Episode 19 - Alan Magee
Jenifer Kern: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. And welcome to restaurants reinvented. This is Jen Kern. I'm your hostess for the show. And today we have a very special episode. I have a cohost with me today, Nico Pava Dimitrio our vice president of business development. Hello, Nico.
[00:00:40] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:00:40] Hi, Jennifer, how are you excited to be here today?
[00:00:43] Jenifer Kern: [00:00:43] Jennifer, are you kidding me?
[00:00:45] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:00:45] I'm trying to be formal.
[00:00:48] Jenifer Kern: [00:00:48] Let's go with Jen.
[00:00:49] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:00:49] All right, Jen.
[00:00:50] Jenifer Kern: [00:00:50] Welcome to the show, Nick, I'm really excited to have you here to cohost with me. Nico has been at Qu for quite a while. I think you were actually we not employee number single digit.
[00:01:00] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:01:00] Probably five ish, something like that. Yeah.
[00:01:03] Jenifer Kern: [00:01:03] So seven years you've been with Qu.
[00:01:06] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:01:06] Going on seven. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
[00:01:09] Jenifer Kern: [00:01:09] And before Qu you had a restaurant.
[00:01:12] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:01:12] I did, I started a restaurant and a nightclub in Washington, DC right downtown. And, that was a fun experience. I learned a lot. And before that I was in a past life, as I like to say I was an investment banker. But I was just the kid. I wasn't the one ruining our country, maybe with, back in the last crash that wasn't me.
[00:01:29] Jenifer Kern: [00:01:29] You're so much fun to work with Qu, so excited to have you here. And our very special guest today is Alan Magee from Church's Chicken. Alan is the VP of digital marketing and technology for Church's, Alan. Welcome.
[00:01:42] Alan Magee: [00:01:42] Hello. Thanks for having me, Jen and Nico. So excited to be here.
[00:01:46] Jenifer Kern: [00:01:46] So you've got the trio. this is a new thing for us. So you're like our test group.
[00:01:51] Alan Magee: [00:01:51] I love it. I love being part of the test group.
[00:01:53] Jenifer Kern: [00:01:53] Well for our listeners, one of the reasons that Nico's joining is because Nico and Alan have a relationship and have gone back for a couple of years and have known each other. I will probably be a little bit quieter than usual, so we'll see, we'll see. I don't want to make any promises.
[00:02:07] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:02:07] Don't hold yourself back. Do not hold yourself back.
[00:02:10] Jenifer Kern: [00:02:10] It's a tough one. It's a tough one. But Alan, were really excited to learn about you and what's going on at Church's so to give our listeners some background, can you talk to us about your experience, how you got in the restaurant industry, and then what brought you to where you are today at Church's?
[00:02:25] Alan Magee: [00:02:25] Yeah, happy to, I'd say my restaurant story started out when I was young. I grew up in Western New York, super small town. And at the age of 16, my first job Line Cook at McDonald's flipping burgers, making egg McMuffins, stocking the freezer. And so was doing it for a gas money, car money. And that got me into the restaurant industry.
[00:02:45] And then move on to down South to go to college at Clemson university, stayed in the industry, working on campus dining, waiting tables at Outback in the summer. And then ultimately after Clemson went to the university of Texas at Austin and earned a master's in advertising, focused on consumer insights, behavior, how we take those insights and turn them into advertising and action.
[00:03:07] From Austin moved East to Atlanta for my first job, is in the advertising world at Grey worldwide and had the honor of working on Bell South. So selling telecom.
[00:03:20] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:03:20] Yeah.
[00:03:21] Alan Magee: [00:03:21] and the account I was on was dial up and DSL internet So it was literally sending out CDs for people to get onto dialup
[00:03:29] Jenifer Kern: [00:03:29] Whoa insert mind blowing beam here
[00:03:36] Alan Magee: [00:03:36] Yes Yes it was right when DSL was coming out It was that the hot new technology of getting people on dial up or upgrading to DSL So after a couple of years in the agency world did a little bit of a Zig in my career and jumped over to the brand world with RVs Spent a couple of years with RVs really focused in product development So taking everything from insights it's with the culinary team to leading product testing and rolling out products and tested about 35 different products everything from sandwiches to shakes to turn overs everything under the sun And I'd say Really learned about how to plan calendars and work with franchisees one of my favorite things was making kids' meals toys and you'd be amazed at how complex making a 9 cent kid meals toy is it's pretty amazing And after RVs I took a little zag in my career and jumped over to intercontinent hotels group So parent company for holiday Inn crown Plaza hotel Indigo A whole slew of brands and worked in a variety of roles there some focused on business travel So how do we drive travelers in certain days of the week groups and meetings working with sales teams and really had the opportunity to get in deep into brand positioning media strategy because what's working with each of the individual brands with different targets different goals And we were able to flex with each of their budgets I was able to work on some cool sponsorships like helping run a PGA golf tournament and working with Ricky Fowler as a spokesperson and working with BMW motor sport So a variety of things and then shifted over to solely focusing on the crown Plaza brand Everything from marketing to guest experience design and then Digital innovation at the hotel So in hotel kiosks where people could check in without having to go to the front desk and how do we bring more digital innovation into the guest room and to the lobby Was a cool experience but the focus was on the Crowne Plaza brand turnarounds and I worked for a couple of years on a pretty strategic plan of how to turn the Crowne Plaza brand around versus the competition And so obviously we could do a whole other podcast just on that but a lot of great learnings across a number of different brands at different stages And from there then I decided okay I'm going to Zig back into restaurants And jumped over to focus brands and led the marketing team for most Southwest grill so 700 restaurant fast casual burrito concept So everyone loves the welcome to Moe's when you walk into a Moe's and the brand had abandoned a little bit of a sales decline and when I came in we were in the midst of a turnaround again So looking at everything from product to media strategy in restaurant experience And then also a bit focused was our double-down in digital We launched a loyalty program that was big for us And we changed what our overall social strategy was around and how we looked at all of our channels And so ultimately we did turn Mo's around and had a pretty good path And then this opportunity at Church's came up to go over to Church's and take the brand through a digital transformation And I've been there for two years now and it's been fun It's been challenging and we're making some significant progress on making the brand very relevant in the digital space
[00:06:56] Jenifer Kern: [00:06:56] I love it from dial up to digital
[00:06:58] Alan Magee: [00:06:58] Exactly
[00:06:59] Jenifer Kern: [00:06:59] I got my podcast title already That is a really fun and interesting career And I love how you described the Zig zagging right
[00:07:08] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:07:08] Which I like
[00:07:09] Jenifer Kern: [00:07:09] Yeah And now I know why you're such good friends with Nico because you've specialized in product development and customer insights and data and turnarounds It sounds like you talk about the digital transformation And so walk us through a little bit of what you're doing in that regard at Church's
[00:07:25] Alan Magee: [00:07:25] Yeah So at churches when I came at the end of 2018 the goal is how do we bring ourselves back to being relevant and competitive in the digital space knowing that it's so important for our guests whether it's for discovery whether it's for conversion it's at every step of their journey And we put ourselves on a three-phase journey that we built And I like to talk about it as a house The first phase was we were building the first floor of the house everything from a website relaunch really focused on the user experience and search relaunching our digital listings and knowledge revamping who are our MarTech partners who are our creative partners putting strategies in place And so building that strong base And then we went to year two which we called our calibration year And that was where we focused I'd say on the second floor of the home and where we looked at our CRM platforms we brought in new creative and targeting strategy started using data to drive to more personalized marketing I'd say really doubling down in social media And then also starting to do things like getting ready to launch a CDP So putting those things in place And the first two years of having this really strong base of a house that we can activate in marketing and 10 15 different ways and that's where the third phase goes to is how do we take this house and turn it into a smart home bringing in automation and data and really having really big business impact by being able to use this digital ecosystem that we built
[00:08:54] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:08:54] Amazing I'm so excited about it I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you right now Sorry I'm jumping in
[00:09:00] Jenifer Kern: [00:09:00] Go go It's all you Nico
[00:09:01] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:09:01] no it's just everything that you're talking about is just so exciting to me I'm not a marketer you and Jen are right we've already joked about this but I get so excited talking about this stuff I'm just going to jump in here So Alan talking about marketing I'm using air quotes for all you listening right Talking about marketing inside the restaurant Company today what are the business units that you have to be aligned with marketing What are the business units that are aligned with marketing today And where's the challenges there We all know that as we progress a brand forward as we move businesses forward you have to realign things Can you talk to us a little bit about how that happens for you at churches and how you've experienced that happening at the two three five different companies that you've pushed things forward at
[00:09:44] Alan Magee: [00:09:44] Yeah it's a really good question because it varies at different stages so for instance at Church's I'd say the four to five functions you've got the brand marketing team We've got our digital marketing organization it finance operations right They're all the spokes of the wheel And for a lot of things digital I say it's very much the try out of it Operations and digital marketing mainly because it has to implement a lot of things you want there but it has to tie to the point of sale there's a lot of data that we're talking about Operations on the execution side of stuff whether it's a delivery offer or an online ordering offer or something new that we're rolling out on the mobile app that's tying in restaurants And so typically that's I'd say is the triangle that's working closest on most of these initiatives our brand marketing team and finance they're in the loop on things but I'd say There's a little less of a translation between those parts of the organization but usually we're synced up on different initiatives
[00:10:44] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:10:44] So that you're taking the words out of my thoughts of my guesses as to how things work I mean I'm super glad to hear that triangle right is the digital marketing it And of course ops but what blockers do you experience realistically in trying to align all three of those parts of the organization Because there are certainly historically and that's a lot of what I'm going to be talking about here today and getting at it historically there's a lot of blockers between those parts of the organization Right So where do you realize those and how do you get past those blockers How do you come together as a team
[00:11:19] Alan Magee: [00:11:19] Yeah there's definitely blockers And as the restaurant industry is still pretty traditional in nature We're coming out with new products new LTOs you're focused on a lot of traditional things that have been around for 50 60 70 years And the digital is still relatively new especially as a focus in different organizations And so a lot of it comes down to figuring out I'd say the cadence of how it fits into the bigger scheme of things So if we've got an LTO product that's coming out Where do we then look at digital innovation of launching this pre or post and lining up with a lot of the same resources because the challenge that Every organization runs into is you only have so many resources and you only have so much time And so how can you set up a project that it fits inside of that kind of blocking calendar of other things that are running of the everyday business to continue to move forward Some of those are real quick and fast and some of those are slow and they take a lot of time so that's the way that at least I think about it It all comes down to the project management
[00:12:23] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:12:23] Yeah intro team alignment I guess the way that you can successfully project manage is by sort of evangelizing and getting folks on the team Because if people don't feel like they're part of the solution and that their input is something that legitimately contributes to where the company is going it's hard to get buy in later isn't it so from that perspective how do you and your team evangelize within the brand within the organization and especially when maybe you're taking something on that's a little bit more boundary pushing for the restaurant tech space which is historically a laggard dish of adopting new technology How does that work
[00:13:03] Alan Magee: [00:13:03] Yeah For me all comes down to the storytelling And like you said us in the digital marketing space we get into this tech talk all the time and we're using acronyms and we get kicked out by data and this and segmentation and targeting and integrations and APIs And what I've learned is how do we simplify what we're talking about for whether it's our partner teams our executives our franchisees and tell the story of what is it that we're solving for the consumer or how's this going to impact that consumer to make them visit more in the most simplest terms And then sharing okay this is what the business impact can be This is how we can actually track it This is how it makes us smarter and move more forward And then that middle space breaking down to these are the one to two to three things that need to get done And this is how you as our partner this is what we need from you to help accomplish those So it's all comes down to storytelling and it's taken me a while to discover that across different brands especially as you're working in an industry like this what digital is still very new for a lot of brands
[00:14:08] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:14:08] Yeah absolutely I appreciate that So speaking about some of those acronyms Just jumping right into the next piece here Look I get it We all want to get to the coveted one-to-one marketing right that's the Holy grail although I don't know is it I don't know we'll talk about this a little bit but maybe it's the Holy grail but we want to gauge our campaign's effectiveness by industry standards campaigns specific ROI and CAC and customer lifetime value and all of those great metrics that we all love to talk about But are we even here now today is the restaurant tech space here today is the restaurant operator here today Are those metrics that you and the industry have the ability to actually gauge today And if not what are you measuring here today And how do you get there
[00:14:54] Alan Magee: [00:14:54] Yeah I think we are there It is available And the challenge that I feel that most brands have is the technology is there It's more of having the people side to be able to then deliver on that technology on those pieces And so looking at things like customer lifetime value a lot of brands are looking back but you have to make sure you have the right data You've got the right insights to be able to then turn that into action This idea of one to one I do see that as the Holy grail I think that's ultimately where we are trying to take the brand is from this batch and blast one to many message You can't translate what you do on TV to what you do in digital because there's so many smarter ways to message and I like to say people don't dislike advertising They just want it more personalized And if you can personalize advertising to how they want to engage with your brand product time day part any of that then people are going to feel more invested in you as a brand because they're giving you their data They're giving you insights on their behavior and they're expecting your use it because Amazon and Netflix do it every single day with them And now they expect us it matter how big or small of a grand you are but this is my new expectation
[00:16:08] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:16:08] So you are there and you get it and your team gets it and maybe ops and IT because again this is the Trinity right The Holy Trinity gets it Where's the C suite on this is the C suite there or are you teaching and training within the organization Because digital marketing is still up and coming What does that look like Or has the Csuite react to this
[00:16:30] Alan Magee: [00:16:30] they react very positively Cause they do know that ultimately this is where we're going And looking across other industries like Hospitality and travel and retail This is where they're at So ultimately this is where the restaurant industry is moving towards where these other industries are a couple of years ahead of us And so they're very open to it I'd say there's a lot of learning sharing and breaking it down for what is the actual business impact of doing this If we can get to More personalized one-to-one marketing Does that improve conversion rate What does that conversion rate look to at actual dollars Are we driving more frequency So it's more on those backends metrics of how does this actually impact comp sales and the frequency of our guests
[00:17:13] Jenifer Kern: [00:17:13] Let me just ask a question Are you aligned with your C suite on what you're reporting on cause this is always a conversation with me and my C-suite right Like the metrics that your CEO and your C leaders are asking for are they the ones that you believe are the most important
[00:17:29] Alan Magee: [00:17:29] I think the big metrics yes 100% as you drill down and look at reporting of things like attribution and conversion metrics Those are things that I am And my team are really dialed into but it's how do I take that connection with that piece and then connect it to sales And that's where I think that line goes from C-suite down into the working teams and so I'm looking at 20 25 different metrics across everything And I'm trying to drill it up to what are the five to six for them And if there is a good story around something then I'm tying it down to that smaller metric
[00:18:04] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:18:04] So if the return is ultimately the biggest thing Sales increase And maybe if we want to take it a couple steps further sales of even better margin products and things like that Or of course I don't even want to say secondary but critical factors to driving top line sales growth right then So here's my Nico ding Dang I don't really understand entirely Okay I get most of the stories But loyalty Isn't every costumer in front of you And I don't literally mean sitting in front of you standing in front of you on the counter anymore We're in COVID I get it But in front of your brand the ones coming in through marketplaces the ones coming directly to your website the ones that are coming into the drive through lane or in the restaurant isn't that customer the most important customer at all times And if so how do the metrics that you're tracking the technologies that you're evaluating already using looking at using how do they help there Or am I off am I off And that's actually not the best most important customer
[00:18:59] Alan Magee: [00:18:59] no you're a hundred percent right Because if we have a customer that's already engaged with the brand whether they're online ordering whether they're in the drive-thru they're standing at the front counter that is the most important customer if we give them a great experience from service to digital experience to the food when they eat it they're ultimately going to return They're going to keep us in their consideration set They're going to build up more of an emotional connection They're going to those positive experiences Those people are going to tell more people about the brand that maybe haven't tried us for awhile So loyalty is a very big umbrella and the idea of When you say personal useful experiences is one of the two overarching pieces the other side of loyalty comes down to personalization And if you add those two things together it makes people very loyal to a brand
[00:19:48] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:19:48] Yeah that makes perfect sense And in the personalization part is the harder part right Isn't it it seems like that would be the harder part Now you have to marry up patterns and trends and benchmarking activities to individuals So that seems like that's the hardest part And so I wonder when I look at that and look my next question after this was going to be who's doing the coolest stuff right Because tell the world tell everybody they deserve to know But instead of spending so much time and effort trying to identify the user to map it up can we just identify trends across all of our channels and all of our sales patterns And if this customer whomever it is it doesn't matter if it's man woman tall short older or younger has this type of impact when we offer up these things across this channel in this date part in this geographic region Don't those become the things that work 90% of the time or 80% of the time And is that more valuable than linking up an identified customer across the internal benchmark to things Again I don't even know who's doing these things but you probably do
[00:20:51] Alan Magee: [00:20:51] so here's what I say to that It's all about the journey So you can go from one extreme of Batch and blast no segmentation same message same everything to everybody to the one to one And what you're talking about is in the middle of that journey Segmentation like attributes And we know that you're a weekend dinner customer at Church's so we're going to Send you a special offer around dinner So it helps conversion and it gets to some level of personalization So everything that I've read says if you can get to three levels of personalization that's where you turn the corner with a guest and the first level is easy that is you send them an email put their name in the email The second one is easy enough too Put their most recent story that they went to So it's not rocket science sharing with them If they like tenders versus bone in chicken or they get Mac and cheese versus a mashed potato So those pieces it's not that difficult to get to the personalization The one to one I do think is that Holy grail where if Nico you normally come in on a Thursday every Thursday for lunch or a Thursday every other week and we know we're launching a new product I don't want to send you an email on Monday I want to send you an email on Wednesday and do an app push on Wednesday and then SMS on Thursday Do you because I know that I want to make sure that you're going to make that visit or if you've missed a visit on that day how do I get you back Or how do I move you around the menu with a special offer to get you to try something else that you're going to come or that day that I think that you're more likely to come And so that's where the nuance goes from the segmentation to the one to one In my mind
[00:22:25] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:22:25] Yes Gosh I'm so glad that you're in marketing Now I see why it's the ability to create the intent right So if you know the intent before then you can communicate to I don't even want to say market so you can communicate to the intent And so then you have the whatever I'm sure everybody has the metrics on these things but two or 20 X higher Conversion because it's like Oh if I'm reminding you Wednesday afternoon and then hitting you Thursday morning and usually come on Thursdays then I know you have an 80% likelihood of coming in and buying that new thing today again I suppose it's good I'm talking to pros like you
[00:23:02] Jenifer Kern: [00:23:02] Hey can I ask a question I'm curious how would you grade yourself right now at Church's on delivering personalization or just the three aspects you talked about
[00:23:12] Alan Magee: [00:23:12] I'd say we're in the middle right now we're moving from the one to many to the one to some and some of it comes down to How much data we've had and data that we need to build And then who are those right partners that you need to add into your stack to be able to personalize becuase you need to have the base and then bring in one to two different partners that allow you to easily do that with the data that you have So it's a little bit on the tech side a little bit on the data side but we're in that one to some and our goal is in the next 12 to 18 months get to the as close to the one to one as possible
[00:23:42] Jenifer Kern: [00:23:42] Yeah Yeah And I love it I'm doing this today after talking to Aaron Levzow from Del taco last week Cause we were talking about this personalization and she was sort of refuting some of the common beliefs about segmentation and personalization and We were talking about baby steps Like it's really still baby steps for us as marketers And then Nico is not as attuned to hearing this for as long as we've been hearing it but we've been talking about personalization for so long and really it's very hard to do It's very hard to do and the larger your organization the harder it is really You think it's easier being larger because you have more budget and access to all the tech and the tools but it actually becomes more complex And we were talking about this like just making those baby steps And that's exactly what you're saying today too is like getting from the like one to many to the one to some And I love the way you laid out those three little points But I've been hearing cause I was a geek it out and you're talking Cause I been hearing so much too but don't just use tokens and like set it and forget it in your emails Cause if you don't check that stuff you'll be delivering Bob an email that says dear dad or Robert or whatever That's not quite the right thing So it's never easy Easy
[00:24:53] Alan Magee: [00:24:53] It's really not and I think there's this belief out there that the technology exists and the technology is supposed to make it easy And the technology enables but you really need to have smart digital folks who want to constantly evolve test and learn that have the right mindset that have to be in it on a daily basis to make the technology Really work as hard as it can because the technology just enables you to be able to do something And I think that's a little bit of the misbelief sometimes and when it comes to digital marketing and the technology that we have out there
[00:25:22] Jenifer Kern: [00:25:22] yeah and we still need humans Yeah today we still need humans Humans are valuable
[00:25:29] Alan Magee: [00:25:29] Yeah people are the most important part of that equation of getting the right people and I love to see in the restaurant issue we've got a lot of non restaurant marketers coming in in leadership roles and CMOs and VPs of digital and even at the manager level And they're coming in from retail and B2B and hospitality and they're bringing those learnings And I think that's one of the big waves that's going to be happening in the next year so it was all these learnings from other industries that now are getting applied to traditional brands That's going to just catapult them forward in a lot of this digital thinking
[00:25:59] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:25:59] Absolutely Absolutely So on the personalization front right Clearly the only way that you get there is through data So that kind of transitions us into the data question which we've already been dancing around in every single question Common answer so far clearly but before we just dump dive head into data I want to take a quick step back and bear with me here for a minute Cause I'm gonna off here but
[00:26:21] Jenifer Kern: [00:26:21] go
[00:26:22] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:26:22] so change management right we're coming up with new technologies that we can implement in restaurants so that we can affect some baby steps along the way to get to personalized experiences and one-to-one But The change management piece of implementing either app or multiple new technologies in a large organization is maybe the hardest part And we touched on again when I'm calling the Holy Trinity ops marketing and it we talked about evangelizing and alignment But I'm going to give an example here So I'm SAP and I'm selling an ERP system to Ford Okay I walk into that meeting and it's a six months or three year sales cycle or whatever not too dissimilar from a lot of larger programs that are being sold into large restaurant chains and they walk in there and SAP says okay we do this for a living we've already sold you quote unquote on moving over to our ERP and we do this for a living We've done this a hundred times in the last five years and you haven't changed your ERP in 15 years or maybe never right Maybe you don't even have an ERP system that's entirely possible and so I think is lacking in the industry is the ability for restaurant technology vendors to be assertive now not aggressive nobody likes or wants that Please Goodness Everybody listens but to be assertive and to say instead of being demure and afraid of the customer in a way if I push here or if I say this there might be tension in the conversation Oh gosh I don't want tension I want everybody to have smiles and handshakes in a pre postcode world but how do we get to a place where the change management aspect can be helped and aided by more so by the vendor And then here's the big one is what's the role of the client in this change management and what organizations Own that And how does that work that's a self-serving question How would we do this How do we do it
[00:28:16] Alan Magee: [00:28:16] that's a very loaded question Nico I'm okay with assertiveness and take a lot of sales calls from marketing technology companies agencies partners And you kinda have to approaches One is they're going to tell you here's what you're not doing and here's what you're missing out on And that does work because a lot of times you're in your four walls and maybe you're not paying attention to where that opportunity is So I'm very open to that Cause I want to know where my holes are where my gaps are where those opportunities are The other part is I see a lot of today is let me understand what you're doing Okay Here's what we can do what we can do better than what you have today But when I have those conversations I look at it and go it's maybe incrementally better or what you're selling me I really don't feel like it's better and that really doesn't move the needle And so I'd rather have I have a comparison of This is the opportunity Hey this is something that we're doing with Dunkin donuts that's allowed them to do X Y and Z or some other brand And give me those examples or do a comparison of saying this is why you guys need this to compete with these two competitors who we already know are doing this or are ahead of you in some way And so that awareness needs to be shared versus a traditional Let me find out your needs and tell you why I have a better mouse trap
[00:29:34] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:29:34] Yeah that's enlightening very valid suppose it's the delivery of the value Clearly We all know that that way forever But maybe it's also if I'm paraphrasing a little bit of what you were saying earlier in the response maybe it's also Making sure to reframe part of the conversation right Not just to walk in and say Hey me and my peers again on the tech side me and my peers do these things And I do these even better because but instead to say okay fine Yeah Most of what we do is commoditize There are three or 30 other companies that do similar things but here's some a tangible examples of peers of yours So it becomes valuable to you and how that's achieved return whatever that return or also Hey have you thought about this other thing Have you realized this other thing that I've realized because I've talked to 30 brands like you and maybe I had an enlightening moment so yeah Okay Very very insightful
[00:30:27] Jenifer Kern: [00:30:27] but Nika can I ask you or I mean this is for both of you really because I thought where you were going there with that question was a little bit more along the lines of I mean I heard you first saying some of the onus is on vendors tech companies for helping with the change management But there's some resistance from the restaurant industry operators or maybe it's not resistance Maybe it's just not knowing right That okay We've got this new tech thing coming or digital channels by the way that everyone's out acquiring all these digital little tools right now or big tools how is that going to impact Short term near term long term business growth in revenue How's that going to shift and that change management piece of it That's what I'm curious as coming from a B2B background and mostly in just software where we do have a coupling of managed services much tighter than what I've seen in the restaurant industry And I'm wondering if does there need to be a shift in how we talk about change management and technology adoption
[00:31:26] Alan Magee: [00:31:26] think so As we know a lot of traditional thinking still and change management is starting to happen You're seeing it a lot of brands and Like I said as people come in from out of industry I think that's going to be easier conversations but there still is a lot of focus on what is going what is happening at the brick and mortar or restaurants And so how does this Technology or the solution or this service how does it support that restaurant but also the longer term picture of how it's going to be driving sales and turning an ROI and simplifying operations all those various things you've gotta be able to take it two to three layers to make that connection Sometimes it doesn't get past that first layer I think that's where people get hung up but if you can make it I get that connection all the way through then it falls down to the brand And how can you make sure you evangelize that because you know that it can be a game changer for your brand
[00:32:17] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:32:17] across the Trinity Cause you're not doing the Trinity internally and if the vendor can't identify And create value to each of the legs of that trial Then you've sold into one and you get blocked by the others and it's not even their fault how could anybody be excited about something they don't even know about that they didn't get buy into Right
[00:32:37] Alan Magee: [00:32:37] Oh yeah it just happens all the time We'll be talking about some different solutions and it's something that maybe get really geeked out about and operations says what about this and that And so I'm maybe geeked out about the marketing piece but if we want to add something into the stack that solves on that I need to figure out how it also solves for one to two other things on the operations side of the restaurant Or making sure that it plugs and plays with what our it team is doing So I'm not bringing something in that's gonna take a full resource away from our it team So things like that I think you hit the nail on the head Nico about how do you make sure that checks the box for all three in the triangle
[00:33:14] Jenifer Kern: [00:33:14] Yeah
[00:33:15] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:33:15] Yeah So speaking of layers right if we want to talk about what I'm calling here with Jen creators right So cool things You said if I get geeked out about something that comes in maybe there's some I dunno some new channels somehow or another some evolving young channel that maybe churches or a restaurant brand can be first to market on or early to market on and maybe it's only gonna represent a fraction of a percent of revenue of the organization out of the gate but these are things that you want to make some bets on right You want to plant some seeds you want to get with some winners and you want to have a blend of it All right But as you create more of these Layers the layers of the onion the data creators doesn't that get to or can't that get to untenable ecosystem in the future So to your point making sure it plays with it and making sure ops has buy-in But how how do restaurant technologists I mean on our side I mean in the restaurant in the brand how do they this How do you get to a place of where you can get data from most of your channels or all of them
[00:34:17] Alan Magee: [00:34:17] there's a way and it has to start from the base of the build so that was something very the proposal that we did when we started our digital transformation is looking at we had a couple different I'd say silos of disparate data some of it from CRMs from web from point of sale all of this and they're all living in five to 60 different silos And it is a big challenge of saying how do we put them into one infrastructure where it all lives and I don't know that there is one place where you're going to be able to have all that live but if you can get to a universal we've got two universes of data and they have distinct purposes for it So whether it's a CDP with with your own customer data is able to pull in a lot of those different metrics to understand personalization behavior insights and then maybe there's other data that's more around whether it's your web metrics your paid digital marketing all these other aspects you can meet with them together and that's okay And that's where the people side of it comes in as being able to look at these different things these different data sets and for insights out of them that you can turn into action but we purposely did that saying whatever we do from a partner data perspective we need you to be able to plug and play And that's where I think this idea of more open source networks is going to be growing in restaurants And most restaurants I've had very close source networks historically but this idea of every partner I want to bring in they've got to plug and play with at least two other partners in the stack or else it's not worth me having a conversation with you And that way you can pull off of the data that's coming from these various channels And so think you've got to be very purposeful in that build but I don't know that you ever get to all living in one data Lake per se
[00:36:00] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:36:00] I love that because I think what I'm hearing is that Maybe getting beyond the how do I normalize my data And instead saying if I'm just going to normalize data if that's the effort if it's creating abstract layers and creating all these algorithms to normalize my data and whatnot I'm going to drop off along the way and it's going to take a long time and a lot of effort So instead if I make a more purposeful move if I think 20 steps ahead and then go implement as you already articulated a three year plan to get there And I can be in a position where I can work have one or two or three main data It's already normalized right You don't even have to go through the exercise And so that kind of tees up my other question which is what's more important 40% of your greater data ecosystem that you can access and derive insights off of instantly or within 24 hours Or 99.3% of it that you don't really know what it says until 30 or 90 days later what's important is pass the time to the vision it play into this ecosystem
[00:37:07] Alan Magee: [00:37:07] my mind is the 40% in real time And that the restaurant industry moves so fast that you want to be able to action on real time data based on something that's happening from a consumer behavior change based on something that's happened from a product change anything that's going on out there And been in larger organizations and say that has went across a lot of larger orgs is data rich and insight poor And there's a lot of big ones Saturday They had a rich they have more data than you could ever spend time with but there's zero insights and you're still just going off of your gut And so I'd rather have what I know is solid truthful data even if it is for 40 or 50% of our customers or our channels but at least I know that it's real time And then it's something that I can action upon versus looking back at the time you look back after 30 or 60 days that data is old and you're not gonna be able to action on it for another 60 days And you don't know what's going to happen in this next few days before you turn it around
[00:38:05] Jenifer Kern: [00:38:05] Yeah love where you guys are going here this is such a rich conversation These are the conversations I feel like we need to be having so thank you Allen You know the data again it's another one of them like to use your hyperbole or overused acronyms in the industry Like we talk about like single view of the guest I'm guilty myself and as marketers we push ourselves so hard and sometimes in while you were talking out and I was like Yeah we don't need all the data Like why do we always think we can get all like we'd need all the data because we tend to be like marketers tend to be perfectionist stop that not that Jen like we actually don't need all the data Like you're saying we need a portion of it but I totally agree with you Cause I'm a consumer We all are Right But I'm like out there all the time like fast casual QSR and Dang things are shifting all the time too right now let me just get this out of my head and this is a new dilemma for marketers by the way So I go to Starbucks this morning Which Sorry I can call them out It's okay It's okay And by the way I used to never even drink coffee until the pandemic
[00:39:06] Alan Magee: [00:39:06] Oh wow
[00:39:08] Jenifer Kern: [00:39:08] Yeah This is how I'm getting my guests This is how I'm getting my breasts experiences I love to go I'm like the prototypical experience junkie Like I love to go into a place I talked to the people I want to sip the coffee while I'm standing there do know what I mean I no longer actually I did not feel like the most important person there cause I do go in cause it just right down the street but going in now and standing there So think of this in the churches world and this isn't only just happening at Starbucks I go in I place now Cause I think maybe I'll get served faster but actually it's the other way around I'm watching all the digital I'm in a queue I'm in a cube behind everyone else And even though I got the nitro that comes right out of the tap that the person that took my order at their register could have turned around and just done it for me I waited like 15 minutes
[00:39:51] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:39:51] You're first in line and last in line
[00:39:54] Jenifer Kern: [00:39:54] again went on a little digression part on AWA but talking about everything you've been talking about the data the experience the most important customer How do you balance all that
[00:40:05] Alan Magee: [00:40:05] it's tough It's a very tough balancing act the idea of digital of making things so much easier being able to order ahead And haven't regulated there It's great when it works But when it doesn't work you're just as dissatisfied if not more dissatisfied right Because the promise has been made that you're getting this special that you're special because you're ordering I have the people that weren't smart enough that are waiting in line and so the restaurant has to execute on operations And you're in a physical restaurant He's always going to run into hurdles there It could be something where product's not ready or you get a big order We deal with it in the drive through where it takes us 16 minutes to make our fried chicken Cause handmade is hand breaded and you might have two or three cars come through the order of 20 pieces and it wipes out the restaurant And they're having to cook and so if you just ordered at the front counter then Oh sorry you've had to wait 15 minutes Like that's a dissatisfier so that's myself or online ordering Yeah you're going to order ahead it helps solve that restaurant knows that they need to be putting more chicken down so that your chicken is ready when you get there But it also it better be ready because you've got this higher expectation that when you walk in it's going to be waiting there on the counter for you so it is a major challenge it can be a huge pleaser or a huge dissatisfier just like every other experience with restaurants
[00:41:18] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:41:18] Yeah absolutely And today with whatever 10 channels or more it's exponentially more difficult right for 50 years QSR had two channels walk in and drive through
[00:41:30] Alan Magee: [00:41:30] Yeah It's a stressful on the cruise they've got tablets they've got technology they've got orders coming every which way And they're still tasked with Being friendly making sure the food's up and ready everything's in the bag closing orders out the restaurant operations piece is getting more complex on a daily basis and technology can only do so much to solve the people side of it
[00:41:52] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:41:52] I actually want to end right there on this data because that's the most of many salient points I think Alan that you just gave us it's the people I don't think there could be a more truthful statement than that so non-sequitur what's your moonshot like you're Alan McGee single brand luxury brand hotel rebrand and across the entire stack Way to reengage you've done great story brands and help turn them around like Moe's and others you've worked for the biggest of the best biggest And here you are leading digital marketing and technology for a StoryBrand in American food and globally in American food not just in America What's the moonshot What's the Alan McGee moonshot
[00:42:34] Alan Magee: [00:42:34] I love working with challenger brands and you know that's a little bit all those brands you just called out They're all challengers And there's something about Being in that challenger space of having to try to get to the mountain top beat your competition and being I have a tackle that whether it's a small brand it's a legacy brand like churches it's a new brand that's growing that's the piece that excites me the idea of being able to build and to say how can we Elevate where this brand is today to really be competing with who's at the top of the mountain And that's what I love And I think that's why I keep moving across these different experiences
[00:43:09] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:43:09] So then follow up to that I'm going to remove real time or near time data access from as an answer So you can't say near time or real time data access but what's stopping you or what's the biggest challenge in the challenger brand to go in write a new story moving forward other than data near time or real time data access
[00:43:28] Alan Magee: [00:43:28] I'd say for a lot of challenger brands it's changed management and thinking it really isn't and it starts at the top And for us with Joe Christina who is our CEO he has that and he's been taking the brand through a lot of change management and Having a big longterm vision that is and most brands I've been to is around like a three year journey It's not something that you can do in six months or a year And you've got to set and prioritize at each stage of that journey and they have to build And so starting at the top exactly Buy in getting the right people in there that Are going to have the right mindset that are going to grind that are going to push where the brand needs to go and be able to elevate it and take it there And it usually that's what needs to happen if you keep doing the same thing over and over again you're not going to make any progress And those are brands that may talk about trying to compete or challenge more But they're really not doing anything different You have to do different things and have different strategies to be able to get there and take some bets
[00:44:23] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:44:23] I like that take some bets Absolutely it's like a bottoms up pre-work exercise than a top down buy in and then a bottom up execution which takes three years
[00:44:35] Alan Magee: [00:44:35] Yeah it takes time It takes time You can have a lot of short wins but also you need to have some slow success And I feel like that's the recipe right there
[00:44:45] Jenifer Kern: [00:44:45] yeah It's good stuff guys
[00:44:47] Alan Magee: [00:44:47] Yeah
[00:44:49] Jenifer Kern: [00:44:49] Hey do you have time for a quick lightning round
[00:44:51] Alan Magee: [00:44:51] Sure Of course
[00:44:53] Jenifer Kern: [00:44:53] Okay I know we're coming up on our hour I'd love to know what the best career advice you were ever given was
[00:44:59] Alan Magee: [00:44:59] Oh geez best career advice I would say goes back to my career a little bit of keep adding tools to your toolbox always focusing on developing no matter where you're at have a PDP have mentors and carve out time whether it's 30 minutes a week to work on your personal development plan no matter what that is and make it a habit
[00:45:19] Jenifer Kern: [00:45:19] There you go Love it Commonly held belief in the restaurant marketing field Do you passionately or maybe just somewhat disagree with
[00:45:28] Alan Magee: [00:45:28] Oh gosh think Nico's going to like this one but it's disbelief that points equals loyalty and there's a lot of points based loyalty programs that have been rolled out the last six seven years And A lot of brands feel like this is a silver bullet We're going to put points in and it's a silver bullet and we have loyalty Now It's not loyalty All points are is a digitized way of a consumer punch card That's lived for 50 years and you're teaching your customer to take a discount points is an incredible lever to have a points based loyalty system like a brand like Starbucks you use it but you need to have Data driven insights You need to have the right channels and then really focused on behavioral and personalized marketing And that's where points can really shine but it's not a one and done solution that a lot of brands thought it was a couple of years ago
[00:46:16] Jenifer Kern: [00:46:16] what's the biggest challenge facing restaurant marketers today
[00:46:20] Alan Magee: [00:46:20] I would say the biggest challenge is keeping up with consumer expectations and you hear a lot about this the Amazon the Netflix effect that consumers expectations and the way they use digital is moving at a lightning speed faster than we can keep up with And so being able to stay on top of what is next and what those expectations are is as tough
[00:46:41] Jenifer Kern: [00:46:41] Yeah I was thinking a lot about the gen Z would you guys were talking to earlier too because they're the ones they say they're born into the personalized Netflix world And they're the ones that have the biggest Netflix effect in how we're going to see that lightning speed continued increase as they age what's the biggest opportunity that restaurant marketers have right now
[00:46:59] Alan Magee: [00:46:59] think there's two big opportunities One is I'll call it the functional side it's using data and getting to data driven marketing versus channel driven marketing And so that's the biggest on the functional side it's there Like we talked about find the 40% figure out how to use that to create insights to then turn that into your activation
And the emotional side of it I think there's a huge opportunity especially in the state of affairs that we're at today inside a COVID of time was your community's restaurants are such at the core of neighborhoods and communities And we talk a lot about the citruses we've been in certain communities for almost 70 years and restaurants have to give back to the communities give to that restaurant But right now is the time that restaurants really need to be focused on how they can support their communities where they're really in need
[00:47:46] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:47:46] So I want to add one last sort of tangent off that last one because I was going to ask a question and then you went right to it Anyway Alan So serving the communities getting back to the people Jen you talked about The second to last question You talked about the identifying and engaging at the gen Z gen all of the younger folks the world I hear just as a near 40 year old guy that in order to engage with younger folks today it's not the cool branding or marketing that it's been for the last 10 or 50 years or whatever It's emotional only time to them And Alan you said emotion right So it's making them want to engage your brand through what your brand means as opposed to what your brand says So how do you do that today Can you expound on that a little bit How do you do that
[00:48:30] Alan Magee: [00:48:30] it's a challenge you have to stand for something you can't stand for everything You've got to give them great experiences for us it's the food it's the experiences It's what we're doing to tie with different community organizations and supporting various activities that are around our restaurants Like for instance I'll give one example And social media and in San Antonio we partnered with our franchisee and because one of the high school and a very underserved community they had canceled graduation and we said we feel like they should have a graduation And we did a drive through graduation and we found three students that were top of their class first to go to college in their family and surprise them They thought they were on some surprise video documentary And they came through at churches and we had personalized merchandising with their face congratulations way to go their favorite meal And then their principal was in the drive through giving them a diploma And also we partnered with our franchisee on a scholarship for them And it's one of those things where you can get back to your community And yes that's great social content but also it's something that we can do to support And so there's fun and really engaging ways that support both the brand and the community to tie together
[00:49:44] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:49:44] is beautiful that is intimately beautiful I
[00:49:47] Jenifer Kern: [00:49:47] I love that
[00:49:49] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:49:49] about that or know about that and that is just a really truly special and beautiful thing to do I love it
[00:49:54] Jenifer Kern: [00:49:54] That's the power though right That's the power of it And we always have to be careful like the balancing act right we spent most of the time talking about the data And listen to that that's really creative and that's doing the right thing That's that purpose driven approach
[00:50:06] Alan Magee: [00:50:06] yep you've got to have the functional and the emotional and all the things you do and how can you tie them together
[00:50:11] Jenifer Kern: [00:50:11] Fantastic Alan you've been such a gracious guest here today Putting up with both me and Nico
[00:50:18] Alan Magee: [00:50:18] I've enjoyed it
[00:50:20] Jenifer Kern: [00:50:20] This has been so much fun before we close I always like to make sure Is there anything you want to promote Any LTO is coming up any shout outs you want to give around to your brand your team your community before we wrap
[00:50:32] Alan Magee: [00:50:32] Yeah couple of quick shout outs So one shout out to our super talented church's team and all of our technology agency partners they're so focused They're driven We're a very small but very scrappy group It was accomplished a lot of big things across all of our organization and the second shadow also is a game changer for us it's coming out next week So by the time this airs it'll be live And I can't say what it is but I'll see say it's everything you love about churches between two buns and it's one of the best in this product category that I've tasted so I'm excited because I'm going to be getting it from delivery or swinging by my local churches to get this a lot so be on the lookout come next week for some exciting news from us
[00:51:16] Jenifer Kern: [00:51:16] Nico We gotta take a road trip
[00:51:18] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:51:18] I'm actually going to leave here and hop in the car pretty soon And until I am I drive for days
[00:51:26] Jenifer Kern: [00:51:26] dude Oh this is so exciting This is so exciting
[00:51:29] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:51:29] my mouth actually just started watering a little bit
[00:51:33] Jenifer Kern: [00:51:33] I did it last week Don't tempt me I got in the car and went down to fuzzies tacos and Charlottesville Cause I was like I gotta go try
[00:51:42] Oh Alan's such a pleasure Thank you again so much for your time All of our best to you at churches We're really excited to see where you're going to do next and closing comments to my cohort Nico
[00:51:56] Nico Pava Dimitrio: [00:51:56] I was just gonna thank you so much Alan for the time and the back and forth and for helping teach me a new things I couldn't agree more on the PDP tip the personal development plan these kinds of things for me personally are what get me excited to be in the world So thank you Alex Thanks Jen Yeah thank
[00:52:15] Alan Magee: [00:52:15] you both It's been a pleasure I really enjoyed that
[00:52:18] Jenifer Kern: [00:52:18] All right thanks to all of our great listeners out there to Come back next week. We'll get more juicy stuff for you.