This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast.
I thank you guys out there for joining us it's always fun to get on the air and and learn about entrepreneurs and the different things that they are doing and today Is no exception I'm grateful for the opportunity to come out to you guys out on the on the web once a week and And deliver some some some new new and exciting tech and today I am excited to talk to somebody that i've known Just about a year now by the time we're recording this, probably by the time that that the post comes out, he
and I got a chance to meet last year through a mutual connection. And now I've got him on the show because I'm excited to to share a little bit about what he's doing. And I promise you, I'm going to, I'm going to hack his name and, and I apologize in advance, but Kamyar why don't you introduce yourself to our audience a little bit, and then we'll talk a little bit about kind of what you get to do in the world of of labor and, and human resource management.
Thank you, Jeremy, for that opportunity and looking forward to it. Yes, this is Kamiar Faron. I'm a founder and CEO of TalentTroll and Zipyap. TalentTroll is the parent company and Zipyap is the product of TalentTroll company. So here we are.
I love it. I love it. So talk to me a little bit about you know, I guess your background. Tell me, you know, for our audience that might not be familiar, if not engaged with you personally, give me a little bit about your background. Cause I know at least when I learned about it, I was like, Oh, this guy's got an interesting background and kind of the where, where he came from and how yeah.
Well, it's always fun to hear kind of entrepreneurs and how did they get to where they got to, because it's, you know, I mean, I had somebody on the show probably about a year ago that was in art school and had some friends that were in the restaurant and he was doing historical art from the mid. You know, 19th century or whatever. And he had somebody that wanted to figure out how to make sure the dishes got prepared properly in the front of the house.
And so they came in and he started doing photography to help with these things. So these entrepreneurial stories, you know, always are intriguing to me and to our audience, quite frankly, when I hear about them. So I'd love to know a little bit about your background for our audience. Cause they they do seem to enjoy it when I get the feedback on social media.
Yeah, sure. I'm, you know, I'm I love technology. It's I've been a geek all my life, basically. And really love restaurants as well. And you know, have always Dabbled with technology in the restaurant industry, but my passion was really deep technology. And I always was involved in very sort of deep technical stuff. And back in actually much younger age in 1992, I did the one of the very first third party delivery systems in the restaurant, you know, before the internet actually, yeah, yeah.
And, you
Was faxes? We're faxes coming through that.
well, believe it or not. Yes, we were faxing things. We were faxing orders to the restaurants. We had pagers at that time that we would page things to.
That's
it was, yeah, it was a totally different thing. And it was Actually, it was a successful journey. We sold that company and then, you know, I went and did other things. In 2012, 13, I was really interested in more hiring and helping people with managing their careers. So I realized that there is a. big gap in restaurants, retail, hospitality, uh, in regards to hiring and the way people apply for jobs.
You know, it's back in you know 2012, 13 still you had to either walk into a restaurant to get a paper application or even go to Indeed, or somewhere to apply for a job, fill out a form, and it was really chaotic and a very difficult process. And then, you know, the very high turnover you know, people had accepted the high turnover in the food service industry. And I realized that really there is no good solution.
So I brought my technical background and you know, understanding of the market together of the restaurant market of the hiring market together and you know, started talent troll. And then we, for helping people. Really streamline their hiring process and then develop Zippy app as a product to actually take that process to a totally different level in terms of streamlining and facilitating the hiring process.
I love
So that's the background.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that background because, and it's ironic because we're in 2023, we're recording late in 2023. The problem still hasn't gone away. It may have even gotten worse. It seems like, you know what I'm saying? I mean, you're going back 10 years, 11 years that you, you developed this consulting firm that, you know, or, or this firm to help people understand that.
I guess having been in this space for over 10 years, help me understand what, what are you, what are some of the biggest mistakes before we start talking about product? When you look at the restaurant industry, why is it, you know I think it's. I've said this on the show a few times my understanding is, is that the restaurant industry is second only to the government as far as number of people that they employ in the United States.
And at the same time, the turnover, people will accept 100, 200, 300 percent turnover in certain job positions within the restaurant. But then they don't really have a good system to get people onboarded.
You know, and you know, we've had other people, their guests on the show about how to get people up to speed once they've onboarded them, but why do you think, and what have you found in your experience over the last 10 plus years of people, why is it that they're struggling to bring people in because there's tons of opportunity, there's tons of opportunity, but at the same time, without the right, go to market, you're going to struggle. And I know that's why you guys help people with that.
Excellent question. You know, what I really liked about what you just said was that people have accepted that high turnover, 100, 200, 300 percent turnover. It is exactly the case. And the fact that they have accepted it is the problem. You know, because, you know, if you say, okay, fine, I'm going to have 300 percent turnover, therefore, let me just throw more money at it, you know, but it doesn't have to be that way.
You know if it is a business problem, let's go to the root of that problem and understand why do we have 300 percent turnover? 300 percent turnover means that your entire staff Gets replaced three times in one year, you know,
Oh, I know. But, but I'm sure you can go to stories of, of people that have that high of turnover and the cost is astronomical when you look at training and onboarding and, and benefits and bringing people on and getting up to speed. Not to mention the brain reputation that you lose because, you know, I mean, that, that's, that's probably numbers that are hard to, to measure, I guess. Is it because the, the, the industry is old enough that, that people just say, this is what we've always done.
So we're always going to do it that way. Is that kind of what you hear?
that's that's what we hear. But, you know, again, as business owners and as entrepreneurs, we're always looking at, okay, what is the source of the problem?
Uh huh.
the source of the problem is not that people don't want to do hard work, you know, people have done always done hard, hard work, you know it's if you overpay or underpay, you know, so it is not The type of work, it is not the, the pay because market determines, you know, it's free market, market determines what the going rate is, you know, so it is really something else that is driving the turnover, okay?
And it is getting to the root cause of turnover and understanding why is it that people don't stay? at a job. Yes, we understand the nature of the job is that, okay, yeah, these are transient, you know, you're basically looking for a job, summer job, whatever it is, you know, you want to work for a few hours a week, whatever, and for a short period of time, and then you will go. But it is it shouldn't be the, the norm. It should be the exception that that is the case.
You need to have that infrastructure of your, for example, you know, the leaders and, and the core of the people, and then yes, seasonal, seasonality and adjustments should come and go and as needed, but not accepting the thing as the you know as the norm. And when you ask people really, why did you quit your job, you know, that's, that's actually a very poignant question that you ask, you know, somebody who leaves and you say, why did you leave this job?
often ask, you know, when you ask them that question of the employers, you ask that question, they say that, oh, because pay schedule, so on and so on and so forth. But actually, when you do the survey and ask people, people quit their bosses. More, more than they quit for their pay and, you know, schedule. So if that is the answer, you know, if people quit their bosses, maybe we need to fix that problem.
Yeah. Well, and I think, and I think it's I mean, I. I read the articles you read, you know, Forbes will put out an article, you know, top 10 reasons people leave a job. And number one always ends up being their direct supervisor. I had somebody say something to me one time when I had somebody that was pretty key to me leave. And it really hit me hard. She, she happened to be a restaurant person. She said, you know, people don't quit.
Jobs, they quit bosses and, and I had just had somebody that had quit on me. And, and I took it to heart to say, I never want somebody to quit because I didn't give them an opportunity. And at the same time, I think even oftentimes those middle managers don't have the training. They don't have the understanding, they don't have the onboarding. So they didn't have the capability to get those people. And so I guess, can you talk a little bit about what that, what that looks like? Because I think.
People want to do a good job. Inherently. I have this belief and I have a fundamental belief that people want to do the right thing and they want to do a good job. I think I think there's a very small percentage of people in the world that are bad people that don't want to do a good job. I think the vast majority of people want to do the right thing, but aren't led to do that. And so training and onboarding is very, very critical to ensure that they have success.
those things and showing a path for that staff member that might be 18, might be 25, might be 35, that training and that onboarding that says there's a path for you to get to your next level and to get to successful. Talk to me a little bit about through, through your 10 plus years working in this space. Because I'm, I, I know already from knowing you prior to that, you've done this successfully. You help brands repeat this and, and, and understand that.
So. Talk me through kind of what that onboarding and training looks like for you in the businesses that are doing it well and where you see the challenges with those that don't do it well.
Yeah, I, I really like what you said about people. People are by nature good and by nature people want to do the right thing. It is just the few that, you know, for whatever reason, you know, they're not doing their best. Okay. So people in general are good. If somebody is lacking in something, it's because they don't know better.
Okay. And, you know, once you train people and tell, you know, show them the better way to do it in the right way, in a respectful way, in a caring way, people learn, people want to do better. This is our nature. I mean, this is survival.
Yeah, yep.
So we want to do better. So by really providing, as you pointed out, onboarding and the proper training for people, we really can create a work atmosphere that is inviting. Yes. Working in a restaurant is hard, but it can be respectful. It can be a pleasant place, despite. It's not the only place that is hard to work, you know, there are a lot of places, you
Well, and I worked, I worked in restaurants all through high school and college, and the days would go by so fast because you build such camaraderie. You were in the trenches with these people. But again, to your point, I think, and when we, when I look at the most respected brands out there, you know, I think back about the McDonald's movie that they talked about building these systems and processes.
And then I look at brands like Chick fil A and In N Out, which, Do such a good job of ensuring that their staff members know how to do it. And then I think back about a story. One of my team members had his son had gotten a job at a a wing concept. And I'm not going to mention names, but he had gotten a job at a wing concept. They gave him five minutes of training. They handed him one sheet of paper and says, throw the wings on the fryer. And when they're done, pull them up, push this button.
And that was the extent of it. He lasted less than six weeks at that job because. He didn't see any value in what it was that he was doing. And he had no training. Again, I think that you talked about the acceptance of, of this, it's hard to do, but the benefits strongly outweigh the, the, the, the detriment of spending that time to ensure that you've got the proper onboarding and the proper training.
I guess, you know, in general and the, and the proper systems, you know, to, to ensure that it's getting done properly and the, and the checks and balances. You're not just beating up on somebody when they didn't do it properly, but you're also teaching them. What did you do wrong with that? That, you know, that, that, you know, 12 pack of wings and what, what was going on? You know?
So talk to me a little bit about, about how you've helped throughout this process over the last number of years in your talent show or talent central. I guess I, I, I keep saying, you know, talk to me a little bit about what that looks like. Talent trawl. Tell me, tell me how you guys go into these brands and help people understand that because retaining good employees is critical to being successful in today's day and age and getting them to do the things you want them to do.
We help organizations in through talent roles, practices, management, consulting. We help organizations build what we call employer brand. Because if you look at it you know, restaurants. Build a brand, you know the number one asset is a brand, you know, a couple of brands you mentioned Chick fil a In N Out Burger and so on. They have built a brand. Not only they have built a brand, you know, the moment you say, Hey, I want a, I want a chicken sandwich.
Okay, the first thing that comes to your mind is Chick fil a. Okay and you know, my Daughters love In N Out Burger. They live on the East Coast. There is no In N Out Burger The first thing they do when they come to California is go to In N Out they have built a brand for a consistent food consistent experience quality of food and Everything like that. So that brand is something that they consciously built and they work on every aspect of that brand.
In order to really have that brand deliver on its promise, you need to have an employer brand behind it. And the employer brand just as what that logo stands for. That logo stands for the type of employer that you are as well. Because, you know, it is a very, you know, these businesses are local businesses, you know a particular. Chick fil a location, whatever, you know it is within a 20, 30 mile radius tops that people come into that.
Okay. Yeah. Chick fil a is a great brand nationwide, but the employees of that particular location come from a 20, 30 mile radius tops,
Yes, at the most, at the most,
at the
and probably, probably less where you live and probably less where I moved from because traffic and all of that, you
Exactly. Exactly. Much, much smaller it is. And guess what? These people run into each other again. It's not like this is the only job that this person has, you know, and he or she comes into this location only for this job and they're out of this industry. No people who work in restaurants, they usually have two or three jobs. You know, they work at another restaurant and that employer brand. is what they carry with them.
You know, guess what are they talking about on their lunch break or when they're grilling, whatever it is, whatever they're doing, prep and grilling, whatever they're doing, you know, what did they talk about? Hey, where else do you work? You know, or what, where did you come from? I came from such and such. And what you want people to say is that Yes, I love it there, or man, you don't want to go there, which one, which one, which brand do you want to be?
yeah. Which promise do you want to make out to the employee base that you've got within that 20 mile radius as you talked about?
Exactly. Exactly. And that building that brand, just as it is that conscious efforts, intentional conscious effort to build that brand with a logo and all of that, you need to put similar effort into building that employer brand. And that's what Talent does. And the main question that we ask our, our clients Is, I, I invite the audience to actually contemplate on this question. And that is, is the person you're looking for, looking for you?
Yeah,
I invite you to ask that question of yourself and think about it. Because we have all these lofty expectations that, oh, I want somebody very dedicated. I want somebody to be hardworking, this and that. are you that employer of choice?
Mm hmm.
that person wants to work for, you know?
I love that. Well, and I was going to, I was going to go down the path because before I do want to get to Zipyat here in a few minutes, because I think that what you guys are doing on that side is fantastic. But I think one of the other pieces that I hear, and I, I've actually seen it done well, and then I've seen it done poorly in my close to 30 years in this space is, is giving people an opportunity to grow. Giving people an opportunity to expand.
You look at certain brands that do it really well, have people that are in leadership and executive management positions that started as a dishwasher that started as a buster that started and have worked their way up to president and CEO or president and COO or district manager.
And there's no industry in the world that has that, where you can come in with a high school diploma, or maybe not even a high school diploma, and eventually 20 years from now, 15 years from now, be the president of a brand.
if you have the capability,
same time, going, going back to those systems and processes, showing somebody a path, because I think it is going to go into our zippy app conversation and onboarding of new people, showing people a path that says you can be successful here and look where you can go is critical. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys, I guess, think about that.
You've got the employer choice conversation, you know, the brand of choice, the employee brand of choice, but now it's, what are some of the other elements that we may be missing besides pay? Your manager training and systems and kind of the ability to grow. What are the things that people aren't thinking about when you go into these brands? Or if those are the main ones, then let's talk
No, that's, that's, that's a very important question, actually, that you ask, because, you know, people, you've seen this picture of the universe that you see all these stars, and there is this arrow pointing to one dot on this, and it says, you're here, you know, this is the planet Earth that you don't see, you know but, It is very important for people to understand what is the importance of their job.
And this is what I do for when I coach people when I, you know, I mentor and coach younger people. I tell it is very important for you to know how your job function fits into this business ecosystem. Because if
How do I make a difference?
How do I make exactly how do I make a difference? Because if you didn't make a difference, if you know if you didn't deliver business value in this, your, your job wouldn't exist. Believe me, your job wouldn't exist. So it is very important for you as a, as an individual, as a you know, working individual to know where you fit in. And it is really, if you don't tell people what they. You know, how they fit in you know, they they'll try to figure it out themselves and they sometimes fail.
So it is you the business owner's responsibility to actually tell people what their business value is. Just for, you know, talking about food waste, you know, telling the person that is flipping burger, whatever they're doing, you know, if you mess up this order. You know, this is what's going to happen. So every order that is mixed up, every burger that is, I don't know, broken or whatever has happened to it and needs to
or they put ketchup on it and they, and the person didn't want ketchup. Yeah.
exactly. Whatever happens to that, that's food waste. Okay. So what do we need to do? Accuracy of order. You need to pay attention to that ticket, whatever, however it comes in front of you, you know, to put that order together and all of that. And if you don't do your job right, this is what's going to happen. So that's why I insist on you.
Putting this order, you know, this amount of ketchup, you know, it's, it's one squeeze of ketchup around that burger, you know, whatever the sauce is, that's it. You don't do, you just don't go around you know, that creates inconsistency on all of that. That's why, for example, we are successful because, you know, it's three pieces of pickle. It is not four, it's not two, it's three. You know,
Yeah. Yeah. And well, and I think people understanding that the more burgers they make, right, means the more people that are coming back in means more opportunity for them to grow. And you might think I'm a shift worker and, you know, I've got kids that are teenagers and they're like, ah, it doesn't really matter that much. But at the end of the day. No different than the reason why I started the podcast is I want to see restaurants succeed.
If that staff member that's cooking or that staff member that's at the drive through or that staff member that's, that's ringing up the sale at the cashier does it properly, you're able to grow and there's going to be opportunities for them. You do it improperly. The restaurant starts to suffer and, and you know, your turnover and it turns into a, into a bad, you know, a bad cycle for everyone.
And if you didn't tell the person what is the importance is, you know, for putting three pickles or whatever it is that you still carefully designed, if you don't tell them that they assume and they don't care about. But if you really articulate that, yeah. This is why we put three pieces of pickle on it or, or one squirt of ketchup, whatever the metric is. If you tell them, this is why, you know, it's flavor, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
Whatever it is that you design, if you tell them, they appreciate it. Oh yeah. If I put too much pickle, this is what's going to happen. If I put too little, this is what's going to happen. You know, flavor profile. passionately speaking about the food. You know, this is the flavor profile. This is why we designed it that way. People appreciate it. You know, your, your employees appreciate that and say, okay, I better be careful. You know,
Well, and everybody that's been on a successful team and everybody that's been on a failed team knows that they're going to be held accountable to keeping up with their teammates and doing it well on a successful team. And then the opposite. Nobody really cares. And ultimately, that's why you've got the turnover that you potentially have.
So I'd love to, to talk a little, what is Zippy app, you know, so I, I know what Zippy app is for, but for our audience out there, we've talked a lot about talent acquisition, talent retention, how to get people to do the right thing, and, and all of the reasons why these things are, are so important. But you created Zippy app because you saw that there was a gap in the market and there's a itch that you felt needed to be scratched as it relates to talent acquisitions.
Talk to me a little bit about what, what is Zippy app and, and why is it important for our listeners to hear about it? Silence.
job seekers. in the restaurant industry come from variety of places, variety of channels. We call it different channels. You know, they walk in, they drive by, they hear about it, they search internet, they go to job boards, they go to your website, you know, they hear. So they come from a variety of channels and this multi channel poses its own challenge when it comes to recruiting. So that's one problem to solve.
The other problem to solve is that people who are doing the hiring are very busy people. It's not like you have you know, dedicated team of recruiters sitting you know, in some fancy HQ office and you know sourcing candidates.
It is the restaurant manager that In between, you know, lunch rush and dinner rush has just a couple of hours to interview review applications and hire people and train people and do all of the things that needs to be done and you know get get his or her job done as well, you know, prepare for the lunch rush, prepare for the dinner rush, make sure, you know, supplies are ready
Do my produce order, do my, my, my dry goods order, go clean the, talk to the plumber because there was a backup in the toilet, like, and they have to hire people because they've got a high turnover.
So in that amount of short time that you have, you have to accomplish a lot, you know, we talked about 200, 300 percent turnover, you know, for a place that has 50, 60 employees for a given location, you know 200, 300 percent turnover means that you're hiring roughly Three, four people, five people a week, one person a day, your business, you know, you're hiring. And you need 20, 30 X that in number of applications in order to hire one person. That's why turnover is so costly.
Okay. So imagine 20, 30 applications. You have, somebody has got to review these things. Okay. And then bring these people in for an interview. That is an enormous task. Okay, and this poor restaurant manager has to do this in between everything else. So ZipiApp really solves that problem as well. So we needed to make the job simple for job seekers to find your jobs and apply. And also we need to make it easy for your managers to process and hire faster.
Because the speed is the name of the game. Today, everybody knows that if somebody applies for your job and you don't get to them in less than a few hours, they're gone, you know, because let me tell you this, they didn't only apply for your job, they applied to a few other jobs as well, you know, and if you don't get to them. They're gone. Okay, so speed is the name of the game and how fast you can
I'm going to take it from the brand side. Oh, I'm sorry. Keep, keep going. You can keep going. I apologize. I was just gonna say from a brand side, talking about your brand, you talked about being an employer of choice. How would, talk to me about the app and talk to me about how they put that out to people through Zippy app. Because I think it's important for people to know what to expect.
They need to know that they're coming to a place that they can grow, that they can make a difference, that they're going to be trained, you know, because you do, as you talked about it through your, your consulting.
Experience know that we have to ensure that they're, that, that, that you're going to be a place that, that they want to come so that when they do apply, and then I want to talk a little bit about the, at the applicant site in just a few minutes, but as a brand, how do I put myself out there to talk about all the fantastic things that I do through Zippy app and Glassdoor
Okay.
things to do and they're, they're way behind, but they also, they also, oftentimes as a brand are keeping people, I know this happens every day is they keep people on staff because they don't have another warm body to take that place. And so they might see people that are low performers because they don't have anybody else to cover that shift. So how does a brand think about that process? Because it's critical to. Not even acquired, to attract the right kind of talent. To, to bring them in.
Because if you don't have the right talents attracted, you're not gonna get, you might have to go through 50 resumes before you get one person that's, that's, that's worthy.
So what, you know, what is very important for all business owners to think about is really recruiting is a marketing function. You know you are,
I say that and people don't. No, no, no, it's HR, it's HR's problem. No, it's
no, no, it's, it's a marketing function, okay? You have a product, which is a job, and you are marketing it to the audience, okay? So recruitment marketing, actually, we call, we sometimes call Zippy App a recruitment marketing platform. Okay. And the reason we call it the recruitment marketing platform is because you need to put your jobs in the best light. Okay. And, you know, you're look at. your first impression with a brand. Okay. It has to deliver excitement.
And if your job description, if the first interaction with your recruitment marketing is sort of clunky and archaic, You've lost the game already, so you really need to look at that first impression that you have on the candidate, okay? Is that first impression today better than 80 percent of the applicants are on their mobile device? If that mobile experience is not. At par with Apples and Amazons of the world, you've lost the game already.
Okay, so your candidate experience needs to be at that level because mobile experience, people, it's not, we are not in the newspaper age anymore. You know,
yeah, I can't just put a sign out in the door and people sign up, sign up to apply. They're all over the place.
They're all over the place. People, you know, spend their time on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, on, you know, YouTube, and it's a very rich, fast experience. So that's the expectation. You need to deliver. at that level in order to be seen. Boring you know, engagement, forget it. Boring experience, forget it. So you need to really think about that candidate experience. I often tell people, have you been through your own application process? You know, you're, you're a business owner.
You're a business owner. You have, you know, 20, 30 restaurants of whatever brand it is, okay? Have you really tried to apply for one of your own jobs? And who is the demographic you're looking for? Is the demographic, you know, the Guy with the gray beard or
Yeah, both of us, both of us working on that great
is it, yeah, or is it the, is it the you know teenager, 20 something that is on their mobile device running around and doing it. So. Understanding that what is catering to that audience and making sure that is it bilingual? Is it mobile enabled? You know, how many steps do they need to go through in order to apply for your jobs? Have
Do they get a response
Do they get a response?
get a response? I mean, how many times have you heard from clients that you have that, you know, they, they had 50 applicants, but then they didn't get back to them for four days or six days. And those people are already on to something else.
Exactly. Exactly. So really designing that candidate experience to be inviting and then your job descriptions. If you have, you know, some organizations write your job descriptions, you know, and put in all of the legalese in that job description Guess who's going to read it? I call those prison sentences. You know I, I call some of those job descriptions prison sentences. You know, that's not an inviting, that's not an inviting job description. You're not inviting me to come here and, and work.
You're coming here to commit to a sentence.
Yeah, well, and, and, and your brand promise across all of those things, whether it's the job application, it's your social presence, it's the presence in the store, it's the way you interact, all of it makes a difference to getting the highest quality talent.
it's, you're absolutely right. It's not one thing, it's a combination of things. You need to look at it holistically. It is not that this patient just has one problem. You have to look at this patient holistically and see what does this patient really need, you know, and it's not just one pill, you know, you need to look at it 360 and address the problem.
And only then, once you have totally understood the problem and addressed all of the sort of challenges, then you have a holistic approach to talent acquisition and your staff is really ready to meet that desired brand that you created. And Zippy app really is the product or the platform that helps you deliver this promise. You know, we talked about multi channel. We talked about, you know, people being on job board, people coming in, people visiting your website. It needs to be.
consistent across all of these channels. Imagine this, you know, you try to apply through Indeed, you go through one experience. You come to my website, you go through another experience. I tell you to, you know, scan this QR code, you go through a different experience. I, you know, I tell you to do that. Any, any channel that you can come through and you go through a different experience, you get confused and you say, the hell with it, I'm not going to go there. You know, which one,
if this is if this is the problem that I have on onboarding, what am I going to get when I
what am I going to
what people think,
Right? So if all channels point to the same source that you applied through this platform, you know, everything comes here for you to apply, then, okay, I know that I'm applying through the, to the right place. I know that it is where people will see it. People feel confident about your organization, people feel comfortable that when I submit more, my application, it is not, somebody's not going to sell my information, all of that, and people say, okay, yeah, I'm, I'm comfortable applying.
So, really, everything has to be orchestrated. Your entire talent acquisition process needs to be orchestrated and understood. And that's what every business needs to go. Yeah, exactly. Thought about it. Yeah.
Well, and so I'd love to, I'd love to kind of wrap because you obviously have a full business that you've had for over 10 years now, helping people with us. And now you've got an application. What is the downside to not doing this? And what is the cost of that two and three and 400 percent turnover? Years ago, we have a call center in our business. And I went and looked at what is a new call center person cost the business every time we have turnover.
Cause at one point we were over a hundred percent turnover. And I looked at the cost to get somebody onboarded. And again, different industry, different. Skill set, different pay scale, but it costs us somewhere between 10 and 15, 000 for every new employee that I turned over. So if I turned over 50 employees in the year, that's a half a million dollars that I just, I just, you know, poured down the drain by not addressing this.
Talk to me a little bit about some of the numbers and when done right, what it helps a brand and when done wrong.
What you're finding to make it really hit home for these people that it is something you can tell me it's a HR problem You can tell me it's a restaurant problem But at the end of the day not having the right staff is an everyone problem Not having the right brand promise not having the right people not having the right systems is a problem for everyone Not any one departments the whole brand so talk to me a little bit about you know If you have any numbers or any of those kind of things to
share, I'd love a little bit of help with that Yeah.
about the cost of turnover, you know, it's a number that depends on how you calculate it. You know, there are several different models that you can calculate cost of turnover, but if you really look at it Correctly, it can cost anywhere between the lowest number that, you know, it comes up is 1, 500 to 5, 000, 6, 000 per employee, you know, and the reason for that wide range is because how many variables you basically put in there.
You know, if you look at it holistically, it can go to 5, If you exclude or don't think about some of the Intangibles that go into that, you know, it can, you know, hard cost, it can be 15, 15, you know, 100 to 2, 000. But the important thing to, to remember is that if you have that kind of a turnover, you need to address that turnover. I, when I sit down with a potential client, I always tell them, Hey, you really have to. address your turnover.
It's like, you know, you are sitting in a boat that has a lot of holes in it. If you don't plug these holes, doesn't matter how much water you bail out, you know, you're constantly bailing out. You really need to plug some of these holes. Okay, fine. So we got that. Plugging those holes is one thing. How do we actually bring in people now?
And with the busy manager, and you've always, we've seen this, that the manager has to step in and cover for the person that didn't show up, you know, if the manager is washing dishes, if the manager is taking order, you know, guess what, you know, they're not doing their job, you shouldn't be asking the manager to step in. So, if you really look at it that way, and say, how do I make the job of my manager? As easy as possible. That's where really Zipyap comes in and shines.
Zipyap is really an automated system that can go from an application to somebody qualified and on your calendar within half an hour or an hour without a single click on the manager's part. That is really a game changer. Because, you know, today, one of the biggest challenges that exists is people don't show up to interviews.
Your poor manager went through you know, selected the candidate, reached out to the candidate and you know, the candidate is scheduled to come in at two o'clock and you know, manager is sitting there with, you know, with the application or resume, whatever in hand and the candidate doesn't show up. There it goes. And a lot of time wasted today. That is the number one problem that restaurants have. No shows.
Okay. Zippy app solves that problem by actually having addressed all of the candidate experience needs, simplifying it to the maximum possible. And then through artificial intelligence. We actually qualify each application that comes in. And then through secondary engagement, see, recruitment is like a, like a marketing function. You need to bring people in, qualify them, and move them through the funnel.
And moving people through the funnel, that nurturing, That we do in marketing, that nurturing that we do with the applicants is done all automatically. Okay, through text messaging engagement through questions that the system presents to them and walks them through all of that.
And then at the end of qualifying process, if the candidate is now qualified and has gone through the selection process, then they are presented with the option to schedule their own interviews, okay, without a single click on the manager's part. So really, this is a game changer because you can go from somebody submitting an application to them being qualified and on your manager's calendar, Without a single action by the manager, all fully automated within half an hour.
That's remarkable. That's, I mean, I, I know just from being in the space for so long, what you've built is something that most people don't know exists. And now that they do know that exists. Talk to me about how they get in touch with you, how they get in touch with your team to learn more about Zippy app and how, how do they, how do they engage?
Because I'm assuming the questions that Ruth Chris steakhouse are going to be very different than the questions that are going out to somebody at Chick fil A if
Oh, absolutely.
you know, they need to engage with your brand to figure out what is it that's critical to them to make sure that they've got the right hire to get them through that funnel process. What does it look like to engage with your team? And I'm now one of these restaurant people out there that I'm like, Hey, I need this Zippy app. How do I get going? Talk to me a little bit more about what, what does that engagement process look like and how can they find out more?
Just go to ZippyApp. com forward slash schedule, and you know, it's just four or five fields that you need to fill out, and somebody will be reaching out to you right away to schedule a conversation. And just as you
later.
No, no. Very quick
I'm teasing about
No, I know. I, I know.
process.
I, I know you know, and the good thing that you said about Rus, Chris and you a quick serve restaurant is that we have clients in both camps, in every concept in the middle. You have your fine dining, as well as a local deli that just, you know puts out sandwiches. We, we cover the entire spectrum. And the candidate, the candidate experience doesn't have to change, you know. Just because you're applying to a Ruth's Chris, it doesn't have to be fancier than if you're applying to it.
And it, the branding and the imagery and all of that is different. But the experience is the same. The experience is the same streamlined, respectful candidate experience that you can expect any job. And yes, just go ahead, go to zippyapp. com forward slash schedule. And, you know, just put in your contact information. We will reach out to you and schedule a conversation. We will give you a full demo of the product and all of the services that we provide.
Yeah. I I appreciate you sharing so much insight over the, over the years. It's, it's fun to talk restaurants and, and kind of how restaurants I love talking about restaurants that are doing well and quite frankly, a lot of the, a lot, quite frankly, the ones that do it poorly. There's, there's that side of it, which is, it's hard to see. But at the same time, that's part of why I have people like you on the, on the show.
Thank
you guys are online, checking out Zippy app if you haven't already subscribed to the newsletter or the podcast and or our YouTube channel, please do so. Thank you so much for quite frankly, solving problems that I didn't even know. I mean, I know the problem exists, but I didn't know until I met you about a year ago that there was even people trying to solve this. So I love that. I love that there's a solution out there for it.
And I I'm excited for our, our listeners to to engage with it and see what it looks like for them.
That was good. Thank you very much. I really, in closing, I really invite people to think about and ponder on that question. Is the person you're looking for looking for you? Because that is really. the core of the problem. Okay. And you want people, you want those people to look for you. So if not, why not? Answer that question. It's not their problem. It's my problem.
I I appreciate all the insights and have a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you guys.
Thank you very much.
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