Exploring the World of Ghost Kitchens with Wesley Li

This podcast episode from the 'Restaurant Technology Guys' features a conversation with Wesley, a restaurateur who operates exclusively out of a ghost kitchen space in partnership with Cloud Kitchens. Wesley shares insights on the unique challenges and advantages of running a delivery-only restaurant, the definition and operational intricacies of ghost kitchens, and the strategy behind focusing on Asian fusion cuisine. Discussions also delve into the technological aspects and customer experience enhancements facilitated by Cloud Kitchens, alongside Wesley's vision for scaling and refining his delivery-only business model. Key highlights include the iterative process of menu development, maintaining a crisp product upon delivery, and strategies for customer retention and satisfaction.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction to the Podcast
00:18 Meet Wesley: The Ghost Kitchen Innovator
00:59 Exploring the Ghost Kitchen Concept
02:52 The Culinary Journey: Asian Fusion in a Ghost Kitchen
04:03 The Strategy Behind Delivery-Only Services
11:02 Expanding Within the Cloud Kitchen Model
17:34 Tech and Operations in a Cloud Kitchen
22:30 Creating a Memorable Food Experience
26:12 Customer Engagement and Feedback
31:03 Discovering Cloud Kitchens and Wesley's Brands

Transcript

0:02

This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.

Jeremy: 0:14

Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I appreciate everyone out there for joining. As I say, each and every time I know you guys have got lots of choices on how you spend your time. So we appreciate you guys spending time with us, each and every week when we post one of these today, I am joined by a restaurant operator who's in some pretty unique spaces, but I'm gonna let him tell his story here in a few minutes. So Wesley, why don't you introduce yourself? Who is Wesley? So that, everybody can understand who you are first. And then we can talk a little bit about what you get to do for, For a living

Wesley Li: 0:41

Yeah, hello to your, your listeners. Jeremy, I'm Wesley. like you mentioned, I'm a restaurant operator. what's unique about our situation is we operate solely out of a ghost kitchen space, a partner with cloud kitchens, and, our goal is really just to be you. Very good and laser focus at creating the best delivery only experience to our customers, which sounds a bit crazy to traditional brick and mortar restaurant owners because, half that distribution channel is gone without dine ins.

Jeremy: 1:13

now. And I, I'd love for you to define what you call a ghost kitchen. Cause there's lots of people. I was just at a trade show earlier this week, and there's people that define ghost kitchens in different ways as the industry has continued to evolve with ghost kitchens and, partnership with cloud kitchen. I'd love for you to define what does that mean for our listeners from your context? there's different people. And again, Brinker had their own ghost kitchen, which was really just a portion of their existing kitchen that there were no digital only. I know your guys circumstances differently. So for our listeners, why don't you define that for them? And then we can talk about why you've chosen to go to business this route.

Wesley Li: 1:45

Yeah, that's an awesome question, Jeremy. And I'm always on, Twitter, arguing with people saying, Hey, this is not what ghost kitchen means. And this is what a ghost kitchen is. And this is what a virtual brand is. And all that,

Jeremy: 1:57

I love that you even defined virtual brand. Cause I think it'll, I think it'll go into our conversation. Cause I think it's. it's very poignant to say that. Cause I, I had a very similar argument earlier this week. I'm like, no, that is a virtual brand inside of an existing brand. That is not a ghost kitchen. So why don't you define what you guys call a ghost kitchen for us?

Wesley Li: 2:13

yeah, in our opinion, a ghost kitchen is, just the space where an operator can run and process their food for their customers. So it's not the branding or upfront. It's more of the platform where they can have the kitchen where they You know, produce food, and it's more of the manufacturing space that we think of and compare that to virtual brands of virtual brands is just if you think about, Kellogg's right there have a bunch of brands like frosted flakes, Cheerios, and so forth. And that's what we think virtual brand is. And a lot of people, link ghost kitchen with. With that virtual brand mindset because of what happened with, Mr. Beast burgers and having a low quality. and we try to distance ourselves as much as possible with that, because in a ghost kitchen, it's just a space for us to, produce great product for our customers at, with the main focus of delivery only.

Jeremy: 3:06

Perfect. so now that we've gotten through what is a ghost kitchen, tell me a little bit about your restaurant. Tell me what kind of food you guys produce. Tell me, tell me a little bit about it. let's create some cravability factor on how did you get in the restaurant industry and what kind of food do you guys produce in the, In the Cloud kitchen or in the Ghost kitchen,

Wesley Li: 3:20

Yeah. we produce, Asian fusion food in our restaurant and. We went with that because I'm Asian, I have no experience. I have no experience in the restaurant space before this, So I've never worked in a commercial kitchen, never stepped like really cooked anything in a commercial kitchen. And, we went with Asian food is because I'm Asian, I like Asian food. And, we just wanted to create Some type of product in the ghost kitchen space, because we really see a huge opportunity, of the delivery only space and leveraging ghost kitchens because of the very low cost of capital and so forth. We'll, we can talk about that later on, our experience is that the food side, we try to create the best product possible by just create it. Iterations and we're creating iterations on iterations, on our food in terms of Asian fusion and it's it just we use the data to create the best product possible and what people like and what we see people like. So it morphs over time.

Jeremy: 4:17

Very cool. So talk to me a little bit about delivery only. What does delivery only mean to you guys? Is that through DSPs, through delivery service providers like DoorDash Uber Eats? Do you guys do some of your own in house delivery? Talk to me a little bit about why delivery only and not even having a storefront and I'd love to talk through some of that as well.

Wesley Li: 4:33

Yeah, The reason we chose delivery only is because we saw a huge shift in the market, right? The younger generations, like the Gen Zs and Millennials, who grew up in a time of convenience and Amazon, where packages delivered to your door the next day, are becoming a bigger percentage of the workforce, and they have high expectations on convenience. And we see that convenience is becoming a big factor in this food space alone, right? And No, I was always told it's very hard to be very good at two things. So we decided to put our heads down and just focus on creating the best delivery experience possible, whether that be our operations, whether that be who we partner with and so forth.

Jeremy: 5:19

Okay, so thanks for defining that and why you guys went there and it still is interesting to me because I heard a statistic recently and you guys talk about Asian food. I had heard a statistic that over 80 percent of Chinese food is Either eaten via takeout or eaten via delivery and I guess, tell me a little bit about why that, why you think that might be, because that was a really interesting statistic to me. And I think it plays into why it is critical for you guys and why you guys have been able to find some of the success you've had. And then we'll talk a little bit about some of the challenges you guys have struggled with. But I was blown away because, and I heard this from a full service, casual dining brand that happens to be Chinese. So they, they're trying to figure out how to tap into that 80 percent market. Whereas, I was reading an article about PF Changs and I'll just say the name, they were struggling to figure out how to get takeout because 91 percent of their sales are in house and they were really struggling to tap into that portion of the market. Tell me a little bit about just not only culturally, but, have you seen some of that says, you know what, people are more apt to order pizza and Asian food on, in a delivery platform versus, versus some other types of food. Is that what had you guys down that path or was it, was it a different, different path that brought you there?

Wesley Li: 6:28

Yeah. So like I mentioned, the main reason we chose Asian food is because, I'm Asian. and if that's the case, I'm going to be quite honest with you, Jeremy. We just got lucky if that's, those are statistics you're seeing because if we did

Jeremy: 6:41

I just, it was crazy to me cause I was like, Holy smokes. I didn't realize that so much of Asian food was to, so much Chinese food was done via takeout. because in a traditional casual dining brand, again, I was just at the straight show earlier this week, most people are shooting to get into that 15 to 20 percent range. Whereas, where they're looking to get digital or looking to get digital native hit that same gender, demographic that you were talking about and they're like, we're striving to get to 17%. They're like 17 percent digital, where it's via delivery and you've been a hundred percent since day one. And so I just think it's a number one, a very interesting statistic and number two, I think you guys hit the nail on the head with. something you may not have even been educated to prior to you guys starting that, you started an Asian fusion restaurant because you're Asian, not because you were like, Hey, this delivery thing is the best way to, to deal with it. And for those that have not ever been to a cloud kitchen and have never been to that environment, talk me through what it looks like, what is it having never been in the restaurants, Talk me through, is it like a full kitchen? Talk, talk to me. I'm familiar with it, but paint a picture for those that are less familiar with your operating environment. How do you get orders in? How do they, most operators that are on these calls run regular full service restaurants. And so they get it, they see a full service restaurant. They know where the kitchen's at. They know there's a line between the dining room and the kitchen or the front counter in the kitchen paint, paint our listeners a picture of what. What your kitchen looks like and how kind of the operations flow within, within your environment. I,

Wesley Li: 8:07

that's a great question and There are a lot of different models in terms of ghost kitchens, but in terms of the cloud kitchen space, when we interview our employee, for employees, they have the same questions and we've came up with multiple iterations of in terms of analogies of what creates the best picture. And the best thing we came up with is it's like a combination of a food hall and a condo together, right? Cloud Kitchens has a space where it's a huge building where it hosts multiple kitchens and each kitchen operator has its own little kitchen bay, like a condo or apartment where they can operate out of some, ghost kitchen, other ghost kitchen companies is more of a huge share kitchen, which we weren't much of a fan of. We still wanted to really control our space and control the quality of our space, which cloud kitchen allows us to do, right? They create a great space and they offer a lot of different other services to ensure that we succeed. But in terms of what it looks like in the back end, the best analogy we have is it's like a condo, but for restaurant owners.

Jeremy: 9:12

I love that analogy. Cause I hadn't considered that being, but it is, it's very correct. It's you talked about the capital expense to open up a restaurant versus coming in and renting the space to be able to use. and so what does cloud kitchens provide you with? Is it just the cooktops? Is it the ovens, the grills? Do they, Pots and pans. Talk me through even what that means for you, because it sounded like you guys were able to get in at a much lower cost than you might if you were opening up a full brick and mortar. Anybody that's ever run a restaurant knows the craziness that happens during a meal period in a rush. One of our partners, Restaurant Technologies, Total Oil Management Solution, is an end to end oil management system that delivers, filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the jobs that none of your team wants to do and takes it off your hands, allowing your team members to focus on their guests. Control the kitchen chaos with Total Uh, restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing your staff's time. The solution can be provided at no upfront costs. If you want to learn more, please check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.

Wesley Li: 10:22

Yeah. So what cloud can kitchens does is it licensed one of their kitchen based to us. And what includes is the hood and everything that's required in terms of, licensing and just get, getting through let's say the fire departments and the health inspectors, they do everything in terms of that end. And what we do is we just, Furnish the kitchens, with our equipment. And that alone us. If we're able to be very, cost effective on that end, it's, we did the calculation in terms of traditional brick and mortar, build out versus, cloud kitchen build out. it's around like for us personally, it's around one 10th the cost.

Jeremy: 11:03

Holy smokes. that's a huge, capability that allows you the opportunity. So where, where are you at capital wise? Are you at a place where you're going to continue to invest in cloud kitchens? Are you at a place where you're going to take that success that you guys have already had and consider brick and mortar? Talk me through even what you and your founding team are thinking about as far as growth and as far as getting to another unit and a third unit and such, are you going to just continue to invest in, invest in the cloud kitchen space and potentially get to different geos? Yeah.

Wesley Li: 11:31

question, Jeremy. And, a lot of friends and family asks us, when to open your next brick and mortar? And, quite frankly, that question, Confuses me sometimes, right? let's say a pickleball, pickleball right now is all the rage and we want to be world class pickleball players, to us They're asking us When are you ready to play tennis next? And if we jump into the tennis game, which is traditional brick and mortar, our opinion, we're going to get destroyed but we want to focus on Being very good at creating a great delivery experience. And that comes with a lot of stuff in terms of fine tuning our operations, right? traditional restaurants versus traditional brick and mortars. the prep time is a huge difference that we really need to be very good at in terms of the ghost kitchen space, right? Our average prep time in terms of receiving order to bagging order is around eight minutes. And from what we're hearing, brick and mortars, it takes around 20 to 35, 30 minutes to get the entree out. So if we want to be very good at the delivery space in terms of cutting time down, it allows us to, really build a model within cloud kitchens to streamline our operations where we can deliver to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. So to answer your question short, is, we'd like the cloud kitchen models, like you mentioned, like I mentioned before, it's very, takes very little capital. And on top of that. The time it takes, to start up one at a new location or even a new kitchen, which is our model, our model is a bit different from other operators and cloud kitchen is that we like to expand within the same location.

Jeremy: 13:08

Oh, okay.

Wesley Li: 13:09

Yeah. So you're probably thinking that's a little weird, right? So from

Jeremy: 13:14

less weird. It's more just, I guess I'm trying to figure out, are you finding bottlenecks, meaning you can't get enough orders out, which is why you're having to expand, cause historically, again, a lot of the operators are going to look to a second location because they want to hit a different region. versus expanding, within their same four walls. And I can tell you a story, as we continue to go, we've got, I just was talking to somebody from a very well known, salad brand. Who's considering doing a hundred percent ghost kitchens for some of their brands and keeping the brick and mortar that they have because it was impacted. Chipotle did the same thing similarly at one point where they said, you know what, we're going to do full cloud kitchens or ghost kitchens for our DSPs and our delivery orders and let the brick and mortar stand for the in person guests. And sorry, I'll let you keep going as to why you guys chose to just continue to expand within cloud kitchens versus opening up in a different geo.

Wesley Li: 14:05

Yeah. what's really neat about this opportunity is like you mentioned the bottlenecks, right? so what we see from traditional brick and mortar bottlenecks, it's either the amount of seating you have is the bottleneck or how many orders you can produce, how much food you can produce within the kitchen, right? Like you mentioned, there was a bottleneck going into our space, when we were expanding, when we were growing, there was becoming, operational bottleneck within our kitchen where we didn't have enough room anymore to push out, as many orders as we wanted. we thought that the next best way was to expand to a different location, which we did with cloud kitchens six months in, which is fairly quick because we were able to, really recoup our investment. But within that time already and once we yeah, once we did that we realized Okay, there is some cannibalization and Our labor percentage is getting a little higher. Now, the economies of scale is going down. And what was very nice is we had a conversation with Travis, Travis Kalanick, and he was like, he sees the problem. He understands the problem. Okay. Why don't you consolidate the two kitchens? And we're like, we never thought about that. And we're like, let's try that out. And once we did that, we actually doubled our revenue with one location versus. And on top of that, we're able to really lower our labor costs because we don't need as many staff members because of the expanded space in terms of operational capacity. We're able to really streamline our operations where our prep time was around 12, 12 minutes, and we're able to cut it down to around nine minutes because of extra space. And we really didn't need as many team members as having two different locations. Does that make sense?

Jeremy: 15:47

It does. It absolutely does. and again, I think that, all too often, again, I've been in this restaurant space, for a really long time and I've watched people, they have this idea that they've got to expand and they don't look at the side effects. And I love that you guys have considered that and said, you know what, let's just expand within the same region, are you guys considering. Expanding outside of your core region. Cause I think you guys are in Chicago now, are you guys thinking about going to a cloud kitchen in LA or in some other region where they are? Are you going to just double down there and just make sure that you can create the best, best delivery experience for you guys and your guests there in, in the region that you're in today.

Wesley Li: 16:20

Yeah, that's a great question because it really speaks to a lot of why we decided to partner with Cloud Kitchens in general. Quite frankly, Jeremy, we're still in the proof of concept phase. We're still fine tuning and making iterations to Create the best unit economics for one location. And we're still, hacking away at that. And once we hit those numbers, the beauty of cloud kitchens is they really built their platform. To make scaling as frictionless as possible, going back to the amount of capital acquired and the amount of time it takes again, the amount of time it takes, from our experience takes about one sixth of the time it takes to start up a brick and mortar in terms of signing to pushing out an order. And once we. Going back to our proof of concept, once we have all the unit economics it's, we can really scale, without giving away too much or any equity or without incurring too much debt as well.

Jeremy: 17:23

Yeah. and, for many of our listeners that are trying to open up new restaurants, the cost of opening up a new restaurant has exponentially grown, construction costs, labor costs to get restaurants open, publicly traded company we do business with right now had said they had to change their projections for 2024 in half. Because the cost of opening a new restaurant almost doubled. So for something like the cloud kitchens, it's a perfect example of the opportunity that you guys have got there. Talk me through the tech space and how kind of the orders come in. And again, in a traditional restaurant, you've got point of sale terminals. You've got people sitting there ordering on them and depending upon how, how tightly integrated things are either the. third party delivery and the first party ordering come straight into the point of sale. Other places still have the tablets, there that they're managing. Talk me through the staff experience with the tech as it relates to orders coming into your cloud kitchen. How does that all work? And then I want to flip it and talk about what the guests can expect as a shirt and use brands like yourself. So talk me through the tech for the staff members and who's interacting with, with what it is that you guys are doing.

Wesley Li: 18:26

Yeah, and going back, That's a great question. And what cloud kitchen did well is allow operators to really focus on, creating great operations for producing good food. So our team members, what once an order comes in, it either comes in through our direct to consumer website, our third party platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, cloud kitchens has software that consolidates all that order information and pushes it out one POS tablet. And it prints a ticket out. Once we see the ticket, our team member starts, producing the order and making the food for the order. And it takes us around seven to eight minutes to finish an, AOV order of 30. And once everything's bagged, we click a, Button on the tablet that cloud kitchen provides. And depending on the facility you're on, either a runner will come and grab the order for you and hand it off to a driver in the front desk, or they have robots, which essentially just drive to you and we put the orders on there. And. They have a locker system where they put the, where they distribute for drivers where they have to scan Their phone to open up a locker to receive the order, right? so what i'm seeing is this has changed over time with our time in cloud kitchens and what's What we notice is cloud kitchens is always trying to, fine tune and make everything a bit more efficient for operators. So we don't have to, do all the little things like dealing with 50 to 80 plus drivers during a rush hours, which can be an operational nightmare, right? They're trying to make things as easy for us as possible so we can focus on what we believe is going to create the best customer experience.

Jeremy: 20:05

and I think that, I think as both a consumer and somebody working in the restaurant tech space, most of the brick and mortar restaurants have not been built with delivery and takeout being a large percentage of their business. And so they're either having to redesign their takeout areas so that they can hot food, hot, cold food, cold, you talk about these locker systems, they're installing them in order to get what they need. Or, quite frankly, the product. Ends up being bad because it's been sitting out for too long and or you've got these delivery drivers that are taking up space in your lobby or taking up space and in the environment, not allowing you to get through to, to, to get a normal standard order in the dining room or otherwise. and so as a guest, most of our listeners have probably ordered on DoorDash or Uber Eats or Grubhub. Are they getting that data that's coming back that says the order is being prepared? everybody. and again, I just got back from this conference and I keep referring to it, but I just got back from this conference literally last night where everybody is looking for the dominoes pizza tracker. if you've ever ordered from dominoes, you've got this Hey, your order has been placed. Hey, your order is about to go, it's on the prep table, it's in the oven, it's on its way to you. and everybody ironically, my wife did order from a pizza brand yesterday. And she had a bad experience because the pizza tracker wasn't getting updated and her food took too long. So as a guest I go order, what can I expect when I'm working with your brand and cloud kitchens type, from a communication perspective, about my food and what's going on with that.

Wesley Li: 21:26

Yeah, so when we first started, quite frankly, that it wasn't anywhere near, the dominoes tracker, which is amazing, right? It tells you when you put it in the kitchen, in the oven and tells you when it's out for delivery, right? and it's, I don't know much on their end and they obviously work on it in terms of the tech side and the backend with a third party delivery platforms. And I'm sure they have their gatekeep some of that information, but over time, what I've seen is that communication with the customers get better. and they're constantly talking to, The delivery platforms to say, okay, how do we create a better experience when we click on the tablet or our POS, to say the order is ready, does the customer know it didn't do that about a year ago, I think, and now it does, right? So all these little small fine tuning, we have faith in the CK team that they can constantly iterate and prove, to get there where it, Overall creates the best customer experience possible. Yeah.

Jeremy: 22:27

cloud kitchens and again, part of what you're here to share is just how great of a partner they've been is that they're meeting the customers where they are. And you're not having to take the burden on of having to figure that out as well as having to figure out the great food and having to figure out the relationship with the delivery service provider and having to figure out those different items. And Now I'm going to flip to the food side, Wesley, talk to me about the food, brag about your guys's food. why, you talked about Asian food, but what kind of Asian food I selfishly, it's my favorite, but ironically, I eat every kind of Asian food from Vietnamese to Chinese to tie to Japanese. But talk to me a little bit about the Asian fusion concept, favorite menu items, most ordered venue items, for those people that are in Chicagoland, how should they, what should they come in and get first and why should they get it first, from you guys? Talk to me a little bit about brag on your guys's menu and what you guys have been able to create as you guys have been iterating.

Wesley Li: 23:17

like I mentioned, we had no real restaurant experience, so we created a food that I generally like to eat, I'm American born Chinese. So my Asian food is mixed in with a lot of different flavors. so it was more Asian fusion where it's. I love Korean food. I love Chinese food. I love Thai food. I love American food, right? so to call it, so to call it straight Asian food, would be a lie, Jeremy. I'm gonna be honest with you. but it's, our most famous dish is the, our sesame aioli crispy chicken. people love the sesame aioli. we've been advised to charge, start charging people for asking for extra sauce, but. we believe that, our job is to create customer surplus, To create as much value for our customers as possible. And if that's like giving away sauce that they love, we're more than happy to do it. But yeah,

Jeremy: 24:05

for Chick fil a. It's worked for Chick fil a. They've done okay with, with giving away Chick fil a sauce. So I think you guys are onto something there by creating that sauce. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but, okay.

Wesley Li: 24:13

sure.

Jeremy: 24:15

and even in that Wesley talked to me, you talked about crispy and aioli. Aioli is essentially mayonnaise or, very similar to mayonnaise. typically I have found, and I'd love your opinion on this. How do you guys deal with menu selection when it comes to producing that food and delivering it because you have less control once it leaves your kitchen that the food is going to stay crispy. And they always not going to make it soggy. I personally, when I order takeout, I don't order french fries often, not because I don't like french fries because who doesn't like some salty french fries. But oftentimes by the time it hits my door, It's not nearly as crisp as if I was sitting in the dining room. How have you guys considered even your menu selection when you guys are going and putting those things together as it relates to the methods by which you guys are delivering that food to the end user?

Wesley Li: 25:03

Yeah. that's a great question, Jeremy. And, we just iterate and learn over time. when we first started, like we mentioned, we, we have waffle fries, where we put sesame aioli on top. We used to put'em in plastic boxes because we think, it, it keeps it intact for delivery, But we've. We look at reviews and, review aggregator aggregators to see that, okay, the fries are getting soggy, like you mentioned. So we constantly make iterations. Do we put it in cardboard boxes? And then, do we put it in this box to make it better or travel better? And then just. Having that focus and being very good at the delivery space only we can put our all our Attention and testing to create that best product and now for that sesame oil waffle fry we put it in compost boxes because compost boxes soak in the moisture a little bit and It keeps it intact where you're not gonna have that soggy fry issue. So that's what's really Great. in terms of just being able to focus on delivery only, we can create menu items that are good, but we can constantly iterate and improve to create a better delivery experience over time and be world class at that.

Jeremy: 26:12

I think it's amazing that you guys have iterated. I love your idea of continuous improvement. I wish more restaurants actually listen to their guests and fix these things. And one of the biggest challenges I continue to see with people that are driving more to. Delivery platforms is guest recovery. Talk to me a little bit about your guys philosophy on guest recovery, Wesley. Cause again, and I'm going to define guest recovery as the guests got something that wasn't exactly what they wanted, or it wasn't to the spec or it wasn't to the level that the brand might have purported and they're disappointed and, or they're upset. How do you guys deal with that? How do you guys deal with the customer complaints and manage through that? Because I think it's a critical piece to ensuring that you continue to drive that guest behavior where they're, you are the brand of choice when they go to deliver food to them.

Wesley Li: 26:55

Yeah, and I mentioned this very shortly at first that our main goal, our main metric is consumer surplus, right? And how do we measure consumer surplus? consumer surplus, we believe is how much value the customer is receiving, minus the price they're paying, right? So how do we track that? We track that by measuring customer retention rate, how often a customer returns to our virtual brands. and with that number as our guiding star. we believe that we should over deliver and under promise. You mentioned that if customers don't receive the best food possible, we're willing to lose, two X the amount they paid to make sure that the customer is happy because over time we want to build a brand that customers and consumers can trust and believe that, okay, if we don't get it right, which we don't sometimes we'll. We'll double down on making sure you, we get it right for you. Not this time, next time. And next time after that.

Jeremy: 27:52

Thank you for that. And I, again, I'm speaking to you operators out there, listen to what Wesley said, cause it's very critical. And I think a lot of people do it right. And there's some people that, that really struggle with, with evaluating that guest feedback. You mentioned something Wesley that also comes up in my talks with people about delivery service providers. How do you know who your guests are? Is cloud kitchens helping you provide that information? I know that's often a struggle when it comes to working with, the door dashes and the grub hubs and the reads cause their data companies and their delivery companies, but they're using the delivery, data to, to continue to, to drive some of that consumer behavior for themselves, are you able to see into that consumer and, is that something that cloud kitchens is helping you with is to know who those guests are and see what their retention rates are and see what their recidivate rates are and how often they're coming back.

Wesley Li: 28:37

Yeah. And, the way we do it is we really just look at third party platforms to figure out what the customer retentions are. We talked to CK's development team and they're on it. And as you mentioned, the delivery platforms like Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub, they're gatekeepers to that data, which makes it very hard. And we say this, To them all the time. Our goal, we don't want to take people off your platform because you offer great service. We just want enough data to create a better experience for the customers, right? If we know that a customer is coming back 10 times within two weeks, we want to be able to throw in an extra dessert or an extra, Item for them that they always get to create a better experience for them, but with that lack of data It makes it very hard, but I'm confident that something will be figured out if we partner with the right people like CK

Jeremy: 29:31

Love it. We have gotten 30 some minutes into this. you've talked about cloud kitchens, you've talked about Asian food, but you haven't even mentioned the brand name. So for those that are going to be listening to this and are going to have a hankering for, some Asian fusion food, what is the brand's name? and, you talked about your most popular menu item, but I also love you love for you to talk about, some of your most unique menu items, but what is the brand's name before we get into some of the menu selections and what people need to experience from you guys? And

Wesley Li: 29:56

our main brands right now are Take a bow eats bowls of rice and a bunch of dumplings and we are in talks in of, making some acquisitions of different brands as well where we can create value add to create a better customer experience. But those right now are our main brands.

Jeremy: 30:14

if I'm a first time guest, what are the top three items they need to make sure are in their basket before they order, because, one, you guys are going to execute them really well. And two, they're going to have this capability factor where they're going to be sitting at home going. I don't really want to cook tonight. I'm figuring out how to go, how to go order, order one of these three items, because it's, ultimately I think, a lot of us, a lot of us order and make our selections based on that.

Wesley Li: 30:36

Yeah. So one of our top, items from take about is the crispy sesame aioli chicken bow, which is essentially a sandwich, but instead of a sandwich being baked, the bun being baked, it's steamed and we stuff, crispy chicken and sesame aioli and other vegetable toppings on top, which creates a nice crunchy bite with a lot of savory, flavors in there. And for bowls of rice, our customers love the jalapeno herb grass fed steak bowl, which offers. Great protein and it's just a meal where they can have over and over again

Jeremy: 31:13

Love that. Love that. now you make me hungry and I'm not in Chicago this week. So I'm a little bit jealous. Wesley, how do people learn more about, cloud kitchens? How do people learn more about, your brand and, how can they get in touch and learn more about both you and about your partnership with cloud kitchens and what you've been doing with those guys for the last, last number of years?

Wesley Li: 31:29

Yeah, I think the best way to you know, learn more about cloud kitchens is to go on their site and just book a tour It's you've heard from me saying that it's like a condo for restaurant owners, but it's hard to visualize you really have to see it yourself to see Okay, does this work for me? is this something I want to grow with and just unbiased from my opinion. It's once you figure out that model, scaling and growing your business and serving more people becomes very easy.

Jeremy: 31:57

I love it. And I would echo what you had to say. I think, I didn't get it at first. and, when we were approached about talking about cloud kitchens, because again, it is very difficult to define it. Cause there's a lot of people that talk about virtual brands versus cloud kitchens, number one and number two. so there's a lot of misinformation about they're out there about that. And number two, I was like, how exactly does this work? And I went on the website. I was like, Yes, please. how do I tell more people about this? Cause it's exciting to hear. So Wesley, thank you. Thank you so much for educating our listeners. I would encourage a lot of our listeners out there to consider this. It's an opportunity for you to expand. It's an opportunity for you to try new things as well. Even if you're a full brick and mortar, but you've always thought, you know what? I want to try a wing concept. I want to try a Asian concepts and I happen to be American food. You can try this at a really low cost of entry. And quite frankly, as you found. It may be one of those things that you just decide this is, I'd rather do this than even start a full brick and mortar and just, optimize that business model. for our listeners, guys, as I say on the onset, I know you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for spending time with us. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Wesley, thank you for your time and to our listeners, make it a great day.

33:03

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.