The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
Data-Driven Success: Exploring RAD's Impact on Restaurant Operations with Dave's Hot Chicken
In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, Jeremy Julian, Chief Revenue Officer of Custom Business Solutions, is joined by Jeff Porter and Ryan Burhorn, co-founders of RAD, a next-generation analytics platform designed for restaurant operators. Their guest, James McGee, CFO and franchisee at Dave's Hot Chicken, shares insights into how RAD helps the rapidly growing brand make data-driven decisions that improve guest and employee experiences. The discussion covers RAD's innovative approach to providing actionable insights from existing data systems, the importance of understanding financial versus productivity metrics, and the critical role of customer sentiment. The episode highlights RAD's customized analytics solutions and how they help franchisees enhance their return on investment while maintaining consistent, high-quality service in a scalable manner.
00:00 Introduction to Today's Episode
01:00 Meet the Co-Founders of Rad
02:00 Introducing James McGee from Dave's Hot Chicken
02:20 The Genesis of Rad
03:24 Rad's Approach to Data Analytics
05:51 Holistic Data Analysis in Restaurants
08:03 James McGee's Journey and Dave's Hot Chicken
09:48 Actionable Data and Productivity Metrics
13:42 Engaging Franchisees with Rad
26:16 Future of Rad and Restaurant Analytics
30:46 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.
Jeremy:In today's episode, we are joined by the co-founders of rad, rad as a next generation platform that allows restaurant operators. To create actionable data from the tools that they already have within their environment. Jeff and Ryan are one of a kind in the way that they tackle the data and really solve things for people. They also were able to bring on one of their clients, James McGee, from Dave's hot chicken. If you're not familiar with their brand. James talks quite a bit about who they are and what they do, where they came about. James was audio is a little bit rough. I did what I could to clean it up. But, hope you enjoy the show. If you don't know me. My name is Jeremy Julian. I am the chief revenue officer for custom business solutions. We do restaurant point of sale for multiunit restaurants. Check us www.Cbsnorthstar.com.
Jeremy Julian: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 got lots of choices. So thanks for hanging out today. I am joined by a couple of co founders and one of their brands. And so I'm going to start with, Jeff, why don't you introduce yourself? And then we can go around the horn and let everybody know who all is on the recording, and then we can talk a little bit about, about the product that you guys built and. Why it's solving so many awesome problems.
James McGehee:at Dave's Hot Chicken. Uh, I also co founded an
Jeff Porter:Okay. Great, thanks. My name is Jeff Porter. I am the COO of Rad Restaurant Analytics delivered. Ryan and I are the founders of this company, and we're excited to chat.
Jeremy Julian:Awesome. How about you, Ryan? You want to, you want to take that other co founder moniker over and talk a little bit about yourself?
Ryan Burhorn:Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jeremy. I'm Ryan Burhorn. I am other co founder of rad and currently acting as the CEO. So
Jeremy Julian:Awesome. And you guys chose to bring one of your amazing customers. And ironically, I knew this customer before I met you guys. And I, obviously know the product, but, but James, you're facing and a name that I know a lot of people around the industry. I'll know, but why don't you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you get to do before we jump into rad and, and why rad exists.
James McGehee:Absolutely. Nice to see you guys. James McGee, he's CFO over at Dave's Hot Chicken. I also co founded an advisory group, Results Crew Strategy, about 18 years ago. outside of being the CFO over at Dave's, I'm also a franchisee.
Jeremy Julian:not know
James McGehee:I get
Jeremy Julian:pretty cool. That's awesome. so Jeff, I'm going to, I'm going to start with you. Talk to me a little bit about rad. besides the fact that it's like a 1980s, adjective that we used to use for things. where did rad come from? Talk to me a little bit about, why does rad exist? and, you and Ryan obviously chose to step out on a limb and, cause there's not enough analytics platforms out there. There's not enough people that are looking at data to do things. And you guys chose, chose to do something about it.
Jeff Porter:Yeah, definitely partially came from the fact that it's a great adjective from the eighties. 100%. Ryan and I both come from a background that's rich in. Um, data, working with data, and working mostly in a consulting fashion, we together saw the opportunity to, after many years of rebuilding the same model, the, in a consulting capacity, for restaurant and hospitality groups to take that expertise that we had developed and create more of an analytics solution. That's very focused on the industry. And, rather than just. Takes data and puts it in front of people, actually helps them make prescriptive decisions around them. So that's the genesis of the idea and how we put it together.
Jeremy Julian:Awesome. Ryan, talk to me a little bit about, because again, data, and I've said this quite a few times on the show, data, not analyze data, not put into a prescriptive way to drive business decisions, I don't wanna say it's worthless, but it's, it does very little, where I have seen others, not your guys's product, but where I've seen others as they throw a whole bunch of stuff up on the screen, but it doesn't necessarily drive the behavior, it doesn't drive those things. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys created a theory that says Every data element that we have should really be giving the user, the end user, that needs to be able to make a business decision. it needs to create some emotion for them to do something. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys think about that.
Ryan Burhorn:yeah, absolutely right. We have a saying that rad cuts through the noise, if you will, right? You're absolutely right. In that there is a wealth of data out there. in standalone, It can be, super hard to comb through. We really sought out to build a solution, that is analytics first in its approach, meaning, really a guided and directed experience of not necessarily what you did, how are you trending reporting, which is still critical and we can support, but really more of this, what should I be doing? To differentiate ourselves and to, ultimately, honestly, have that measurable impact on an organization. we aim to cut through the noise and provide all levels of the organization, the metrics that matter to them, and accessible at their fingertips.
Jeremy Julian:Yeah. Haven't been in the restaurant tech space, which is where James and I had engaged, some close to 20 years ago. there's lots of different data elements. there's sales, there's labor, there's inventory, there's food costs, there's staffing, there's weather data. There's so many different data elements. Talk to me really about where rad focuses, because again, every one of those impacts, I remember talking with a brand that used to be right up the road from Anaheim stadium and on game days, the place was bombed, but the place, the traffic. Changed on game days because everybody wanted to be at the store at 5 30 so that they could get to the game by seven. And then when the angels changed their game times to earlier, they changed those theories. And so sales, labor, all of it has to come into play. So talk to me a little bit about how you guys focus, because just looking at sales, absence of labor, absence of food costs, absence of any of those kinds of things in a vacuum is really, I guess short sighted if you're not looking at it holistically. Talk to me a little bit about kind of the theory before we jump into kind of how Dave's hot chicken is using the data that you guys are producing.
Ryan Burhorn:For sure. And you mentioned a word there holistically, which is totally key. we have a, an offering in rad if you will, that we call our opportunities matrix. You can think of the big four of what you were talking about. Sales, labor, cogs, And guest sentiment being a key component there. each on their own, important to understand, but as you said, operating in a vacuum. The power of what we do is really bringing that together, in an in your face sort of approach. The metrics correlated so that you can understand the triangulation of how is guest sentiment impacting labor. Vice versa. How's labor impacting guest sentiment? How is this all driving sales or perhaps, hurting sales. So we really aim for again, that holistic view, simple, easy to use in your face. But being able to make those correlations, between the metrics that matter the most.
Jeff Porter:And I think an interesting thing to really add in there is, we've always understood and focused on the fact that restaurant operators job is not to understand data. That is not their goal. What we can do for them, in a world where there's ever increasing amounts of data, the platform where they can. Refine that information and understand and use it to make decisions that help them engage their guests, give guests a better experience. that's always our drive.
Jeremy Julian:and the funny part is, amongst all of us, we probably have, somewhere close to a hundred years of restaurant experience and in a vacuum, when you look at it, you go, Oh, this all makes sense. Hey, I'm understaffed. So guess what? My guests are more frustrated. But when you're, when you don't look at it in that holistic manner, it makes it really tough where, cause you're like, Oh yeah, that totally makes sense. Hey, three people didn't show up for their shift today. We're going to deliver a crappy shift and that crappy shift is going to, be impacted, whether it be on guest sentiment, and, or cook times are going to be longer. My drive through times are gonna be longer, whatever those items are. In a vacuum, it's very easy to see. But when you're running brands that have got hundreds of units and you're trying to figure out why this store, the store that's two miles away from the next closest store is not doing as well, looking at data is how you can get down to the bottom of that. And so I'm going to pivot here to James. James, how and when did we get into running restaurants outside of the consulting side? Because, I had no idea that you were also, running a restaurant. Also a franchisee, that's a fun story. I'd love to have you share with our listeners before we dig into why, because you literally can have the pick of the litter as far as analytics tools. And you obviously partnered with rad, but tell me a little bit about the journey to being a franchisee,
James McGehee:Yeah, it's a great question. So I was, I've been very fortunate to partner with several different great brands, and several different great ownership groups. So if you take a look at my journey, after starting our own practice. Results through strategy, what I realized is that there was a massive vacuum in the public fractional CFO space. I ended up partnering with different private equity group. Patterson Brentwood to name a few some great brands, like Mendocino farms, pretzels, plates, pizza, and ultimately with Dave pot chicken. because of the like ownership group with Wetzel's Pretzels and, Blaze Pizza. For me, I've been very fortunate, right? I've been here since store one. just in the last five weeks, we've opened 17 stores. and we're on track to open up 100 stores next year, 100 to 110 stores next year. And on a base of 260. And that's all in a five year period of time. So we were very fortunate to get introduced to Rad, through our VP of IT, who had worked with them over at Smashburger, and what I saw was a product that Quite candidly, 3 years ago was probably is still a little bit raw, but they have the vision for what the restaurant needed restaurant industry needed. And the 1 piece we haven't talked on, which I think is really important. Is there's 2 types of data, there's financial data and there's productivity data. Okay. Financial data is an end result. And has no actionable qualities to it. Okay, I cannot affect the cost good sold percentage. I can affect actual versus theoretical. I cannot affect labor percentage. I can affect productivity measures like on phrase per labor hour. Okay, metrics that I can go from region to region, regardless of type here. Or timeframe to timeframe, regardless of things like minimum wage increases, which in California. We just went from 16 to 20 for limited service restaurants. And, you start looking at all those different factors. Rad had the vision to really combine all the disparate data sources into productivity measures that were actionable for operations, right? How many hours of labor I needed? How many cases, in my case, of chickens I, that I'm missing. I go through 26 million pounds of chicken a year now.
Jeremy Julian:I, funny enough, I remember when Dave's first came about and I had the privilege probably 10 years ago to go to the, some of the original Nashville hot chicken places in Nashville. can you take 30 seconds for those that may have been living under a rock and don't know what Dave's hot chicken is? Because, It does go into why you guys have been able to scale. Because again, I've had people cause you guys have grown so rapidly. It's not like this brand that's been around for 40 years where everybody's gone there for, some birthday dinner or some something. can you just give a 30 second snippet on where did Dave's come from and how, and why has it grown so fast before we jump into why this is so critical? Cause I love what you had to say and I want to dig into actionable data, but. just for those listeners that are like Dave's hot chicken. What is Dave's hot chicken? How did they get to 150? I don't even know who they are.
James McGehee:Is amazing. I've never seen anything like it. I've been doing nothing else besides restaurant finance and accounting for 31 years. Okay? This restaurant started at one, not even one unit. We started in a parking lot with three founders that literally combined, had 900 bucks, and they went to Home Depot, bought a fryer, bought a table, bought an easy. And then borrowed their friends, family's parking lot, and had some great. support in the parking lot, moved to their first location and at their first location, we found them, which is the, the management team and ownership team that's there today. The founders, I give them all the credit in the world. They have a vision for the brand, which is, spicy hot chicken done in Tennessee style, which is basically you take a fried tender, you dip it in oil and you apply a spice blend to it. Dave is a fine dining culinary chef. he has worked in some of the best restaurants. He's a spice nerd by trade. and he's done an awesome job of maintaining the brand. Arman, one of our other co founders, is an absolute social media genius. To put it in perspective, we have more followers on Instagram and TikTok than Chipotle has, and they have literally 3000 restaurants. We have 230.
Jeremy Julian:That's incredible.
James McGehee:So yeah, it's been a juggernaut, but the biggest piece of our growth is really came from our literally 85 franchisees that are the who's of franchisees. These are all multi-unit. groups with existing infrastructures. Managing other brands, So we're very
Jeremy Julian:and again, fast, casual walk up to the counter and order, as well as many of the stores have a drive thru. I know the original store did not have a drive thru. At least I don't believe it did when I went up to LA to go to that first store, I think the majority of what you guys are building are now. So just, I wanted to give that context for those that, that aren't aware, James, I'm going to dig in a little bit to your comments about financial data, because all too often I hear from operators that all the finance people want to know is what's my PNL going to be? What's my labor percentage going to be? And. I love that you take the opposite approach that says, let's give the people that are in the stores that are helping us make the money a different, a different metrics to strive for, because you know what, ultimately those PNLs are a result of their actions in the stores. They're a result of the guest sentiment. They're a result of what's happening, not necessarily the, they're the end result, not necessarily the means how and why have you gotten that philosophy over the last 30 years? Because I think it's an incredible, incredibly different. purview that a lot of financial peers don't think about. And then let's talk a little bit about how Rad helps you get to those numbers.
James McGehee:no, listen, I'm a. An op support, that's what I call our team. literally our only job as a support center at day is to improve the return on invested capital. For our franchisee, plain and simple, their only job, drive sales, control construction costs, control time loss. Okay. That's it. It's very simple. Now, within that is store level operations. within store level operations, what are we doing? We're isolating opportunities. Or our franchisees to figure out exactly where in sales they have the ability to grow. for instance, attachment rates of drinks, third party delivery percentage as a percent of total versus their exact region. These are all things that we apply within rad to make sure that our franchisees know where to look. I'll give you one specific example. Our marketing, our Minnesota franchisee, and they know this, I'll call them out on it. They literally only spent 0. 16 percent of third party delivery on marketing. Okay. The industry average is actually 4%, 5%. Okay, so when we looked at their third party delivery percent of total sales, it was only running 19 percent versus our company average, which is 26%. And we immediately isolated an opportunity for that, so there's so many other components within rad that are, I'm going to call it leading indicators that help drive revenue. So right now we're focusing on employee sentiment driving customer sentiment driving sales growth. Okay. One of the big misnomers in our industry is that speed of service, even with groups that have drive throughs, is the number one indicator of sales growth. It's not. It's actually customer sentiment. Okay? Because at Dave's, we're made to order and we're making sure that every single bite of our chicken is piping hot and spiced to perfection. and it's a different mindset. it's a
Jeremy Julian:I was just on the phone with, I just had a, I just released a podcast with Danny Klein from FSR, QSR magazine. And he and I were talking about exactly that. everybody wants to talk about drive through times and guest sentiment at Chick fil A is through the roof and their drive through times are awful as, as far as a total. and again, I'm not saying that it's awful because they're bad operators, it's awful just because total time, because they've got so many people and I, I'm sure they compete with you guys, so it was less about bringing that up, but he and I talked about the fact that they set the bar for what people expect and they are still way beyond, in and out. And again, another institution in Southern California, they also Amazing guest sentiment and their drive through times are not the best. And very much so looking at that data and then being able to make some business decisions. Ryan, talk to me a little bit about how do you guys consider what data elements you guys bring in? Because, You've got to partner. in my mind, it sounds like you guys partner pretty deeply with the brand to understand who are they and why are they trying to get there before you just start throwing data at them? Because if you don't know where you're trying to get to, you're never going to, you're never going to find a way to help them. So talk to me about how you and Jeff use, even your consulting background and the things that you guys have done in the past to consider that, because it sounds like that's part of the DNA for rad is not just throw a bunch of data up and say, here, you guys go figure it out. It's let me help you get to where you're trying to get.
Ryan Burhorn:Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think the genesis there is a bit from our consulting background. RAD isn't just a software that you install, that we walk away from and hopefully you can figure out. RAD really is a partnership. we've got, we're very blessed with a great set of logos of clients and what we've done is built really what we consider a strategic ecosystem, being able to work with the brains like James at Dave's, We continuously build, not only our product. But our overall offering, right? We can take ideas that we're developing together, to the industry as a whole via our other strategic client partners. And that's really what we're setting out to do here, right? visionaries we hope on a mission to change the way that the restaurant industry, consumes and interacts with its data. a big part of it obviously is understanding their business, right? Dave's is different then another brand that we work with, obviously very similar in a lot of things, but on Dave's main dashboard, you're going to see a metric there that is the attachment rate of in adding cheese modifier, to chicken tenders. So operationally, they're very interested in that metric. It's on their face, it's on their main operations dashboard. and it's really a deep understanding of what's driving their business. Now, of course, holistically, we aim to get the enterprise of data. for all of our partners. that's when data starts to tell a story again. It's that triangulation and correlation. but it all starts with, obviously, what are they selling? understanding their business, the point of selling, getting interactive with them. and then, going from there, I would say, certainly, and you guys were just touching on it. guest sentiment, is that first next point of triangulation after sales and labor. and so from our perspective, that will be a key system that we go after, but there is a key understanding of their business before we just start throwing things, throwing things at
Jeremy Julian:Yeah. And just selfishly, James, since I've never ordered cheese on my tenders, help me understand that. I there's, there actually is a Dave's right next to my office. So I'm there on a semi regular basis and I don't get it, I look at it and go, that's not something that sounds good to me. So I'd love to understand, and maybe I just need to go try it out. Okay, gotcha. It's all good. I was
James McGehee:And just so we're clear, only 17 percent of the people add fees. So
Jeremy Julian:Okay, cool. I just, I literally, I look at it and I go, I don't get it, but it's all good. Jeff, help walk us through what an engagement looks like, because I could see myself sitting here as an operator going, this sounds so overwhelming. You guys are going to move my cheese. And so help walk me through. What helping them move their cheese, not in a bad way, but in a way that's going to ultimately make a material difference on their guests and on their business looks like, because all too often I run into operators, they hear about these fantastic things and go, I love it. And I don't know how, so make it simple for me. What does it look like to engage with those brands? Because I'm certain that's one of your guys barriers to entry in some of these places. This, they don't want to do the hard work to change. they're good with the metrics that they created in 1996 that seem to be working for them.
Jeff Porter:Man, it is a trick. and you are absolutely correct. Ryan and I for years have dealt with this when we talk with people. And, one of our very sort of early tactics with, this was Here's everything right? Like we'll figure it out together. and ultimately that's not the solution, right? Like we have to come with a very standardized set of. Here's our rollout process. Here's how we're quickly going to show value. Here's how we're going to handle some of your blocking and tackling reporting. But more importantly, this is the path to get you from I have these five systems to I'm looking at an opportunities matrix within the four walls of the restaurant to tell me what to do. so our big focus in the last year or two has been, number one, defining that standardized package that answers 80 percent of the questions. number two, providing people with the ad hoc tools that they can use to self service answer the other 20 percent of the questions. and then number three, adding on that analyst as a service, thing where we give the feedback channel from other partners and help you develop the next gen of prescriptive tools on top of what we've already put together. so that rollout process has been super critical for us, standardizing it and Just making sure we can engage people rapidly and tell them, Hey, here's what you get as part of this, as opposed to you have all this, let's figure it out. So big
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Jeremy Julian:I love that you guys have found your way to that. Cause oftentimes I find, even guests on the show, they create the best tech in the world and it sits on the shelf because they can't get operators to change their way of doing business. And so helping walk them through that is, is really critical.
Jeff Porter:Absolutely.
Jeremy Julian:James, talk to me a little bit about how you guys get the franchisees to, in franchise environments. You've been around long enough to realize that they never trust what corporate's given them, especially when sales are down. And so help me understand how you take the data. And every time I ask you a question, I feel like I get a chuckle. So for those that are watching this on YouTube, but at the end of the day, this, they're all skeptical. They all think that they have it figured out. They, a lot of the brands that you guys are working with. Are in a place that they have done it before. They've done it with other brands that might be bigger than Dave's. So you're coming to them with something different. Oftentimes, help me understand how you get them to internalize this and make better business decisions. You use the example about your Minnesota franchisee, just earlier in the show.
James McGehee:let's put things in perspective. I have franchisees that up until just this year owned more restaurants than Dave had in its ecosystem. I have, great people like. All until Carter, whose father started Carl's junior. Okay. So they have over 100 calls juniors. What am I going to do? Tell them how to run their business? Oh, not look. Everybody's going to utilize the tool for the simple things like. Sales and traffic and things of that nature, right? It really comes down to showing them how to leverage the tools to help them improve. And I'll get back to it. Their return on invested capital. We gave an entire breakout session at our franchise convention with 450 people. They're solely focused on showing them how to improve the return on their. investment to pay back 33 percent faster. Okay, and that resonates with our franchisees. And by the way, so does our current return. I mean, the reason
Jeremy Julian:through the roof. The volumes are through The roof. People are making money. So that's good.
James McGehee:are good, but what we have built is a system that they can replicate over and over again. And it's that consistency of that replication that gives them the confidence to move faster. Okay, even myself as a franchisee, I signed up for a 9 unit or 7 unit territory. I've got 3 open, I've got the 4th that I'm building right now. I'm trying to expand my territory, right? I'm a great indicator because I'm actually a very conservative finance person that's willing to go into doing things like signing personal guarantees on leases because that's how strong 4 wall economic model. Rad supports all of that through our productivity metric.
Jeremy Julian:I love that. I'm going to ask Ryan, where is it going? Where's rad going? James would allude to the fact that, when they came on board with you guys a couple of years ago, you guys, maybe we're a little bit raw. You guys have had some really deep levels of understanding of where we're at, but what's the next phase for red? is it just growth of different restaurants? Is it different business models? Help me understand where you guys are at and how you guys see the future of analytics and really predictive analytics that are going to drive behavior. Because part of why this show exists, part of why I do what I do is I love the restaurant industry. It's given me and my family 30 plus years of. fantastic opportunities to engage with great people. And I want to see restaurants succeed. Nothing pains me more than when a local restaurant in our industry fails, whether it's a big brand, huge brand, national brand that's struggling, or it's the local, watering hole that's struggling. I want to see people succeed and tools like Rad help people succeed as James has been talking about the whole show. So where's it at and where is it going?
Ryan Burhorn:Yeah. honestly, where is it going? our push and our belief and where we're driving development efforts, our approach and our conversations is really that more simplified, prescriptive approach to the data, right? And let's be honest, like there's tools out there. There's lots of buzzwords in the analytic space of AI can solve this, just stick this tool on top of that data and this data or whatever. and see these insights, it, it all markets and sells well, our belief is wholeheartedly that a lot of that, the power there truly is in the make cutting through the noise, right? As we talked about earlier, getting the data together into a way that's really perfect built for reporting and analytics. and so to enable some of the. around words like prescriptive, you still need the wealth of that data, but that's really our approach is more of a simplified to the operator. What are the things that I can do that will have a positive impact on my business today, this week, and then ultimately the longterm. So Where we're going with that, right? Again, is that prescriptive model around our opportunities matrix, but really driving it to be more exceptions based alerts. So then an operator can have on their phone. Hey, you hit X in entrees per labor hour as your main productivity metric that we know that we're driving that we've built a culture around. Your ideal is Z in your face. You should be paying attention to that. So really more of this, guided and directed exceptions based alerting towards those, a prescriptive approach on those productivity metrics. of course, from there, there's. lots of technology. we've recently implemented things inside of our tech stack where we have enabled natural language query searches, right? So instead of needing to know how to build reports or, whatever it may be, an end user can have a business conversation with their data. What are the top 10 stores with the highest labor opportunity last week? our tool enables that so that somebody can ask those types of questions, see it in their face very quickly and easily. I would certainly welcome Jeff and James to chime in more, but again, we really do see it. Exceptions based alerts around productivity metrics and just making it easier, right? The right metric in the right hand at the right times. And the more we can support that with, enabling with technology and features like natural query language, is where we're taking our offering.
James McGehee:in
Jeff Porter:there's a Ryan 100 percent right on the product where we need to take it. there's a cool component that's emerging right now for us to, traditionally we've grown entirely by word of mouth and now that we're at volume, there's this bigger feedback channel between ourselves, the brands we work with, or there's starting to become a sense of community as well. I think that's something I want to see as nurture as we, so that we can start having these people talk to each other and really help them create, best to breed solutions in their analytics platform.
Jeremy Julian:I love that. and again, I know I gave, James kudos earlier, but, I love the fact that he's one of those people that's in your guys's advisory group to help you guys drive this product because he thinks so different than many of the finance people that are in his same space. And not only is he an operator, but he's trying to create something that's going to help the operators. Get to the best place to be able to drive those things. So is there anything that we missed talking about that you guys want to make sure that, that our listeners here, James, is there anything that you, you went through that you're like, Oh, I forgot to talk about this. And you want our listeners to hear about when they, when they go dig into the, to the rat opportunity.
James McGehee:I think it's like anything else, the tool that you can have the best tool if it's not adopted by operations at the store level, then it doesn't matter. So I think the option of any tool, and I don't care if we're talking about RAD or, customer sentiment scrapes or anything else. It needs to be utilized at the store level. It needs to be mobile based. It needs to be productivity measure based. I can't stress that enough. I've been talking about this for a guy. So many years now. but I really mean it. and I think that it, there's a struggle in our industry. Understand that the financial model is going to be very dynamic. Hey, California, right with a 25 percent increase in minimum wage. Okay. You cannot manage your labor anymore as a percentage of sales. That's okay, right? At the end of the day, you got to ask yourself, what is the customer experience? How do I support that customer experience with productivity measures? and then more importantly, and I said this early, but I'll say it again. How do I push those, the customer sentiment all the way back to employee sentiment. Because I do think that's going to be a really critical piece of this going forward. At Dave, we focus heavily on productivity measures. But the way we do it isn't by cutting labor. We look at meaningful labor. Okay, what do I mean by meaningful labor? Do you get value out of filling sauce cups with Dave's sauce? Or do you do that for in store and you get packets for to go? Okay, that's something at Dave's we did. Do we hire cleaning crews at the end of the night? Because our cleaning crews, the last time I checked, the last thing our employees want to do after a 10 hour shift is clean a toilet. Okay, so I'm heavily focused on meaningful labor within the restaurant industry and making our employees lives better.
Jeremy Julian:frankly is the problem that every operator that I've talked to in the last couple of years has struggled with is getting people in the door and keeping them there for any length of time. I love what you guys are doing, Ryan and Jeff, thank you guys for creating this. Cause again, for me, it's my favorite to sit and listen. And the fact that you guys were able to bring James on who's not only an operator, but also is somebody that endorses the product has been awesome. So thank you guys for your time. Thank you guys for creating a solution that's making a difference. Thanks. And the restaurants that you guys serve, James, thanks for hanging out. And, to our listeners, make it a great day.
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