmello and Shea Mitchell and Tommy Lee , create their own burgers and then bring them to this festival and then all the people that came to the festival will get to try these burgers . And I did it for the LA times . And then in 2018 , I did a Prince street pizza pop-up .
I asked the owners of Prince street pizza if I could do a national pizza day bring Prince street to LA . And that kind of like was gangbusters 300 , 300 people waiting in line for three hours in the foreign rain and I had like probably 200 signups onto the app that week .
It was like , oh wow , this is really more importantly is like people love this product . People really are dying for this square Sicilian pizza with these cup and curl pepperonis and the spicy sauce . So , with these cup and curl pepperonis and the spicy sauce .
And then after that I did Tender Fest , a Chiffon Tender Festival but with that I realized whoa , this craveable product , everything I learned from off the menu of like why restaurants fail , what drives them , what makes a successful product , I felt like Prince Street had all those things so I asked could I open one up in LA ?
Opened one up in LA and the same thing .
I had lines and two zip codes and it was really exciting and I didn't put an investment into burgers never say die , which was the first LA smash burger that , since pretty much all of America's kind of tried to copy , but burgers never say die was the first like authentic , really cool hype smash burger yeah in Los Angeles .
That's kind of how it all started with the experiences , and then since later , I've created the whole krabby patty collab experience for spongebob square pants . That is .
I thought that is so cool man yeah .
So I think just knowing what's cool having a good palate I love food and I guess I know what's good and what the average person's going to crave . In a way , I think if anything was strong at anything , that would probably be it .
See , I think that is just so cool because , at the end of the day , like we said , it's the guest experience . And so , as you're looking at all these varied experiences from events to restaurants to apps what do you think is the most important aspect of the guest experience
¶ Creating Viral Food Experiences
or the customer experience ?
Authenticity and quality I would say is big , and then the speed and ease , right Like the convenience of what I'm doing . And then really , at the end of the day , we say service but it's really hospitality . I mean , if you're servicing , it's a transaction .
If you're giving hospitality , you really like the customer , really feels like they care about the business , cares about the customer . Yes , so I think I feel like that's the digital integration , from whether that's mobile ordering or a loyalty program . It's having a seamless like .
Digital integration is something I'm not necessarily great at right now but we strive to every day to get better . I know it's a part of the culture , the food culture . Gen Z doesn't need the human connection because they're like this all the time . So at first I was like no kiosks , no kiosks , no way .
And then you're thinking about yourself well , if that kiosk experience is exciting and is good , maybe it's not that bad and I hate to say that . But you know , when I saw shake shack and the guy I look up to , danny Meyer , doing kiosks , you're like , ok , maybe we got to think twice about kiosks in the restaurant .
Well , because honestly , it's like and I'll I rarely do this , but I think that maybe you'd agree with me I'd like to push back a little bit against . Gen Z don't need connection . I think that they're in their phones because they're looking for connection .
I just think how they get connection is different than prior generations because they grew up with so much technology . They get connection through a text message . They get connection through that response back and forth , and through , like the personalization . Look at someone in the eye , shake in the hand .
And when we were kids , the only way that I could get people's phone numbers is I had a little digital card and it was like I could type in people's names and phone numbers and it could store 250 names and phone numbers and that was my cell phone , and then I would use that to go and call my friends , right , but we didn't have the technology , and so it
was so much more about the face-to-face stuff , right , absolutely , absolutely . And I love what you're saying , though , about like that convenience factor , because if you don't have that , people aren't even going to try you out , right Exactly , I mean .
or they're going to try you out once and they're going to get frustrated and then they're not going to come back .
Yeah .
Unless your food is so good that , like the soup Nazi , you know your food is so good you can treat people like shit . They'll still come back .
And you go to , I guess Chances are that's probably not your restaurant , right ? If you're listening to this , Definitely definitely not .
I mean , especially with competition out there . It's like people secret recipes aren't so secret anymore because somebody could take a recipe , go to a lab , figure out exactly how you made it and make it themselves . So people copy all day long .
People are copying that are spicy spring pizza opening up I'm opening up an herbs and planet Hollywood and there's a not going to name the pizzeria right beside it , but it's literally an exact rip off of Prince Street Pizza with a different name . I was like oh and I , so I ordered the King Street pizza . It's so funny .
It's like well , the sauce isn't good , it's not cooked through like Prince Street , they're not using the Greek cheese , the pepperoni it's a rip off but it's not the same pepperoni and they're not cutting it the same . So all the little things that they're doing to copy are totally off , which makes it not like it doesn't hit you .
It's not like a punching you in the face . Oh , wow , that's an amazing slice . But even if you have a great product , you have to have great hospitality 100% love that .
Now ,
¶ Digital Integration vs. Human Connection
lawrence , I know you know a lot of people in the industry . Who's someone that we should be following ? Who's someone that deserves an ovation ?
Yeah , yeah , especially for this podcast .
I'm going to give an ovation to Preston Lee and he has a company called the 30% Rule which I've hired and he helps me with all of my front of house hospitality and really training almost training the staff , but training the trainers because that's the most important thing is who's training your staff and like , how are you training them to train your staff and
you continually train and retrain . That , for me , is a guy I'd like to give a shout out to , preston Lee . Uh , the 30% rule . Every restaurant has got to be taking their front of house seriously . It's the first touch point of the restaurant , before they even get the food . Hello , how are you ? Welcome to Irv's .
Welcome to Prince Street , welcome to wherever restaurant you are having that connection . Welcome to Moe's . Welcome to Moe's , Whatever it is he helps restaurants do that , so that's my shout out Awesome .
And now , Lawrence , where can people go to find and follow you and your brands ?
So me personally is at Big Shot B-I-G-S-H-O-T . And just so you know , I got that Instagram name not because of how it sounds , it's more . It was when I first joined Instagram . It was a filter app for photos , so I was going to take the big shot .
No way you legit have big shot . That is your legit Instagram . Yeah , that is nuts . Well , I am adding one to your 23,700 followers .
And I'm not awesome on Instagram personally , like I'm not . And then Prince Street Pizza Erzburgers Bar next door , underscore , underscore .
And then a new one on the other side of prince street , west hollywood's gonna be opening an ice cream shop called hall pass ice cream oh nice , yeah well , I don't forget about sparky sports bar oh , sparky sports bar in malibu . That's right . How do you forget ? I love that man . Because we're redoing our liquor license and everything .
It's been closed for a oh , sparky Sports Bar in Malibu . That's right . How do you forget it ? I love that man , because we're redoing our liquor license and everything . It's been closed for a couple of months and Malibu has been an absolute disaster . Oh yeah .
Oh geez , I love that you got that much stuff going on , though . Lawrence man , I'm so grateful you came on the podcast , and Lawrence , for showing us that you actually can't
¶ Ovations and Final Thoughts
find 30 hours in the day . Today's ovation goes to you . Thank you so much for joining us and give an ovation .
Thanks so much for having me . This was great Thanks for joining us today .
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