Elevating the Burger Experience with Tech and Teamwork: A Chat with Patric from Bobby's Burgers

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, the host interviews Patric, the vice president of operations for Bobby's Burgers by Bobby Flay. Patric shares insights into his extensive background in the restaurant industry, including his experiences before joining Bobby's Burgers, like working with Cold Stone Creamery and a significant sushi brand. The discussion delves deep into how Bobby's Burgers leverages technology to ensure recipe consistency, enhance kitchen efficiency, and improve customer service, particularly highlighting their use of clamshell grills for perfect burger cooking and kitchen technology for order accuracy. Patric also touches on the brand's growth strategy, franchise opportunities, and the critical role of selecting the right technology and partnerships to support their vision. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of enhancing the guest experience through technology, including off-premise dining solutions and future plans for Bobby's Burgers expansion and franchising opportunities.

00:00 Welcome to the Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast
00:14 Introducing Patric from Bobby's Burgers
01:02 Patric's Journey in the Restaurant Industry
02:26 The Concept Behind Bobby's Burgers
04:56 Leveraging Kitchen Technology for Quality and Efficiency
07:30 Exploring the Impact of Technology on Franchise Consistency
18:08 The Evolution of Off-Premise Dining and Packaging Innovations
25:04 Embracing AI for Enhanced Customer Experience
30:57 Future Plans and Franchise Opportunities with Bobby's Burgers
35:50 How to Learn More About Bobby's Burgers Franchising

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 think everyone out there for joining us as I say each and every time I know you guys got lots of choices So thank you guys for hanging out with us Today I am joined by somebody from a brand that I admire quite a bit I'm a patron of and so it's always fun when I get to hang out with somebody that I admire what they get to do but Rather than me talking about him. I'm gonna let Patric introduce himself first. So Patric, what's up? Why don't you introduce yourself to our audience and then we can talk a little bit about what you get to do for a living.

Patric Knapp: 0:44

Thanks, Jeremy. yeah, the cool part of my life is I'm the vice president of operations for Bobby's Burgers by Bobby Flay. and yeah, it's, it's a blast getting to work with, a chef like Bobby and his caliber. and then bringing that to more and more customers every single day. So thanks for having me.

Jeremy: 1:01

Very cool. And I guess a little bit of background about yourself before you went to Bobby's, Patric, just for our listeners. Cause, I always like to, our listeners tell me, they're like, I like to hear backstories, I like to hear where this guy came from and, they're lazy, they don't want to go check it out online. give them a little bit of background about your history and, and your experience in the restaurant industry before we jump into the topic.

Patric Knapp: 1:19

yeah, absolutely. very fortunate that I've had over 30 years in the restaurant industry at this point. my father was a restaurateur, his father was a restaurateur, so it runs in the family. but I've spent time with, some pretty iconic brands, most notably Cold Stone Creamery. I spent a significant amount of time with, them and Cajal Brands that acquired them back in the mid 2000s. and spent some time with, some less known concepts, He shows sushi. actually, it's a half a billion dollar sushi player. and that was my most recent experience. But I've been very fortunate throughout my career to be focused in operations, but also have my hands in design, construction, I. T. P. O. S. really just, a great career. I've been able to be, to have so

Jeremy: 2:04

Very cool. thank you for sharing a little bit of that. And, some of our longtime listeners might know my affinity for Bobby Flay. It's been, he's been one of those people that, 20 years ago, I didn't cook at all and he, through his, cookbooks and, And food network, I learned how to make some of the recipes, which, ultimately have, have started my culinary journey over the last 20 years. So it's, I definitely owe a debt of gratitude to Bobby and I'm certain there's lots of people out in the world that do that as well. so talk to me, Bobby is known for his burgers. So talk to me a little bit about the concept for people that haven't had a chance to experience the concept, Patric, what is the concept? Is it, I know what it is, but for those listeners that haven't gotten a privilege to, to check it out, what is the concept?

Patric Knapp: 2:40

Yeah, so you know, the great part about it is, Bobby is a burger guy, as you just mentioned. So at the end of the day, he's working, he's filming shows. The end of the day, he wants a burger and fries. And it's, it's pretty simple where he sends spends his time eating those burgers. Um, at And what we've kind of really done with this concept is create a fast, casual, burger concept. unlike the rest of the players out there, for example, like, you know, this, um, being one of our customers, one of our guests, that we actually cook burgers medium done and well done, which is a little bit of a differentiator from some of the other folks in the fast, casual burger spot. and we're actually making everything to order. So there is no. Hot holding equipment in our kitchens. when a burger order comes in, we actually drop the patty. So we're making everything from scratch, everything fresh, to order. And, the cool part is Bobby really allows us to lean into technology. So if you are chef Bobby Flay, your biggest fear in life is that your recipes aren't executed. we lean into technology, not just from a consumer standpoint, but also from our kitchen equipment. So we use clamshell grills that perfectly cook a medium burger every single time. and it leaves the employees to a point where they just have to press a button that says M on it for medium. So we really spent a lot of time trying to execute Bobby's vision of what that perfect burger is. and that's really where the concept came from. we're very fortunate. we have seven locations as of today. three of them are in Las Vegas with Caesars Entertainment. Caesars Palace, Harrah's and Paris Casino. And, we have two additional locations with Caesars Entertainment, in Atlantic City and New Orleans. we're fortunate to be in Yankee Stadium and, we have a wonderful airport location in Phoenix Sky Harbor.

Jeremy: 4:28

I have seen the Phoenix sky Harbor store, but I, I have yet to get to the one in Yankee stadium. It's been a couple of years since I've been back there pre pandemic. I have to find my way to New York city cause I happen to be a Yankee fan. Don't hold that against me. but, but, my kid and I actually, have been talking about trying to find a way to New York this summer to, go check a Yankees game out and I'll certainly check it out if I had that way,

Patric Knapp: 4:47

visit.

Jeremy: 4:49

And, I love myself some New York city and we were just chatting about going to Vegas, which is, the two extremes of, of, of opulence and different experiences. you touched a little bit about, the kitchen technology, Patric, talk to me a little bit about what that means, because, when I heard the, the pitch to be on the show, I, I actually didn't, I spend more time on the front of the house, technology point of sale, kitchen automation, but, and I've gotten more into, we've had a few guests that have talked about cold storage and hot storage and lockers and some of those kinds of things. But some of the things you guys are doing in the kitchen are unique and different that, stuff that I didn't even know existed, would you mind clicking, double clicking on that a little bit for us, for our listeners that might not know about some of the tech that's out there that you guys have employed.

Patric Knapp: 5:28

Yeah, absolutely. and it's a labor love, right? is a, is an operator true to my heart. we do try to make our lives easier inside the kitchen for our crew members. And we also have to try to make this as scalable as possible. So our franchisees can operate it pretty easily. And, we've partnered with, an equipment manufacturer and that is, built, which owns Garland and Frymaster. And the way that we're leaning into this is we're not using robots were not at that point. What we are using is Garland has a clamshell grill where the arm actually comes down by itself. You can program this piece of equipment so that it comes down to different heights, different temperatures on the top and the bottom. But where we're leaning into it even more is taking that to the next step with their kitchen connect system, which provides us a real time dashboard of how many recipes have actually been pressed on the on it. and it goes even further than that. We can start to sense When one of the heating elements is not reacting properly. So we can actually support it better from a repair and maintenance standpoint. but it also allows us to push down menus, to do things remotely, which. When you're trying to scale a concept and you're doing this, and if you have a new product that you roll out, press of a button, something goes down to your clamshell. and so what we've really tried to do is use this technology in the kitchen to help our staff. so even on the fryers. The same system works there, so we know how many times they dropped onion rings. more importantly, when you start getting into an analytics set with this, we can now see how often they're pressing onion rings, but we can also tie that back to an order from our kitchen display, right? So we can actually see how long it took before they actually pressed the onion ring button on the fryer, from when the order got to the screen. So you can actually start to take this and turn it into more of an efficiency focus. Thanks. Not just utilizing tech to make their jobs easier, but also the benefit for an operator, and getting to analyzing their business, seeing where pain points are.

Jeremy: 7:30

and I have so many questions about this Patric, because the first, I guess that leads me down this path is as a franchise or of a brand consistency and being able to uphold Bobby's name in the space is a huge piece. And so the fact that you guys have got this product that. He would be proud of, or you would be proud of regardless of where you go. It sounds like you guys have taken some of the guesswork out of that. the difficulty with getting outside of the four walls of, of a restaurant where you can feel it and touch it every day is making sure that the product is the same. Talk to me a little bit about, I guess both the challenges. So you guys roll out new recipes. You talked about, we've had a recipe viewer product for close to 20 years that does something very similar. Works in big brands like Cheesecake Factory, where they can roll out from the corporate office, a new recipe out to the field. The thing that I love that you guys are doing is now you're taking not just that recipe, but you're integrating it with the cooking system. So now not only does that recipe hit the cook line. Now you're also saying now I put this medium rare burger, this medium burger down. So talk to me about even even that innovation and where that came from and why you feel like it's such a critical piece before you guys get to 100 restaurants and get beyond the six or seven that you guys are at today.

Patric Knapp: 8:36

Yeah. I think the biggest thing for us is looking at, yes, we have Bobby sitting in our corner, right? We have this amazing chef giving us recipe. Telling us how that burger should be coming out off the grill. So we know that we have a fantastic product. That's how we do that every single day. And obviously there's tech to get our consumers orders in accurately, right? That world's all evolving. You're we're using AI. Everyone's using AI on, on phone calls, right? And, it's becoming the norm at this point. But when you take it and you move that back into the training for a cook and the execution on the grill, I think that's where the magic really happens. you start thinking about today's world where such a high percentage of our volumes actually done off premise, right? People are taking food and going with it. yeah, your kitchen displays now talk back to Olo, unlike they used to be able to do. Olo didn't get information from the restaurant. now you can do that. when you start linking that all together in a dataset, that's where meaningful change actually happens. and yeah, our focus from a franchising side is we need these restaurants to also make money for our franchisees. So the more efficient that our crew members are, the more of a return that they get. Which makes them happier, makes them want to open more stores, makes the brand more successful. it's that whole ecosystem. yeah, from an innovation standpoint, literally where we were sitting in the Garland test kitchen one day. And, they're like, Hey, we're rolling out this process where the system where you can actually get a dashboard with information. and. It's basically, yeah, sign us up, Because not only did we want to test it, but we believe in the value of the information, and using that information to make our restaurants that much better. And as technology is changing every single day, right? So it's finding the right pieces that are going to have a meaningful, impact on our business.

Jeremy: 10:25

thank you for sharing that. And I would echo to our listeners, guys, this is part of why having partnerships, deep levels of partnership with your supplier partners is huge because had you not been there in their test kitchen, understanding what they were doing, you might've missed that opportunity to have that. And I guess challenges with this Patric, so talking to a different provider of cooking equipment on the show in the past, they've talked about And when you get to different geographies, That product may work differently in the a hundred degree heat in Las Vegas than it does in the wet swampy New Orleans, and then you got New York and Yankee stadium. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about even what that looks like from a product consistency. Cause it's, oftentimes restaurants don't think about that when they, cause they're all in Southern California or they're all in Dallas or they're all in Chicago and everything feels the same and looks the same. And then they get outside of the region and go, Oh, that's great. why is it taste different here? and you don't have a budget like McDonald's where you've got stores all over the world and they've figured out the food science, geographically. How do you guys think about that? 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.

Patric Knapp: 12:09

Yeah. that's an interesting question because, fortunately for us, at the end of the day, the clamshell grills, the fryers, they're set to a specific temperature, right? So as long as we're using the same product, They're almost identical from location to location. That being said very truthfully and very transparently, our team's been at every single opening, not just when we're there to do training, we're actually there on equipment fire up so that we're verifying recipes before the technicians leave. being a concept that uses fresh, never frozen, certified Angus beef. yeah, we need to make sure that we actually have our beef product when the contractors are firing up the equipment, because that's when we're calibrating it and making sure that it's on, on, on spec. so we actually do that as part of every single opening that we're actually there. We're part of that process. And then we're also there for the training in the opening, but it's, it's an investment in quality. That's our product. At the end of the day, we do burgers, fries, and shakes. We do them pretty well, but that's because of our dedication to our products.

Jeremy: 13:10

thank you for sharing that. when you were talking about how you guys go about, you mentioned KDS or kitchen video. I don't remember exactly what, what acronym you use, but essentially you're using kitchen videos in some of your kitchens. talk to me about, the benefit of using kitchen video. Cause I don't know that everybody uses it. I still have lots of clients that are still using tickets and what data metrics you're getting from that KDS that really is helping you improve operations, both for the staff members, and then really how it impacts that, that cook times and really the product quality. Because I, again, implore lots of our listeners. If you haven't, haven't considered it, KDS is something no different than some of the AI pieces. And some of the point of sale pieces and the online ordering pieces that you talk about are really critical to being competitive in today's day and age. Would you mind talking about that for just a few minutes?

Patric Knapp: 13:56

Yeah, absolutely. kitchen video system. KBS, is actually very, a very big passion of ours. obviously that controls the data to your crew that are cooking your food, right? so it is imperative that it's set up properly, but more importantly, that's one of the aspects where we are leaning very far into the tech. so quite honestly, I'm in my office here. We have a test lab. Yeah. And I have five boxes from KitchenArmor, because we are using KitchenArmor POE devices. So in case that there is a power issue, all that I have to ensure is that our rack is electrified, right? and we can continue on with operations. But the great part about today is, you go back in time and that KVS or even your KDS only operated off of your native POS system. And now with partners like KitchenArmor, QSR Automations. that information can go to different places, not just a function of your P. O. S. But that can go back to your online ordering that can go to a dashboard that can go to a power B. I. Report. so you can actually pull reports that are pretty meaningful and you Yeah, in a fast, casual setting, minutes add up quick. so the faster that we're actually able to react to something or a learning, when we opened Caesar's Palace, for example, we have a smokehouse burger. That smokehouse burger needs an onion ring on it. the onion rings are actually made by the fry station, not the, but the assembly station actually does need that onion ring, right? To finish the smokehouse burger. being able to actually just send that onion ring over to the fry station instead of the human being needed to say, Hey, I need an onion ring for a smokehouse. It allows for that tracking. It allows for all that control, right? something as simple as that can really throw off a kitchen. If all of a sudden they're behind three onion rings. And onion rings take four minutes to fry, creates a bottleneck and it just cascades across your entire kitchen. setting those up properly and ensuring that you have the right items going to the right places, it's of utmost importance. but yeah, then you start getting into the data and the analytical side of it. And matching that with other information from your store, it's really powerful and can create some great efficiencies. we're dealing in a world where, all of our margins are being shrunk, right? The labor is increasing, food costs continues to rise. So if we have the ability to make our kitchen more efficient, we're going to do that, right? we need to do that. Everyone needs to do that.

Jeremy: 16:24

and I think that the other side of that, and I think for those that haven't done KDS and haven't really looked, the kitchen armor guys are great. QSR automations is awesome. Spend some time. Like we talked about pre show with them, at a trade show most recently, and both of them are fantastic partners of ours, and they're really good at making sure that you understand. The other thing that I find is not only helping the staff members, but the product itself is better because that, they can say it's an eight minute cook time on the burger, but the onion rings don't fry, don't hit the fry guy until four and a half minutes so that, you've got 30 seconds to drop the onion ring in before it hits that rather than it being sitting in the hot box for four minutes, getting cold before it goes on the burger. So at the end of the day, if you're not doing those kinds of things, your product that goes to the guest is also impacted because of that.

Patric Knapp: 17:10

Yeah. And the great part about, these partners, for example, is there's an element where you can have recipes built into these kitchen video systems, right? yeah, maybe an employee gets an order for something that they don't make every single day. They can tap on that item and drill down into what it actually is supposed to look like. Prep times. Obviously, we try to keep our menu very simple, so that it is executable and they don't have to do that. But having that at their fingertips again, empowering employees. Where they don't have to go fumbling through a book. They can literally tap on a screen and pull up exactly what they have to make. so yeah, just being able to execute better quality food faster. and then ensure that it's coming out the right way all the time.

Jeremy: 17:52

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing those pieces. And I'm starting to think that you're moonlighting as a CIO, even though you really say you're a CIO because the amount of tech that you, that you're aware of is, is awesome. you don't get very many operators that are this deep into the tech. So it's fun to talk, talk technology. Patric, you talked about off premise being a big piece of growth. That, it was a huge piece of this conference and, historically people, we're in the less than 20 percent off premise, world pre pandemic. And, then we went to a hundred percent on off premise because of the pandemic. And then now everybody's trying to figure out what the middle ground is. Talk to me a little bit about how Bobby's burgers thinks about off premise and how that's a, how that's a strategic part of your guys growth and really your customer delivery, because there's a lot of operational pieces. There's a lot of technology pieces. There's a lot of food quality pieces. Talk to me a little bit about your guys strategy. And where are you guys thinking is it really soft premise and really how tech plays a part in it?

Patric Knapp: 18:44

Yeah, I think that's probably easily the most tech forward area out of a restaurant. Because you have to execute, we've spent a lot of time, on the testing side. with Olo, for example. and, as we're building this ecosystem for our street side stores and our, our full portfolio, when you get into this third party world, yeah, we're even taking a look at robots, delivery robots, because, the biggest challenge for us is we do cook everything in order. We're burgers, fries and shakes. So we're very temperature focused products, right? if you get a, if you get a shake, that's all melty. you're not going to be very happy with it. we're actually actively looking at utilizing delivery robots, because that allows for a quicker delivery time, right? To the consumer within a specific radius. but yeah, you start looking at DoorDash, GrubHub coming into your restaurant. and some of the other folks that are out in the burger category are seeing 30 to 40 percent of their volume in that medium. So it's very important for us to understand it. and executed on it. very specifically what we've tried to do is we want to make this as easy as possible for those drivers coming in and picking up an order. so yeah, if we don't have the ability to do curbside, we are positioning our pickup area as close to the main doors as possible so that they're in and out, we are actually also using a order ready screen so they can come right in, see the order number, know that it's ready. They don't actually have to interact with anyone can just grab the order, grab the right order and leave. so we're looking at it from a couple of different aspects. That being one of them, the other one is how they actually come in. again, partnering with specific groups that X that are experts in this, as I mentioned earlier, I was with, Olo at their convention last week and, they have a 99. 99 percent uptime, which is pretty unheard of, from. From that type of a, a group. phenomenal rating, right? how do we actually then take that and make sure that we're executing 99. 99 percent of those orders? so you get back into kitchen video screens. You also now add in some kitchen printers, right? Because. from a tech standpoint, KVS are great. But once it leaves that area, how do you know what orders with which? the use of thermal printers has really significantly picked up over the past four years, right? so we're actually Building those into our tech, in the restaurant as well so that there's actually going to be one at Expo and one at our beverage station, so that the hot and the cold can actually be packaged separately and still tied together somehow. so yeah, we're looking at it from that angle that we do need to make sure that we're executing really well. the other interesting part about our business is, see, I think you said you had a cheeseburger with ketchup and pickles, right? the ketchup does not come on our burgers, from an off premises standpoint, though, all of those little details about an order are extremely important. that 30 to 40 percent of those customers that are ordering off premise, we have to nail those orders, or else you're just reducing your population that are going to purchase from you. we need to keep our guests happy. everything from creating that online menu properly, and actually going through that ordering it for if you were ordering at home, to really understand what you need to add in. What needs to be specialized, making sure that, Hey, if you're ordering our crunch burger, that it automatically lists out those modifiers that come on it. building that menu is really the core of this off premise game, making it easy for the customer to order what they want and get it how they want it.

Jeremy: 22:18

Yeah. And I think all too frequently people say, let's just do the same thing we did in house or what we did from takeout when you go to third party delivery or even first party online ordering, you can't there from the packaging. To, guest expectations to the modifications. and I, we even have certain clients that won't offer certain things off prem that they can offer in house because they know the product is not going to travel as well. did you guys also go through and most brands have, but I'm, so I'm assuming you guys have, cause, even the tech that goes into, and I say technology, the technology that goes into the packaging. Packaging, what kind of packaging goes out when you're sitting in the dining room and you say, Hey, I want to take the second half of the cheeseburger to go, it's a very different experience than if it's going into a bag, that's going into DoorDash. So have you dealt with, have you had to deal with all of that as well? Patric?

Patric Knapp: 23:04

Yeah, what's interesting is we have, so we've already, in our very short life so far, we've already modified our burger boxes once, and we continue to do that. So our burger box, for example, is now that clamshell that you got. it actually used to be a box that folded into itself. so it had four flaps that folded in, and it wasn't as easy to take around and eat from. So part of the evolution was, hey, we're We need a box that's more friendly. not only that, but this box also has, perforations on the seam. So you can rip it in half, which makes it easier. we're actually going to, we're looking at, changing the fry cups. So if you had fries, they actually come in a standup cup. We're actually looking to go to a box. so yeah, we are actually modifying our packaging, for the street side as well as the third parties. because you're absolutely right. Getting the right product, having a box that everything, your sauce doesn't leak through the bottom of it, right? so yeah, we're going through that. We actually live through that stuff every single day because the, that's another thing that's actually moving a little bit faster than it ever did in the past is packaging. you can get some pretty cool things out there. even from a straw. So now there's the biodegradable straws that you can use for shakes. that still allow you to get a nice spoon bending shake through. so we're very much so focused on that because it is a different world. even something down to a sealed for safety sticker that a couple of years ago you didn't really have to worry about. But that's an important part of doing business today, making sure that the consumer knows that when they get a bag with burger and fries inside that no one else was inside of it, right?

Jeremy: 24:42

Yeah, I'm sure everybody's seen the, the Tik Tok meme of the, the pizza delivery driver that sliced the, one slice out of the pizza and stuck it back together and stuck it in the box. So I know that's it. and it's silly to, we will chuckle about that, but this kind of stuff happens and at the end of the day, you're not directly impacting that guest that's sitting in your dining room. It's going out, be a third party, or it's going out, out the door in a bag and not knowing that's there. Patric, talk to me a little bit about how you guys are thinking about AI. you brought up AI on the ordering side. Olo has been one of the leaders on that front, spent a decent amount of time at this recent trade show with two or three of the other, two of the vendors, two of the three vendors that I know that are in kind of the voice AI side, but how are you guys considering AI as it relates to everything from site selection to operational details, to guest engagement? Because I wouldn't be a restaurant technology guy show in 2024, if I didn't talk about AI in some way.

Patric Knapp: 25:33

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. yes, we are exploring the voice AI for order injection into POS. And yeah, we're also actually talking about the potential for drive thru locations. drive thru menu boards would utilize that technology as well. most of our tech stack has been using that around analytics, right? You mentioned Olo. they have a phenomenal AI engine, right? that understands consumers, and they're taking it to another level where it's now talking about what we're upselling to a consumer, right? what we're actually going to recommend to go along with this item where it's not. Not needing a human to generate that anymore. they're actually, their AI is actually predicting out what a customer is actually going to want. so you start getting into that, from a loyalty standpoint, from a marketing standpoint. I think, there's just some tremendous opportunity with AI. some of the campaign, the things that are being put out there. we're looking at it that we're still a little bit young, where we have the opportunity to see what's going on and playing with it. but definitely the part that we're leaning into first is for the voice ordering, and then utilizing the A. I. That are our partners have built into their systems on how we can plus that up.

Jeremy: 26:49

and that I underscores the comment that I made earlier about just investing in these partnerships and understanding where they're at and how it might fit into your brand. Cause some of those producing for a brand, may or may not fit with you guys. But if you're not sitting down with those people and spending time at conferences and spending time at these different events, you're not going to know it. And so you don't even know to bring that back to your business. I realize it's hard to get outside of the four walls of your business, but it's ultimately where you can grow and learn about those things. Cause, the pace of innovation post pandemic, post 2020 is, I've been doing this almost as long as you have in the restaurant tech space. I think I'm 29 years and it's, it's insane that the pace, because for so long it was, the, nobody wanted to adopt anything new and now, Whatever the reason is, people realize it's not going to kill them to try these new things. So what else in your guys's environment, Patric, did we not talk about from a tech perspective that you, you would want our listeners to hear about and say, you know what, you've got to be thinking about these things.

Patric Knapp: 27:43

I think, we've spent a lot of tech time talking about the tech in our kitchen and our back of house operations and, I think you mentioned partners and I think that's one of the approaches that we take to all of this, that you don't necessarily always see. And I think that's been probably one of our successes is. Yeah, as we've been talking to toast, for example, who's our POS provider, toast looks at us as a partner. We're talking about things. Oh, hey, here's what we're looking at. and I think that's one of the biggest cells for us with the folks that we're aligned with is it's more of a partnership. it's folks that are also growing, right? we far too often overcomplicate what a restaurant is. at the end of the day, right? it's an opportunity to provide people with food in a hospitable fashion, right? And that word hospitable, hospitality kind of gets thrown away at a point when you look at tech the wrong way. and we're very focused on aligning with companies that will allow us to focus on being hospitality folks, not technology folks. Don't get me wrong. You can tell I'm excited about technology and how we use it. but at the end of the day. My job in life is to make sure that our restaurants are serving great food to folks and leaving them happy, right? not necessarily that my POS works so Finding partners that actually believe in that same thing in our that allow us to do that and spend instead of spending a whole lot of time working on technology. so that partnerships really been a key point to us. yeah, you look at our partners like toast or thanks. for our loyalty and our marketing program. And those are huge components today. the loyalty portion of any restaurant's business is significantly different than it was 10 years ago than it was 20 years ago. and we like to think that we're very forward on how we're looking at those things. But there's a lot of great examples out there from some other concepts that do some different things to really engage with their customers. so I think the thing that we really haven't talked about is that guest engagement side of it, and that's where, thanks for us does really come into play where, yeah, we are building out our app, and we have this loyalty program, and we're going to incentivize people, and we also have this, uh, we have, we have an ability that some other concepts don't have with Bobby. so we actually have Bobby Flay where, yeah, we can do, autographed cookbooks to our top 1 percent of our guests type of thing, right? And, we're still working out what all of that is, as we get out to the street. But, really utilizing that AI side of this as well to truly understand our guests. To really market to them and make their experiences in our restaurants more meaningful.

Jeremy: 30:28

and I think that it also underscores something that I say all the time for both to both our team and to a lot of our clients, tech for tech sake does nothing tech that makes operations better tech that makes guest engagement better. Tech that makes the business better to help them make more money. But it's not just about making money. It's about delivering great product and serving your guests what they need when they need them, hot food, hot, cold food, cold, making sure that it's hitting their door or hitting their palate when they need it, in the ways that you want it to. Patric, where are you guys going? Talk to me a little bit about what the future looks like for Bobby's burgers, and what you guys are looking to, deliver. To expand into and where do you see not just the tech, but really the brand as a whole, getting out into the world. Cause, unfortunately I had only seven units. I'm guessing a lot of our audience, unless they've been in one of those three Vegas stores or in New York or, any of those places probably haven't gotten a chance to experience it. But I, I am certain under your leadership that, that's going to change quite soon.

Patric Knapp: 31:20

Yeah, we're really excited about the future. we are looking and actively looking for, experienced multi-unit restaurant folks. to join us as franchisees and partners. and the example that I'll use is, I'm in our Charlotte office today, and, we're actually building a restaurant about half a mile behind me, which will be our flagship store. and that's going to be where we're actually going to do all of our training for our franchise partners as well. a lot's happening here in our own backyard, but as you look at where we're growing, we have, we have some excellent partners that we've already aligned with. so we have a group that's actually bought the rights to the state of Colorado. we have another group that's bought the Chicagoland, area. And we have several more that are actually going to be announced in the coming months. But, what we're looking at is we're not going to be the largest burger player out there. We want to be the best. so our focus on quality is always going to be the right thing. The right focus for us. So what we've really been spending a lot of time doing is, yeah, we have a bunch of calls. We're always looking for the right folks to partner with the people that understand and believe in what we're doing, that yes, have some sort of an affinity towards Bobby. that's always a positive. but yeah, we're looking to aggressively grow. We're going to have, several stores open this year. our Charlotte location will open in June and, we have, another airport location in Raleigh Durham announced for later this year in Q4. And, we'll probably have a couple of our franchise locations open this year. we do think that it's going to be a pretty, exciting ride. but yeah, we're actively seeking, seeking franchisees to join us and be part of this.

Jeremy: 32:55

I appreciate you sharing that and I'm excited to, to see the growth just, just for those listeners that may be in a place where they're like, Hey, what does the perfect, Bobby's burgers look like, most of your properties thus far in nontraditional locations. And I say nontraditional is that, kind of growth paths. Is it freestanding? Is it in line? Because again, these are all questions that I guess I'll save you the phone call. If somebody's Hey, I've got a Burger King that I want to convert into a Broadway's burgers. That might not be what you guys are looking for. So I just would love to cut that off of the past before we, before we let people, so they inline, freestanding drive through, talk to me a little bit about what types of properties are you looking for and what geos.

Patric Knapp: 33:31

Yeah, great question. And the easy answer is yes. so what we've done is if you experience any of our locations, so you were at our Paris resort and casino, that location, the from our cash registers to our cook line is about 400 square feet. And that model is actually what we built our prototypes off of. So our prototype for that same function is about 400 square feet. We can add on, you have to add on some back room, your walk in cooler, freezer, your mop sink, your three comp sink, dry storage, and then it's really what you add on the front for a lobby. our prototype is around 1, 900 square feet. We can do that in an end cap, we can do that in a freestanding building, we can actually do that in a drive thru as well. while our existing locations are more on the non traditional side, all of those do have some sort of a kitchen in the back, right? we are focused more on the street side on those end caps on the freestanding side location. here in Charlotte, our location is actually a mixed use, it's an office building. so we're on the ground floor of an office building just happens to be one of the best corners in Charlotte. we were very fortunate to get the space that we did. but yeah, our franchise partners are out there looking for mall locations, In lines, some are looking for freestandings. Some are actually looking at a Burger King space right now. none of it's really actually ruled out, from a demographic standpoint, the cool part about the world that we live in today with third party. You're not just drawing from the street anymore, right? for us very specifically, we have this phenomenal draw with Bobby Flay, and we internally say it that Bobby's going to get people in the door and then it's our team and our franchisees teams jobs to make sure that they come back right through our execution of his vision of his product. And his hospitality. we're not necessarily in a situation where we say, Hey, it has to be there. It has to be on this side of the street. because we do think people will turn a little bit more than they would for their morning coffee, for example. It's an interesting position, but, definitely looking for strong markets, right? We're again, we're not out here to build a thousand stores. We want to build stores in the right place with the right partner.

Jeremy: 35:42

I, I love those explanations and I hope I didn't, throw you too off track. I'm sure you get these questions all the time from these calls. So if people want to learn more, if they're sitting here on the call going, you know what? how do I learn more about Bobby's burgers? Where would you, where would you send them? What would you suggest they check out next?

Patric Knapp: 35:56

Yeah. The best place to go is bobbysburgers. com. So our website does actually have a franchising page on it. you can actually download our brand deck. Fill out the form if you want to learn more and it will actually connect you with a member of our team to do an introductory call. And, quite honestly, the second call is typically with myself and Michael, our president. we're very hands on in this process because we feel it's really important. So if you are interested in learning more, definitely check out bobbysburgers. com.

Jeremy: 36:26

I am blown away that, in this day and age, Bobby's burgers. com. You guys didn't have to spend a lot of money to get that URL. I'm like, how did you guys get Bobby's burgers. com? that's pretty fun. Patric, thank you very much for, for giving us insight on what you guys are doing on the tech side. it's great. exciting to see people adopting tech to really make ultimately not tech for tech sake, but tech to deliver results for the guests and deliver results for the staff and every answer that you had was really around how do I make the staff's life easier or how to make the guest experience better. So thank you for doing that. Cause, there's more people in the world that need to be thinking that way, because at the end of the day, that's, what's gonna drive the, the behavior from restaurant tours. to our listeners, guys, we know you guys got lots of choices, like I said. So thank you guys for hanging out with us. while you're online, checking out bobbysburgers. com, make sure you guys subscribe to the newsletter once a month. You guys will get an email from us, that talks about all of the different podcasts we have. Patric, thank you so much. And to our listeners, make it a great day.

37:19

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