Innovating Restaurant Operations with GM Pilot: A Deep Dive

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian speaks with Cijoy, an experienced restaurant technology and operations veteran. Cijoy shares his journey from engineering to the Y2K era and his transition into the restaurant industry. He introduces his new product, GM Pilot, which aims to streamline restaurant operations by optimizing labor management, enhancing efficiency, and saving costs. The discussion highlights the significant challenges faced by GMs and how GM Pilot is designed to alleviate these burdens by automating and improving labor and inventory management without requiring extensive training or IT resources. Cijoy also outlines future plans for expanding the capabilities of GM Pilot and provides insights into effective implementation strategies.

00:00 Audio GM Pilot
00:57 Introduction and Welcome
01:06 Guest Introduction: Meet Cijoy
01:49 Cijoy's Career Journey
04:39 The Birth of a New Idea
06:39 Implementing the Concept
11:35 Challenges and Solutions in Restaurant Tech
15:10 The Role of General Managers
17:30 Adapting to New Labor Models
19:38 Custom Tailored Solutions for Labor Management
20:16 Uncovering Hidden Opportunities in Labor Efficiency
21:44 The Importance of Consistent Guest Experience
22:59 Empowering GMs with Advanced Tools
26:09 Future Plans: Expanding Beyond Labor Management
29:24 Engagement and Implementation Process
31:58 Target Audience and Market Strategy
34:49 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

0:02

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

Jeremy: 0:14

In today's episode, we are joined by a friend of mine, Cijoy. He and I met a few years ago at a trade show, and it has been amazing getting to know his story. He talks a lot about where he came from some of his restaurant technology background, restaurant operations background, and now he's here to share his new product, launching GM pilot, which is not just a piece of software, but it's really. An entire way to go about helping save labor as well as make your operations as efficient as possible. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer of custom business solutions, where we sell multiunit restaurant technology to brands all over the country. Check us www.Cbsnorthstar.com. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I think everyone else is joining us. As I say, each and every time you guys have got lots of choices. So thanks for spending time on the show today. Today I am joined by a very special guest. He and I met a couple of years ago, but I'm gonna let Cijoy introduce himself. we met a couple of years ago at a Murtec, I think at a, at a dinner in Vegas. So, Cijoy, why don't you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your background, because I think it's a really critical as we go into kind of. What the topic is for today's show.

Cijoy O: 1:25

Yeah, that'd be good. Thank you, Jeremy. Yeah, I remember that dinner very well. That was I was about to take on a CIO role at a pretty large national chain, and it was still under wrap. So it was nice to share company with you and everyone else at the table that night and kind of get prepped for that.

Jeremy: 1:40

Yeah. You were very coy. You're like, I can't talk about it, but it's a big deal. I'm telling you. I'm like, okay, cool.

Cijoy O: 1:45

It certainly was fun. It was some great people that I worked with and I always enjoy working with great people. And thanks again for having me on the show and helping me, get through the, this conversation as well, too, because, as my background, I've been in the restaurant tech space for about 12 years. prior to that, I started my career way, way long ago in, in engineering, but during the Y2K era, I joined a company called Price Waterhouse, and then which eventually became IBM. And I've been doing global implementations of ERPs and CRMs around the world. But, I needed to stop traveling and was looking for a non travel, role and career for myself so I could be around my daughter as she was growing up. I got the fortunate opportunity to cross paths with Brinker, and met Valerie Davison, she was the chief people officer there. I made a plea to her that I don't know your industry at all. I know six other industries really well, but I'll work and sweat it out in the restaurants until I understand it. thankfully she took me off on the offer and, threw me in the restaurants right after that and spent, lots of days opening and closing and. Working in the kitchen, working the front, really learning everything, about the, about running a building, and the empathy it takes to be a GM, and to, work and work in the industry. it was rough. I'd tell you my first 90 days, I thought, what the heck am I doing? I'm ready to run away. had become very good friends at that point with Pankaj Bhattar. I think you, you know him well. he shared with me. You know why he's in the industry is like the number of people that we touch every day To rely on the things that we do to ensure that their families are fed And that really grounded me on mission centric on, I'm not here for me, I'm here for the people in the field. And fortunately, every, brand that I've been associated with, I've gotten the opportunity to spend time in the field and get to know the people that, that, use the systems and technology that we put out there and see how they're using it, see how it's helping them, maybe how it's hindering them, and see what, and learn what's missing. So it's been a fun journey along the way.

Jeremy: 3:41

Yeah. And I, I always love, you know, former technologist turned operator back technologist, because they have such a different worldview. Cause, as we've talked about the other statistics that I like to remind people of is, is the restaurant industry in North America employees, or at least in the United States employees, the second most amount of people only behind the government. And so when you think about the amount of people that are dining out, whether it's at fast food or at casual dining or fine dining, it's, it's, it's. Every single day to your point, it impacts. And there's people on the front lines that are having to go in day in and day out and sweat. And a lot of those people are listening to the show. so your path from Brinker went to, you know, a couple of other brands and now you've, you, now you're at a place. So joy, where. You're starting something different really to take those learnings and, and to help people talk us through kind of what it is that, that you've seen is missing in the space, because I think it's a really unique value prop that you've got, which is why selfishly I said, Hey dude, I really need you to talk about this because I think what you're doing is really, really awesome.

Cijoy O: 4:39

Thank you. so for me, I think it really started about a little over a year ago. I was at, I'm on the customer advisory board of, one of the major software players and we're seeing what they're doing. And I thought to myself, you know what? It's frustrating. There's still a missing piece here is that we're creating more sophisticated, more capable platforms. Yet the time it takes to roll in a platform out to train it, to get it to a general manager's hands, to get them really good at it. It's going to take longer and longer. We have more and more systems for them to apply, especially with the boom of, off premise dining and all the functionalities and capabilities that come along with that. So I said to myself, I turned to my left to Vince, who was CIO at Raising Canes at the time. I said, what if I went the other direction? What if I actually did the work for the GM so the GM wouldn't have to step into the software and do it? And he turned to me and he's if you do, and his eyes lit up, And if events, it's he's hard to, hard to get him excited. And I said, okay, this looks like it's something worth pursuing. after that, I went about my married business being CIO advisor, like I usually do, and back to the usual thing I know well. and then I ran across a couple of people that would share them with the idea, and my co founder Alonzo, and Alonzo had spent, 14 some odd years at Chipotle built the, the local store marketing platform. They were their own internal digital agency. And even an operator a long time before that. So he was an operator that became a marketer when I shared with them. Here's the concept. If I can take workload off the general manager, not change any software, reduce their workload, become a sophisticated user that uses the software to the best ability that you're supposed to have in the building. What would that look like? He started expanding on it to, we can not only do time and labor like you're worried about, but we can also do inventory and we can do marketing and we can do online order throttling and balance all of those across because all those things drive a general manager crazy, but they're all held accountable for it. But who's got the time? And with that vision in mind, we started on this path this year. We did a kind of proof of concept to see if we can really do what we said we would do. we crossed paths with the great, first client that, that really needed it right away. They got it. I think it took us about 30 days to go from first conversation to up and running and about another 30 days before they turn around and said, look, we're getting so much value out of it. We want to start paying you. And we didn't even know. we weren't even ready for that yet in terms of commercialization, but it's been a fun ride since then. And from that, it's helped us leap into, expansion. We initially did it based on really just finding what we call, lost money. we talk a lot about wage theft when it comes to employers stealing from employees. But you've also got a couple of bad apples and a couple of bad behaviors, where people just linger around after their shift is over and a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there may not seem like much, and it really doesn't end up hitting the labor as a percentage of sales number all that hard. So no one really sees it, but those folks are doing, and those are the folks standing around watching that bad behavior happens, seeing them get away with it, so they get discouraged about. Why should I work hard? Why should I follow the rules if other people are getting away with things? And that really, from the conversations we've had of demoralized employees, from doing the right thing. so what our clients have done is they've done the historical data analysis with us, identified the people that are, the need to be coached a little bit, and maybe some that need to be promoted a guest. And once that's done, they said the,

Jeremy: 8:04

love that. I love that. Promoted to guests,

Cijoy O: 8:06

that was a cheerleading

Jeremy: 8:07

friendly way of saying they should not be employed here any longer. Yeah.

Cijoy O: 8:11

I learned that at Chile, so baptism by fire over there. but once that happened, they said, hey, the productivity of the people in the room have just improved. and now we have more labor dollars available to apply it to where it really needs to go. So that was our first phase. We call that ground control. as you'll see in GM pilot, we use a lot of, references to piloting things. Cause we look at the software that you run as a very difficult dashboard and console to run. it's a sophisticated platform and it takes a pilot, someone really trained in order to make it fly really well. Then soon after that, we, went back and they said, look, we have. Different locations at different beliefs about how many people they need to have in order to be successful for a certain amount of revenue. we looked at that and we said, we've got your typical labor hour per hu per 100. But what that misses out on is the actual people. which people are really driving productivity and which people are really a drag on it. So we went through the cycle of evaluating how to do that. And again, everything we do is specific to the client. So it's a conversation. It's our consultation efforts along with them to discover what's the right approach. and we created a module, we call flight school and in flight school, we start to analyze productivity across, time to see which people are really producing and then to show real, facts that show help shape beliefs around how many people are willing to have. And then what am I doing in one location that's creating a lot of productivity and customer satisfaction. what can I do from there that I can transpose into another building and then get that same level of productivity and efficiency out of that building as well, too. And so that's been, phase number two in the journey, not really phase one of the product. We actually started the product with a module we call flight planner and flight planner does is it follows sales forecast, uses your existing scheduling software, just uses it the way it's supposed to be, which is. Really why a lot of folks, major folks out there like Time Forge, Hot Schedule, 7 Chiffs, Restaurant 365, Synergy Suite, you name it. They love what we're doing because we're not trying to replace them, we're trying to bring them a trained user that uses their software the way it's supposed to be. So post, acquisition of a new tech platform, it's not a 12 month rollout of training material. You train a GM pilot, they come in immediately and start running the software and start getting results for everybody. And whenever you want to run an experiment, like a different labor model, et cetera, you just let us know, we tuned the GM pilot for the locations you want to change. And that goes into effect immediately. It's not a I need to create new training material and coach people and convince them to do something It's we're doing on behalf of the gm the gm can go back to the front of the house and work with people which is what we really hire them for and so it's been a paradigm shifting Approach once the platform goes in because now the hiring process looks very different. They're looking for people that are just have great hospitality skills. They don't necessarily need to be great computer jockeys On the other side of it, especially on labor, today And of course we're working towards inventory, with those that are with us today on labor we'll move into labor. sorry to inventory next year and then with zach at ovation, there's some interesting conversations there about making sure That we're taking guest feedback and using that as a loopback to make sure that we don't drop the floor on labor too low and start negatively impacting, customer satisfaction.

Jeremy: 11:35

and, and so joy, I know you and I have talked quite a bit as you've been on this journey, really on the path of why do operators not adopt these tools and, and oftentimes I want to bring it back to, it's hard. They, you want them on the floor, you want them with their guests. You don't want them to be sitting in the office, trying to learn these new pieces of software to try and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The second piece that I, that I I'll bring back to is our average customer has between 15 and 20 pieces of software they're having to manage within the building. And so whether you talked about a ton of examples of different tools that are out there, all awesome tools in their own vein, many of them not deployed properly. Sit on the shelf and don't do what they need to do deployed properly. our game changers and truly drive the business and drive the profitability, drive the, the, the people talk to me about philosophically why, you know, and you and I talked pre recording, it's not just a piece of tech it's layering technology and or a model on top of existing tech and then helping directionally steer the way forward. The conversation, why did you choose to go that path? Because that is labor intensive. It requires people to be really, really smart. And on the flip side, I love the idea that you're going to be able to get ROI and truly drive the benefit into the restaurant market.

Cijoy O: 12:54

You're right. I think the amount of tools and the power that we have today is probably nothing like we've seen before, like the ability to interact with data at the rest for restaurants anyway, is far better than it's ever been. However, that's more and more applications, that need to be learned. You've got to sit down with it. even me, it's I have a degree in engineering, if I sit down in front of my scheduling system, it still takes me a good 10, 15 minutes to reorient myself with how this thing works. Cause I'm switching context, right? I'm doing something else. I'm coming over, back into the, to the back of the house and I'm going to try to sit down at a computer and spend an hour building my optimal schedule for the next week or two. And while that's happening, there's a knock at the door. Someone needs my keys. someone's calling in sick. There's a customer that needs help with something. There's not a lot of time to get any of this stuff done. I've got meetings I've got to do. plus it's not the only activity I've got. if I'm, mainly we're working with enterprise, chains, right? So for them, they've got merchandising, they've got supply chain things they need to test out, they've got things for marketing, they've got things for finance. Every department in corporate is asking the general manager to get involved in some activity and we're just adding more and, these GM's need help.

Jeremy: 14:09

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Cijoy O: 15:10

And what do they usually do? They go, Hey, I've got enough AUV here. I got enough revenue. I think I qualify for assistant GM. Let me go hire one of those. And what's the first thing they get stuck with? It's labor scheduling, right? It's take this off my plate, do nothing else. but that, that frees the GM, they get out back in front of their guests and their team members, and you see a lift in the performance of that location. It's almost a self fulfilling prophecy, I'm too busy, I'm not gonna do this stuff. So they don't do the stuff they're supposed to do really well, because frankly they don't have time for it. and they're back on the floor. They're doing what they're supposed to do with from a hospitality side. And then when you hire an assistant GM, all of a sudden those tasks are getting taken care of. And then the performance improvement shows up. So they just proven themselves that it was never them. It was just the lack of time. And that's really the challenge. And, we have, I think the last. Stats I saw in a GM now turnover every 18 months. It's not GM's are going to be with us for five, six years, and we can train them on everything and be successful. You look at some of the training cycles I've seen. It's been a few months where we recognize we need training because you start seeing the problem another month or two to prepare the training material. Now there's six to 12 months of deploy. By the time you deployed it, you're restarting over with a new set of GMs, right? Because of the turnover. and that just continues to go on and on. But our point of view is like, what if you could shorten those training cycles, beginning with labor management, by just bringing a GM pilot along for the ride and letting them take over some things that are mission critical or tedious. Nobody likes to do it. Software companies want it to be used properly. Corporate wants it to be used properly, but the GM is just completely overburdened and our point of view, what we're trying to do is affect the GM to really be an assistant to that person so they can get back, be successful, do all the things that they need to do to lift revenue or lift morale, lift customer satisfaction. And that doesn't happen by punching keys on the keyboard.

Jeremy: 17:09

Yeah. Well, and I, and you said it, I mean, GMs have more to do, more on their plate than they ever have. and so because of that, giving them tools that are going to drive positive behavior and ultimately better guest satisfaction, higher level sales, you know, higher staff retention. I mean, all of these things. Ultimately impact the bottom line. What do you guys do? So joy as it relates to those GMs that are like, no, none of this computer crap that you have is going to make my life any better. I've been running the store for 14 years and I know what I'm doing. Cause we've all had those GMs in our, in our past. Some of you may be listening to this call saying, you know, what is this new labor model? It doesn't necessarily need, I don't need any of that stuff. I know my store. I know my staff. What are you finding statistically? And, and how have you been able to pick up even those small half percentage points, because I have a percentage point at a restaurant doing pretty serious volume, a half a percentage point on labor could be tens of thousands of dollars on an annualized basis if done properly.

Cijoy O: 18:10

I think for us, the, we have rarely run into a GM, like we, we speak to great GMs all the time. And that's who we're trying to learn from and continue to model against. It's I have my experience from the brinker and other large chains. Alonzo brings his experience from Chipotle and the other organizations he's been with. but we also have friends that are, growing up through the ranks. So we pull on everybody and ask them for, What's your feedback? As you know me, it's like I'm constantly looking for what can we do better? But when we come down and actually speak to the GM's in the building when we get to the test The just the basic scheduling. Do you enjoy writing your schedules week after week? They're like, I love this brand It's like the one thing I could do without so we really haven't had anybody Come back and say, no, I want to do my own scheduling. leave me alone. I do it better than anybody else can because a lot of times, let's face it. lots of folks are doing copy and paste week after week. even with the, wonderfully good auto scheduling systems out there, there's still steps that the GM has to make decisions against, and those are the steps that never get done just because of lack of time. Or like a confidence in what the, what they're seeing, but when we take over, it's, we're building it from a conversation with the G with your best GMs through your operations team, we're writing out the business processes that, and the, the best practices, the labor rules, et cetera, everything we do is custom, right? So there's nothing like an off the shelf component that you buy and license. It doesn't work that way with us. It's for us, it's a conversation about where are you struggling? what behaviors are there? What can we do help do to help improve it? and then deploy what we design, after that, right? So it's everything's custom tailored, to that situation. And I will say this, it's like, there are folks are seeing, close to 5%. In revenue.

Jeremy: 20:00

smokes.

Cijoy O: 20:01

Yeah on labor. It's just from the circle, Just from the work in ground control alone. We get about one to two percent with flight school we get another one one to two percent and then with ground control we get another one to two percent So we're on track with the brand right now that, they're doing what they thought was great labor. And we thought it was great labor too, because of all our experience, we thought this is a good number to be at. But once we started really digging in under the details, below the, labor as a percentage number and below the SPLH numbers that we're used to realize, Hey, there's actually noise and opportunity here that Unless you had an analyst sitting in the building every single day, watching, the behaviors and what's going on. There wasn't the capability to find that before. And we've talked to folks that are at like a three and a half million AUV. And right off the jump, it's about a hundred grand opportunity and savings a year, just from the first phase.

Jeremy: 20:56

Yeah.

Cijoy O: 20:56

of three phases, and we've proven it time and time again, it's yeah, there is a lot of noise that you can't see. And once we get to see it, there's an opportunity to change behaviors and change beliefs about what can really be done. And for the larger chains, it's been fantastic because there are conversations like, now I can talk to my franchisees about a different lower labor model. And they can turn on apply that, that, potential profitability to picking a better site because now they can maybe spend a little bit more on, on real estate and now we can pick a better pad. That's going to potentially drive better revenue. So it's a win for the franchisee and it's a win for the franchisor as well, too. it's been wonderful to see. It's been amazing that. We can have this much of an impact so quickly, on the brands that we're working with.

Jeremy: 21:41

Yeah. And I want to talk about phase two and three here in just a second. But the, the one thing I guess I'd love to, to hear your philosophy on so joy is, is we've all been to brands where we go to one store and it's fantastic, and then we go to another store and the experience isn't the same. And we've all done that and, you know, talk about any brand in the world. You know, you worked at Chili's there's Chili's, there's two Chili's that I'm right in between. When I go to Chili's with my family, there's one store that, you know, Does a fantastic job and another store that's less fantastic. And I have a hit or miss experience. Labor plays a critical part in that having the right people on the floor, staffing it to the right levels is really, really critical to ensuring that you're going to get that, that, that quality guest satisfaction while also keeping within the parameters of what you need to do. Help me understand how GM pilot and kind of all of the different tools you have can help normalize those things. And, you know, And change because again, I've sat, I've sat in GM conferences where it's like, this store is doing two X what the next store down is doing. And it's like, how are they doing that? And people just say, well, it's just a better GM. And it's like, while that may be true, I think tools today and tools like what you're building can allow you the opportunity to get there. So I'd love, I'd love your opinion and kind of tell me, tell our listeners how you think about these things from GM pilots perspective and really even your guys philosophy and how you guys are consulting to help people.

Cijoy O: 22:59

Yeah, absolutely. I think, for us, we see, there's not just Chili's, but the 20 other brands that I've consulted with, over the last 12 years or so, is that when you look at a brand, when they're five, 10, 20 units, you've been had the luck, you've had the luxury of finding people that are extremely passionate, dedicated, love your brand, love what you love, what you're doing, they believe in the mission. and they will go through, through. Through everything in order to make it successful. so you've got the true believers, the early adopters, so to speak, that have joined your brand as you get bigger and you move across the country, you've got people that are joining. Yeah. They love your brand. They may not be as passionate as your early adopters. They love your brand and they've joined and they're good. They're good people. They wanted to get good results. But they may not be able to have the time or energy to go above and beyond. So you've been somewhat fooled as you scale up that, I've gotten to 50 units and I've got 20, 30 great GMs. You may have gotten very lucky. You've got the handful out there that the right time and place you found them. Now, when you're scaling up, you're going to have to settle for whatever's best in the market. And these folks, whether it's locations that are far away from corporate and they don't really feel the vibe of what, how the jazz about how powerful that corporate center is, there's shades that are doing it really well, like our friends with selling lots of chicken tenders, but others, it takes a long time to get that culture up. So in general, as you scale up and get the hundreds of units, you're hiring good GMs, good people that are good hospitality, you've checked the box for that, but you've got a long cycle to get them trained up and making a great GM. They're passionate. They're running the business really well. But at the same time, it's you're not be able to find hundreds and hundreds of those throughout the entire country. So our point of view is look, if we can take a good GM, someone that we think is great on hospitality, but take away some of the things that they may struggle with. Which is really the back of house computer operations stuff, right? The. picking the right labor schedule, understanding the sales forecast, confirming it's the right forecast to be used, applying that forecast and then picking the right people, for those slots and then scheduling it out and making sure that you're looking out for the weather, making adjustments there. Making sure that people are, following the schedule where they're supposed to. That's an hour plus a day of work, and who's got that time? our point of view is that the more we can help a GM do their role, get away from a computer, get back in front of people, they can see what's going on, and if they can see what's going on, they have the opportunity to affect it. for us, we say, hire a good GM, Get a GM pilot and you've got a great restaurant because now you've got that great GM effect by having talent that you were able to acquire in the local market, plus a, our platform to help them run it. And now you've got the great results at the other end of it. Now there's obviously a lot more, but our part right now is to do labor management and get those GMs the, the time back so they can go back, be with their people. Be with their customers and really understand what's going on in the four walls that they can go out and affect.

Jeremy: 26:06

Yeah, I love that. which I think leads us down the path. So you guys are tackling labor. You got lots of stuff going on in labor, which, you know, for all restaurants is either number one or number two costs, depending upon, you know, food costs and labor costs are your number one and number two, you got to make sure that you manage them. Talk to me about the future. So joy, you know, engineer turned operator turned, you know, back engineer to now business owner and entrepreneur. you know, help me understand where are you guys going? What, what are you guys looking to do? Because you guys have had such fantastic success and I'm, I want to get this product into as many hands as we can, because I'm so geeked about, about, what you guys can do, but where's it going? Talk, talk to it, talk to our audience. Where are you think, you know, phase two and phase three might look?

Cijoy O: 26:46

Awesome. Yeah. For us, phase one has been labor. And, again, we started with the concept of prime costs and that was like my big thing is we can prime costs, let's call it 60%, 30 percent labor, 30 percent inventory. And from there, as when you're building something, you learn very quickly. early on, it's hard to do, but you got to niche down and get hyper focused on something in order to get results. And when you get hyper focused, you realize there's so much complexity and so much stuff to go do just in labor. So we've been doing a ton of that. in terms of phase two for us, it's, we've always thought it's going to be inventory, but it could equally be as well marketing. And for us, it's a matter of two things that have to come together outside of us. One is, The demand from our brands are restaurant chains and to a partnership with a software company that's doing that today. So we've had great conversations with people in inventory, the inventory side of things, because once inventory is loaded, it's a matter of placing the right orders, getting the right part levels, et cetera, those are all things that take training and consistency by the GM. And for us, it's look, we can take that training, a consistency factor, and then bring it into GM pilot. And we can do it. And now the GM, can take care of the physical things in the building that, obviously we can't do from, from our side, when we split that load of work across the two, then we have a chance to be more successful in inventory management, because for us, we look at it from a, if we're going to staff the right level of people, make sure we have the right, Inventory levels to execute as well, too, which also brings us to the front side is that we've had, Conversation with people in the marketing side. It's look, we're running ads. It takes sophistication from marketing analysts to run it. At scale, it needs, they need to hire somebody. But instead of hiring another full time body, maybe you can take over running some of the components of it. They can keep their marketing analysts in play and they can, understand what's going on. But from a GM pilot side, we could actually go turn around and run the marketing side of it to see which ads are working well. And which days that, people are going to be potentially coming in or what LTOs are really taking off and then ensure the right staffing levels and the right inventory.

Jeremy: 28:52

say that same thing because you drive higher, higher levels of sales and you don't have the right people in the building and or the food there to prepare for them. Now you just created a different problem that you might not have already thought, thought through before.

Cijoy O: 29:03

right. for us, exactly. if you think about supply demand matching, we're looking to do that from outside the building inside the building with people inside the building with the inventory. And then it's a matter of letting the GM be a great GM and let them execute. Let them be the maestro that runs the building. and as we can do everything that's outside the building, in order to support them.

Jeremy: 29:23

Love that. real quick, just cause I know that you're going to get people that are going to listen to this and go how, why it's so much, I've already got 75 things on my plate. Set their mind at ease that says your existing systems, we can use your existing systems. We can layer on top of it. We do the majority of the work and just give you back the data rather than it being this huge project that they got to undertake. Because oftentimes I talk to listeners of the show and they're like, dude, I love that episode you did six months ago, but I haven't had time to look at it because it's, I've got too much going on. Help set our listeners mind at ease that says, how are you guys going to market and what is the additional lift for them? As you guys are going through this analysis process and really trying to deploy GM pilot to help them.

Cijoy O: 30:06

I love that, because look, when I'm in the CIO role, I see stuff, awesome stuff out there, and then that gets tempered very quickly with the, everyone's got a lot on their plate. There's no way that I can get everybody through the change curve to get them to actually even look at this thing, let alone try to deploy it and get the value out of it. so it's always look, Hey, this is great. What you're doing is awesome. I really want to use it at best. It's going to be like two years I can put it in play and see value out of it. And quite frankly, for me, that's always been frustrating. it's been, there's an opportunity to create value right now. It's if we can do it to capture it, it, goes back to the, what's our mission is to help all those employees. If we're a better successful restaurant today, we can help all the employees. They can help their families. We lift we're the biggest, second biggest employer outside the federal government. That's a ton of people and all the secondary effects of helping their families, et cetera, by, by, helping them be successful. So it has a big knock on effect to everybody. And it's, obviously we're mission oriented towards that, but for us, again, it's being in those shoes, we have, we looked at it as well, too, and said, what's the easiest way for us to engage? And what we do right now is we say, Hey, give us your historical data. Let's start with, ground control. Let's do a historical ground control analysis. We're going to look at the last 18 months, 24 months, however long you want to go back. To one 500, 1, 000, 2, 000 locations. Let's turn through that. and then come back with a report that'll show you how many hours a month that you could be potentially saving and that will get the conversation going. And if we find value, great. There's a deeper conversation for us to have. If we don't, then awesome. You're doing great. Whatever it is you're doing, keep doing it. Keep

Jeremy: 31:52

hmm. Yeah. I love that. which I guess leads me down that path. How do people get in touch? You know, what is your ICP? I know that it's multi units and you've got to be relatively decent in size to, to be able to use some of these models, help our listeners that are sitting out there, understand what would engagement look like with your team? You kind of went through it a little bit, but what What kind of brands are you looking to talk to? Who is even the person inside? Is it somebody in finance? Is it somebody in IT? Is it somebody in operations? probably all of the above, but I'd love to understand that for our listeners that are out there as well.

Cijoy O: 32:22

Yeah, absolutely. I think when we started, we modeled against the thousands of unit chains, right? Cause we want to, there wasn't so much that. that's who we want to target. This is what I knew. It's what we knew what Alonzo and I knew really well. So we modeled ourself against that. And then we made sure that what we can do can handle, 10, 000, 20, 000 units. so we made sure we can go scale up, right? Cause this thing we hate doing is making promises and not being able to deliver. But when we started really hitting the market and having conversations, we found people that, even if you're 20 units, but you've got a five, five, six million dollar AUV. That there is money to be found there. honestly, it's we're seeing on average every million in AUV. We see about 1 percent in labor that we can get right away. It's like very easy to go do. That said, the people that I think are really ready for us and the people with, let's say, 100 million in total network revenue, whether that's from 20 units or 50 units. Typically, I'd say in the north of a million, million and a half in individual AUV. Would be a good place, just because now you're at the scale that you see these problems and those opportunities exist, whether the chain is a 50, 100 units, 200 units where, we're able to do this report very easily now. so we put a lot of engineering into it. so we enjoy turning this around because it gives us insights to everybody. Even if we don't end up working together, you'll have this report. You're going to gain a ton of insight from it, things that you can go try to tackle on your own. and if you need help to do it, then obviously we can engage going forward. Really for us, a lot of it's been with the operators because, whether it's, a VP of operations or chief operating officer, they know the pain that I don't think anyone else, unless they're in a day to day. Really feel the CFOs love it from obviously from the financial results and, changing the, the overall footprint on the financial footprint of a brand. and it people like, because it's not extra work for them. That's that was one of my favorite things. If you came to me as a CIO and said, Hey, we can actually create value and I'm not going to burden your it department. Awesome. Thank you.

Jeremy: 34:21

Yeah. You're like, go do that.

Cijoy O: 34:23

Let's go do it.

Jeremy: 34:24

Yeah, no, that's I, we joke about it internal to our own business is probably the biggest problem is, is that everything gets stuck behind it's other 27 projects. And it's not their fault, but 20 years ago, you know, 20 years ago, they were involved in 20 percent of the projects. Now they're involved in a hundred percent of the projects within the business. And so, and they haven't grown their staff by five X, in the last 20 years, they, but just have gone down oftentimes, not gone up in, in it in that regard. so how would people get in touch? How would people learn more? You know, give them some direction as to how to, how to get in touch with you. So, so joy, because I'd love to have more people, you know, here and see what you guys are doing.

Cijoy O: 34:59

Absolutely. Yeah. Go to gmpilot. com. G M P I L O T. com. Hit the button for, getting the free labor report. Just drop us an email from there and we'll get in touch.

Jeremy: 35:11

Well, I know that, you and I have been talking about this kind of since the early days. So I'm super proud of you. I'm super excited that you guys have got this thing out there. and I know it's already making a huge difference. And so I, I'm excited to see, the, you know, one, three and five years from now, how many more brands you guys have been able to impact for the positive, as well as quite frankly, the people in the stores, the GMs and the users of the product, because I think, you've got a lot of opportunity, a lot of white space to do that. So to our listeners, guys, like I said, Lots of opportunities for you guys to engage. If you haven't already subscribed, please do so on your favorite podcast player, or we're now on YouTube. Cijoy, thank you for your time and to our listeners, make it a great day.

35:48

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