Innovating Blaze Pizza: Tech Transformations and Guest Experience

In this insightful episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian chats with Chris Demery, CTO of Blaze Pizza, about the technological advancements at Blaze Pizza, particularly post-COVID-19. Chris highlights the pivotal role of user-friendly technology in enhancing both on-premise and off-premise dining experiences. The discussion covers the seamless implementation of the Qu POS system across more than 270 locations, the importance of open APIs, and the challenges and solutions related to managing digital and in-store orders. Further, the episode explores how predictive analytics, data optimization, and customer data platforms are key to improving operational efficiency and guest satisfaction. Listeners will gain practical insights into adapting technology to meet evolving guest needs, maintaining balance between digital and on-site service, and the significance of industry-specific networking for staying ahead in technological innovations.

00:00 Introduction to Today's Episode
00:51 Meet Chris Demery: A Legend in Restaurant Technology
01:27 Chris Demery's Career Journey
02:43 Philosophy on Technology and Operations
04:23 The Importance of Predictable Technology
05:46 Challenges and Innovations at Blaze Pizza
12:45 Adapting to Post-COVID Changes
16:27 Sponsor Messages
17:28 Understanding Blaze Pizza's Unique Model
18:43 Innovative Changes in Restaurant Operations
19:33 Speed of Service and Wait Time Metrics
20:56 Challenges with Custom Orders
24:16 Managing Digital and In-Person Orders
27:32 Leveraging Data for Better Staffing
29:11 Future Innovations and Guest Experience
35:17 Staying Connected and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:02

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

Jeremy: 0:10

In today's episode, I get the privilege to talk with Chris Demery, who is a longtime veteran of the restaurant technology industry has some fantastic insights on how he has changed blaze pizza from what they were pre pandemic to where they're at today. insightful conversation, Chris and I have known each other for quite some time. And you'll get to hear really about how he thinks about technology innovations. Within their brand and how he's continuing to make blaze pizza, a place to go for both on-premise and off-premise dining. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer for custom business solutions. We sell the north star restaurant on a sales solution for multiunit restaurants. If you haven't already checked this out, please check us cbsnorthstar.com. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out with us. Today, I am joined by somebody that, I've known for quite some time. He's been a customer, and, he's been in and around, but, I don't want to say, he's been around the space for a while, and Chris, I'm going to let you, introduce yourself. Introduce yourself for those that aren't familiar. But Chris is a legend in the restaurant technology space. I know a lot of my peers know who he is and he's done some pretty remarkable things for some different brands. And, today we're going to talk a little bit about what he's doing for blaze, but, but Chris, why don't you introduce yourself, give a little background on who you are and where you've been over the last number of years, and then we can talk about, the innovations that you've been doing for blaze for the last, almost four years now.

Chris Demery: 1:36

Thank you, Jeremy. As Jeremy hinted at, I'm currently the CTO for Blaze Pizza. I've been there just over three and a half years, joined in 2021, just close to the end of the pandemic. I started my restaurant technology career at Domino's Pizza, so I helped build out their technology stack. several years ago, after Domino's Pizza, I went to Bloomin Brands, which was four different brands, Casual, Fine Dining. after Bloomin Brands, I went to CKE, so I was back in the quick serve, with 3, 600 locations. Then I went into operations at P. F. Chang's, building out off premises stuff, and now I'm back in with an operations background and a technology background at Blaze Pizza.

Jeremy: 2:22

Yeah, love that. And, one of the things that I love about every time I get a chance to engage with you, Chris, or read what you write, or, listen to you speak, it's just the fact that you've played both sides of it and you've worked with huge brands, you've worked with smaller brands. And a lot of times what I find is technologists don't necessarily always understand both sides of it. They don't understand what the impact is to operations. And so one of the things that I think is so unique about you is that you have run operations before. And you're willing and able to challenge the operators to say, Hey. Guys, you're saying that this isn't right. help me understand where those things are at. can you give me just an overall philosophy about what you think technology should do for brands? Because you and I were talking a little bit pre show about how you see it as a foundation to build upon, because if the technology is weak, you're not going to be able to execute towards what it is that you're looking for. So I'd love to have you share a little bit about your philosophy about technology as an enhancer to operations and to the guest experience.

Chris Demery: 3:16

Sure, and I would say that I learned this at, while I was at Domino's Pizza. Technology people can build very great things, but if operators can't understand it, they won't use it. And so I always attack any, and by the way, the only people I service are marketing, technology, and our guests. It's because we are a restaurant company. We're not a technology company. And so I approach every opportunity when it, whether operations comes to me or marketing comes to me. I look at it of the lens of the guest. First, and then as an operator, second, and our operators are entrepreneurs who like to cook and service guests. So anything that's hard, they're not going to use it. So it has to be broken down into very simple things. And so to take that, a different approach, if I'm going to give something to the operator, they have to look at it, be able to look at it quickly at a glance, understand what they're supposed to interpret from it. And then go back to what they do first, which is service guests. And then they can say, okay, I think my technology is telling me I need to go address something. So I'll go address it when I have that opportunity or immediately depending on what it is from a guest experience. I look at it from our guests are very fickle. I have to smooth out every, and this is not news to anybody. You have to smooth out every one of those rough points because if it's easy to use and it's accurate to use. I have found that a guest will come back to you because you're predictable. So the more predictable we can make our technology integrations with our guests. The more frequent they will come and once they'll visit us and they might go visit somebody else and they'll go, those other people, they're not very predictable, but blaze pizza is pretty predictable. So I'm gonna go back to blaze. I think that's where you get your frequency, which is what all marketing people were. So hopefully that answered your

Jeremy: 5:14

it absolutely did. And I think it's great because I think all too often I find, and we're recording this on the week of FS tech and there's a lot of technology out there and technology for technology sake is worthless. Any long time listeners have heard me say that technology that's enhancing operations, that's enhancing the guest experience is the only way to go. and I think there's the likes of Amazon and Apple and Google. All these people have made the Amazon effect for consumers. So consumers that want to engage with the product, they can go on their phone and have a product this afternoon or tomorrow. restaurants have been trying to play catch up and they don't have a budget like Amazon, which makes it a little bit tough for people that are in your spot. to be able to make those decisions, but guests are expecting it. And if you can't deliver it, you're going to lose to those that can deliver it. Pivoting back to something we talked about earlier. Chris, you had mentioned when you. Got to the brand just under four years ago. Now you were there and you inherited a technology stack that was not necessarily foundationally where you needed it to be, without, throwing shade at any kind of brand names, cause no reason to do that, but what you inherited when you started doing your evaluation, you looked at where the brand was going and you said, With what I have here, I'm going to have a hard time doing that. Can you walk me through that evaluation process? Because I think it's critical to, to make sure that you have the right foundation to build upon because if you don't being able to get the Amazon effect for people and create consistent guest experience is almost impossible. So can you walk us through where you were at four years ago? And then we can start to talk about where you're at now and where you're going.

Chris Demery: 6:45

when I arrived four years ago, what I realized is I had an older technology stack within the restaurant and the restaurant is the front line with all of our guests and all our operators. So that's the most important technology stack you have to deal with. And what I saw was we had some aging equipment, we had some risky operating systems, and I needed to change that. So when I saw that, I said, I need to position ourselves for the future. And some people say, what were you positioning yourselves for? And I said, I didn't know four years ago because I couldn't predict the future. I don't know what our guests are going to do. I have some ideas, but I don't know specifically how our guests are going to change. But I need a flexible, most likely cloud based point of sale solution and a partner that allows me to expand on it or has the ability to expand within their footprint for that. And that's how I got to our new point of sale solution. Can I say who we're using now?

Jeremy: 7:44

you're welcome to,

Chris Demery: 7:46

So

Jeremy: 7:46

I just saw those guys. I just saw those guys this week at the, at the trade show. Good guys. And they've been taking tons of market share, so they've had some great success.

Chris Demery: 7:54

yeah, we looked at a couple different, cloud based solutions and we got down to two, but we ultimately landed with Qu POS. And, we rolled out 270 QPoS locations in 10 months. It was almost a flawless rollout once we got everything going and we defined everything. And that platform allows us to innovate in the restaurant. And, I can tell you some of the innovations we're doing, but it allows me the opportunity. as an operator, if I go to the operations team and say, look, if you do this is what you're going to get out of it. And here's the net benefit associated with. So what I do is I go sell an operational technology solutions. It's easy to use to franchisees and operators. That's part of my job.

Jeremy: 8:41

and I think that, all too often what I find and, many of our listeners know that we sell something competes with Q. It's not a question of them being better or worse. You know what, for your guys's brand, they're a fantastic partner. And quite frankly, they're good people have some people that we know over there, but they gave you a foundation to build upon. We have a similar philosophy of making sure that we are going to enable operations and restaurant tours to adopt the new technologies that are out there by having open APIs, by having stability within the store, by keeping up with the latest trends. And that to me is part of where I think a lot of brands are struggling because they do have. technology stacks or technology stacks that aren't open to interfaces that aren't open to these things that are going to help you compete. tell I guess our listeners why that's so important, because I think it's, I think there's two trains of thought. There's the queue and what we do at North Stars train of thought. And then there's some of the others that don't, they've got walled gardens that don't really believe in open innovation that are going to help the industry. Why did you feel like that was such a critical component to. What it is that you did, because you guys made a huge investment and you went to your franchisees and ask them to also spend money. Maybe that they'd already just spent, within the last two years to put in the previous system.

Chris Demery: 9:53

Yeah, I think it's, it's analogous to, a similar thought is. I'm a vendor and I can provide you everything you need. Like I can provide front of house, back of house, e commerce, loyalty, credit card processing, gift card processing, all that kind of stuff. And for some organizations, that's a very attractive vision because I don't have to deal with multiple partners. that partner is probably going to give you a great deal because you're 100 percent invested with them. And what I would, my argument to that is leadership within organizations matures and what's good. Today, all in one, you get a new CMO or a new CFO or a new COO, and they come in, their job is to make their mark, unfortunately, right? And they go,

Jeremy: 10:48

the time.

Chris Demery: 10:49

I can't get out of this package because somebody signed, this agreement. And so I, it's a difficult decision to do an all in one or something where you can plug and play. Because plug and play requires people that understand integration. And it requires partners that understand integration and won't kill you with integration costs. So it's not an easy solution, but I tend to be on the sort of 60 40. I want to get 60 percent of my restaurant technology, but I know loyalty is going to evolve over time. Whether it's loyalty, 2. 0, whatever it's going to be. E commerce can evolve. today we're with Olo. I love Olo. Will Olo be what I want in five years? I don't know. because they're morphing into this bigger consolidated set of CDP, GDP, Martech stack, everything, credit card processing. And so they have a business to run. Our job is to make this the correct decisions. And hopefully for three to five years for our brands. So it's not an easy, it's not an easy decision, but I tend to sustain about 60 percent within a primary partner and leave opportunities for 40 percent to branch out, whether it's kitchen display system, whether it's e commerce, whether it's loyalty, hopefully that's. Sure.

Jeremy: 12:14

And I think, all too often people don't think through those things and it ends up biting them in the butt because they can't pivot, they can't change. They can't modify those things. for those that aren't familiar with your guys's brand, because I think it's going to go into where you guys are going now. walk us through what the brand is. I know what it is. I grew up in Southern California. I was in some of the early stores, love the brand, love what you guys do. But for those that are sitting here listening, we've got some international listeners as well that maybe haven't been to a blaze pizza, describe what a blaze pizza is for those that aren't familiar. Cause most are going to know, most are going to know what a Domino's pizza is, but maybe not a blaze pizza. So I'd love for you to walk our listeners through that for those that haven't. And then we can talk about some of the innovations you guys are looking to do.

Chris Demery: 12:56

Our founders, started Blaze Pizza on the Chipotle model. You walk in, you start ordering, you walk down the line. At the end of the line, what did you get? I got a build your own pizza or I got a signature pizza. So we started with pizzas. We're primarily a lunch business, about 60, 65 percent lunch. Fast, fast. I wanted my order to start and I wanted to start eating in less than nine minutes. That was the goal to get lunch people in and out. Dinner was a side effect. What happened? COVID happened, right? All the businesses closed down, lunch shut down. Everything's a hundred percent digital. and that's part of what happened to Blaze Pizza. Blaze Pizza was a hundred percent digital for the duration of COVID. And then they come out of COVID. Businesses have not recovered yet, right? There's not a lot of businesses that are having lunches and stuff like that yet. There's some areas where it's recovering, but mostly now it's 30 lunch, 70 dinner. And that shift in operational throughput changed a lot because. The orders got bigger because families would come in. It's versus one or two people at lunch, you'd get a family of four. And so our, fixation on speed changed a little bit. The second thing that happened because of COVID and because of everything e commerce, everybody has food for pickup and delivery. So you can get sandwiches, you can get meatballs, you can get pizzas. So it used to be pizza in Chinese was primary off premise. Now it's everything. So guests come in. And they don't eat pizza as often as they want to. So our culinary side started saying we should serve something else. We should serve salads. We should serve desserts. We should serve meatballs, which makes complexity in the restaurant. At that point you lose. Are we going fast or are we really slow? My question to operations is what is fast? And how fast are you today? And they couldn't answer it. That leads us into the innovation side in that if you don't know your manufacturing speed and your guest has changed, have you adopted your business model to meet your guests needs? Cause they're the ones that pay the bill.

Jeremy: 15:19

and you talked a little bit about it, Chris. I didn't know we talked about this pre show is the guests have changed. When you got there or prior to COVID, the guest was, the person isn't the same, but the way they engage with the brand is very different. it used to be primarily lunch. Now a lot of it shifted to dinner. The digital channel was a smaller percentage, even though you guys were digitally native early on, it still wasn't necessarily the way. I have rarely would have ordered a Blaze Pizza. Because it's so fast and I can get in and get out. And I knew it was good quality food for a good value. And I could get in and out at a QSR price point, but get a much better product. So for me, when I engaged with the brand, it was much more along those lines. Pre COVID through COVID and after COVID you extended yourself to experience brands and you might've had a shift. what. Operational complexities and even digital technological complexities. Did that create, because as we were talking about pre show, you've got to figure out how to manage those things. You got to figure out how to measure them. You got to figure out how to manage them. You got to figure out what does the guest experience look like? So what complexities did that increase? Because it almost happened overnight. It almost happened overnight. And you guys have been in this journey over the last couple of years of trying to figure your way out of it in a positive way to create the guest experience that you're looking for. And now a word from one of our sponsors. Every restaurant operator understands the chaos of a Restaurant kitchen during the meal rush restaurant technologies, oil, total oil management solutions, and end to end automated oil management system that delivers filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking the dirtiest jobs out of your kitchen and letting your employees focus on more important tasks. Control the kitchen chaos with restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer. No upfront costs to learn more, check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.

17:14

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Chris Demery: 17:38

the first thing that happened is that a hundred percent or 30 percent of off premises digital. A lot of our technology stopped when the items were boxed and put on the fast fired rack. So we actually didn't know who was picking up what pizzas, anything like that. and we actually didn't know when the products were ready. That's primarily for the off premises piece. We are a build your own pizza at one price business. So somebody, whether it's online or you walk in the restaurant, you 85 percent of all our products are build your own pizza. And for international people that don't know what that means. A lot of places charge you for every topping you add. We don't, we have 34 different toppings. You can load it up. It tastes terrible if you load it up, but you can put the things you like on your pizza and it's a fixed price varies by region, obviously. And so converting a build your own primary environment and understanding how long it takes to build that in this new guest environment meant that we had to start measuring. What, how are our restaurants doing? And so from a, from an innovation perspective, both of our cash registers used to be at the end of the line. So we never know when the order started except for our digital orders. We never know when the guests paid out and we never know when the guests actually got their pizza. and with the new complexity of whether it's folds, salads, whatever it happens to be, one of our innovations is we put a point of sale at the front of the line. And one of our key process indicators was. The guest duration cannot be any longer. So that point of sale at the front of the line cannot slow down our target of a nine minute, what we call a make time. And so we S we started measuring that and we proved we could do it. So that's one of our new innovations that provides us what we call speed of service metrics. And we call that the make time because the products being made as soon as you start it until you pay for it, the products being made. And the second piece is we did put in a kitchen display system solution at Expo. It's very cost effective. There are some very expensive ones out there. We didn't go that direction. We went with a down and dirty, very efficient one. And It tells us how long between the guest waits or excuse me, pays and when they get their order. So we call that wait time. And a lot of people had said the operator saying, I don't care how long they're waiting. I want to know what I'm like. You should care about how long they're waiting because they paid and now they're waiting and they're getting frustrated. and so by putting in that new technology platform, we can now start measuring and providing to the operators useful information. Useful information about whether the restaurant's understaffed, like your experience, right? How long is the person standing there? Some of the other things we'll probably do is extend the speed of service measurement, but it's gonna have to be cost effective. We're probably gonna want to know when somebody walks in the restaurant versus when they start their order.

Jeremy: 21:05

When they get to the front of the line and start ordering. So Chris, one of the things that I guess, inquiring minds want to know, because I've always wondered when you allow the guests to modify the experience to get one of 34 items, two of 34 items, two, three of 34 items, especially in a digital sense, what we have found, and I'm guessing, I'd love your take on this is that. Yeah. Guess we'll modify it. If I'm sitting down at a Chili's and I know that the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions come on the side of my burger, and they're not on top of my burger. I may or may not modify them from a server or in an Outback because you know what, I don't really care if they're, they are on top of my burger, but they're not really. When you're in a pizza environment. Yeah, obviously if I'm standing at the line in Chipotle, I'm walking down the line, but you might have 15 pizzas in the oven or 20 pizzas in the oven. That's one, but for digital, it's even worse. One of the biggest things that I find out from operations is that guests feedback is that the right product needs to get to the right guest at the right time. Have you guys come up with good ways to manage to make sure that your pepperoni and sausage pizza is your pepperoni and sausage pizza with extra cheese and light sauce? And mine that was pepperoni and sausage was extra sauce and light cheese in that same environment. Because they might look the same on the outside in an individual environment that's hard to one manage. And two, to even recover that guest. If you don't do it properly, have you guys overcome any of that? Cause I giving too many choices.

Chris Demery: 22:30

That's an existing problem. And, there are technologies that we don't use, technologies like a conveyor oven, right? Where we do have some conveyor ovens, but primarily it's a Firestone. It's a fire based oven. pizzas come out, some pizzas come out sooner. They were ordered later and they come out sooner just because of the makeup of the pizza. They're not done right. Didn't get the right rise on the dough or it's a different dough size. So during rush Those orders come out of the oven in a different sequence than they were placed. And it's a visual inspection by the expo person. So we don't have technology yet to solve that. We've been offered some technology by AI camera people. They're like, we'll tell you every topping that's on there. And they don't know our business. Because we don't record every topping that goes on a build your own. So there's no way that you'll tell us if it's right or not, because you're not going to be any more accurate than the person standing there going, yeah, I think that's Tom's pizza. Now,

Jeremy: 23:38

and it's just, it's one of those things that I've always just thought about, because again, when I talk to operators, I talk to executives. They're like, yeah. My biggest problem, especially for off premises is if we don't do it right, we may lose that guest forever. And so ensuring that the right product gets into the box, gets into the bag is really critical. And so I guess just because it comes up often, I was

Chris Demery: 23:56

thing we've come to. The closest thing we've come to is we put a stainless steel numbered marker in the middle of the pizza, believe it or not, like number 57. And the box that is supposed to go into Tom or whoever has a 57 on it.

Jeremy: 24:15

Okay,

Chris Demery: 24:15

So if the expo person can't match a 57 to a 57, we have a whole different problem, but

Jeremy: 24:21

Yeah.

Chris Demery: 24:22

not really technology. It's a manual method to do it.

Jeremy: 24:25

Okay. I'm going to take a different tact because you and I talked about my experience at Blaze and managing digital guest experience and in person guest experience is hard. It's hard for all brands. You've advent of third party marketplace aggregators plus first party online ordering. oftentimes, and again, I know, you guys have increased your off prem, but it creates a tension. It creates a tension to be managed. Talk to me about how you guys are trying to innovate your way through that. And the tension that, that I'll tease it out a little bit more. You've got a guest that's walked in the line. And if you only have one make line and you only have two staff members, they've got to decide, am I dealing with the digital guests or am I dealing with the guests in front of me? And if the line continues for the guests in front of me, that's The digital guest is disappointed. If the digital guest is delayed, he might not come back. But same thing might happen with that person standing in line where they're standing in line and the staff member, the one or two people that are on the line are only making digital orders. Chris, talk me through how you guys are thinking about digital. and how you guys are thinking about managing that tension and how technology can help them with those processes and systems.

Chris Demery: 25:30

yeah. So the way blaze pizza addresses that is we do have to make lines in every location. They run parallel to each other. The primary make line is on the front. That's our walk the line make line. All digital orders print on a chit printer, believe it or not. We still use chit printers, not KDS. to make the products on the back line. So receipts print on the back line. Those are digital orders. Guests stand in front. Those are walk the line orders. What you're supposed to do as a general manager or a shift leader is you're supposed to staff your labor based on volume, what we call fast fired items. And so if there is a situation where I'm starting to get as many digital orders as I'm getting in front of walk the line orders. What I'm supposed to do is operationally realize the situation and shift labor to cover both so neither guest delays. So what we provide to our GMs and AMs and shift leaders is here's how many fast fired items that typically have to be made and go in the oven. This is how often they're coming into your restaurant by day part. Typically 30 minute period. Now, do they always use that information to staff? It becomes a little difficult in California where, you, you have to staff a minimum of four hours and, there's certain guarantees. Generically, it's the same model we use to Domino's. Lay out your labor schedules based on your volume. And if your volume goes up, please volume go up, right? You'll need the staff to increase the volume. And, if you cut and don't staff for digital volume, you're exactly right. Those guests will, they'll go someplace else to order. So we have to make lines today. We've separated the technology that front of the line, it's walk the line, and back of the line, it's digital chits. Both of them go through today, one oven and in some of our restaurants, we have two ovens, a conveyor oven for digital and a gas fired for a walk the line. So that's how we're addressing it.

Jeremy: 27:43

Yeah, and I think, one of the things that I would encourage all of our listeners that are running restaurants is to use the data that it or others have can provide for predictive analytics. Now with, just the advent of the amount of data we're collecting, you guys can tell them pretty accurately how many orders they can expect to get on a Tuesday between the hours of four and four 30, so that they know how many people need to be able to work that line. But all too often people don't. adhere to that or they are lazy or just, whatever they don't staff to it. And ultimately they wonder 30 days from now, why are sales down? amazingly you lost those digital orders, or you lost the in person orders because they had a bad guest experience. So

Chris Demery: 28:22

Yeah. And if you don't have,

Jeremy: 28:23

going? Oh, sorry.

Chris Demery: 28:24

if you don't have speed of service metrics to know when orders start and when they end, it's almost impossible to predict. a usable piece of information for an operator. So that's why speed of

Jeremy: 28:36

and one of the things that you said earlier, Chris, when we were talking is that the, without the data, There's an assumption that checks are going to take nine minutes, but I think what you found through the data is there are some that take less and there are some that take more and figuring out where those things mesh out can help you make better business decisions based on the data, not based on somebody standing there with a stopwatch looking at, they can't. There's no way they can predictably. just this week, I was at FS tech and I get to listen to the CIO or CTO of a yum brands talk about how they're using data to ultimately they're using, different pieces of data to make decisions, not based on what Susie told me, but based on what the data said to be able to go through that. And I love that you guys are going back to that one more time. Where is it going? Chris, you've been on the innovation side. You have been, just one of those people that's always visionary and also have the chops to get it executed. You're not just one of those visionaries. It's got your head in the cloud of just, oh, this is where the world's going and go figure it out. you've also been one of those people that have executed on those visions. Where is it going? Where is it going for Blaze? Give me kind of your guys's roadmap, because you don't know where the guests are going to go, but you know that you've got to be ready so that when they're ready to go there, you guys can support them. So tell me a little bit about where you think things are going, both from a tech perspective and even from a consumer perspective.

Chris Demery: 29:57

it's interesting. I don't think my perspective is for, it's different for blaze, but I've been other places where I had it all. And so I just feel like I'm reinventing the wheel sometimes. I don't, while our guests have changed from the perspective of when they might order or how they might order, I don't think anybody has, There's not a lot of movement away from convenience. and

Jeremy: 30:21

huh.

Chris Demery: 30:22

And so every innovation I do or any technology that I do within Blaze Pizza, I have to continually work to remove the guest friction of ordering and being satisfied with their order. One of our gaps, I don't know who's going to shoot me for saying this out loud, but, some of our team are very proud. Of a 32 hour response time to a guest complaint.

Jeremy: 30:53

Okay.

Chris Demery: 30:53

I would argue that if you have your pizza, if you pick up your pizza and drive home and it's wrong and you complain about it and 32 hours later, you get a response and somebody else does it in 10 hours or 10 minutes, they're probably going to go there next time.

Jeremy: 31:13

Yep.

Chris Demery: 31:14

so where we're going is, a couple of years ago, I invented the I was going to patent it. Silly me. I'm not a lawyer. I don't, you can't patent this. It's called pizza 911. If you order from blaze pizza on your phone digitally, and you have a bad experience and you pressed a button, you could talk to the restaurant within 15 seconds. Now it's fully within technology capability to do that. There's a lot of hurdles there, right? Somebody has got to answer the phone. We have to train the operators what to do on it. I think the story is the same. Solve the guest experience. And they will be more frequent and come back to you. As long as your food is good,

Jeremy: 32:00

Yep.

Chris Demery: 32:00

have to be a hundred. That's right. And so that's what I worked on a hundred percent of the time at Domino's. That's what I worked on probably 50 percent of the time at Blumenbrands, because we had a lot of architecture things we were also solving there, but PF Chang's small footprint locations, and also a blaze pizza. It's all around operationally. How do we make it faster and easier on the operators? And how do we get the guests? To have a better experience. And I would argue with anybody out there, I don't think it's different for you.

Jeremy: 32:31

think that, one of the things I'd heard, and I'd love, your opinion on this before we wrap up is people get into patterns. You probably go, you're moving cross country. anybody that reads the press about plays knows that, they've moving cross country, you're moving cross country. Likely you had a pattern when you were home, you likely have a pattern when you're on the road. You likely have a pattern in your new home. You will have that pattern and getting people into the pattern is huge. When people fall out of the pattern, because you take 34 hours to respond to a guest complaint, they may lose being part of that pattern. And somebody else's taking that pattern, whether it's because of budgetary reasons, or just because of stages of life, Thursday nights, my son has guitar. Guess what? I need to have a fast meal on Thursday nights because I get done with work at six and his guitar lessons at seven. So I've got an hour to get the kids fed and him to guitar lessons. It's just my life right now. If guitar lessons moved to Wednesday night, my, my pattern would shift. How does Blaze stay in that, that, that train of thought? Because I think engaging with the guests and making sure that they've got a fantastic pattern and they're there is going to be critical to seeing you guys continue to succeed in the world, in 2024 and beyond.

Chris Demery: 33:41

I think, and we're not a hundred percent there yet. I think part of it is as we, we move into the realm of what the retail industry has done and is the talk of the town, right? You're talking about some form of GDP or CDP customer data platform. Where I can tie together all these experience. And I know when your guitar night changes. he's ordering on Wednesday. Now I wonder what happens. And

Jeremy: 34:05

What happened?

Chris Demery: 34:05

so you start to, per you, and this is everybody's just saying it, right? You need the data so that you can personalize the experience to a certain degree and not become creepy. That's where we're going. You have to measure this stuff all along the way. And that's the fun part about. Technology in the restaurant industry is it's almost a green field because there's so many opportunities, but blaze pizza is moving along the technology path with operations and digital to smooth out the guest experience, smooth out operations and then get all of those people that are in a pattern in our pattern. Now, part of that is people don't eat pizza twice a week. Sometimes they don't need it once a week. So part of it is we're introducing new products. If you don't know how long it takes to make your core product, you definitely won't know how long it makes to make your new product. So part of that data collection, all the things we've been talking about. So by providing that capability to the organization, we can now flex with new products and understand how it affects people's patterns.

Jeremy: 35:17

I love that. Chris, I think, that's a great place to wrap up. Cause I do think that's where everybody's trying to go. They're trying to get the Amazon effect where they know who their guests are, how they engage with them. So thank you for sharing that. How would you suggest people stay connected, besides just going into blaze and seeing all of the innovations that you guys are doing, how can they stay connected to you and follow what you and the story of kind of blaze going forward? It looks like.

Chris Demery: 35:39

anybody can reach out to me directly. if you say, hey, I was, I heard your podcast. I'd like to dive a little bit deeper. I give stuff away for free. None of the stuff I'm in, none of, I haven't invented any of this stuff. It's all been through coordination with other great technology people. It's just, I'm really passionate about it. And I think I can explain it to operators as well as technology people because I've been on both sides. So you could connect on LinkedIn and say, Hey, I want to connect or do something, or you can, email me directly at chris. dimmery at blaze pizza. com very typical, Microsoft format for email. or just if, or if you see me at a conference, you can, we could sit down and have a cup of tea or a drink, whatever you want.

Jeremy: 36:22

Yeah, no. And, and Chris and I do run into the same people at the different circles and as he said, for those that aren't in those same areas, I would highly encourage you to get involved, especially if you're a technologist, whether that's restaurant technology network, going to FS tech, going to Murtec, going to some of these different conferences, which is where Chris and I get those chances to, to hang out. Chris, thank you so much for sharing some of your wisdom and insights to our listeners, guys. We know that you guys got lots of choices, so thank you guys for hanging out with us. Today and make it a great day.

36:49

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