The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
Unlocking Restaurant Success: A Deep Dive with Matt Plapp on Marketing and Loyalty
Unlocking Restaurant Success: A Deep Dive with Matt Plapp on Marketing and Loyalty
In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian is joined by Matt Plapp, a seasoned marketing expert in the restaurant industry and CEO of America's Best Restaurants. Matt, also known as the Chief Energy Officer, shares insights on creating memorable guest experiences and leveraging digital loyalty programs to keep restaurant guests returning. He discusses his journey from working with his father's clients in the restaurant business to growing a marketing company that now serves thousands of restaurants nationwide. Matt explains the importance of customer acquisition and retention, emphasizing the value of capturing and utilizing customer data effectively. The conversation also touches on the challenges and opportunities in restaurant marketing, with real-world examples of success stories driven by strategic marketing and technology adoption. The episode highlights the significance of continuous self-improvement for restaurant owners and managers, encouraging them to invest in both personal development and smart marketing strategies to drive business growth.
00:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
01:21 Matt Plapp's Background and Journey
04:28 Marketing Strategies for Restaurants
07:20 The Importance of Customer Data
14:22 Challenges and Solutions in Restaurant Marketing
22:32 Real-Life Examples and Success Stories
28:05 A Pizza Restaurant's Remarkable Growth
28:34 The Power of Business Coaching
29:29 Avery's Success Story
30:13 Engaging with Social Media
30:35 Road Trip with Dad
31:40 Matt Plapp's Marketing Philosophy
32:53 Customer Acquisition Strategies
40:57 The Birth of Driver
43:02 The Importance of Continuous Improvement
49:24 Connecting with Matt Plapp
50:27 Final Thoughts and Farewell
This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
Jeremy Julian:In today's episode, we are joined by Matt Plapp. Matt has been on the show a couple of times and he affectionately calls himself, or his title at least, the Chief Energy Officer. He's the CEO of a couple of different companies, but primarily in the space he's known for, America's Best Restaurants. Matt is a marketing genius when it comes to restaurants and helping to create an experience that restaurant Tours will get their guests coming back. He also is now in the digital loyalty space and is helping restaurants Explore the opportunity to capture guests name and be able to communicate with them on an ongoing basis If you don't know me, my name is jeremy julian I have spent over 25 years in the restaurant tech space started the restaurant technology guys podcast a little over four years ago And I also am the chief revenue officer for CBS Northstar, we developed the Northstar Ponticell solution for multi units. please listen to the show and take away a ton from what Matt continues to share because he has a wealth of knowledge on how to continue to create better guest experience through technology as well as through digital advertising. And now, on to the show. Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I think everyone out there for joining us today. We are joined by second time, third time guests. I don't know, Matt. but, I'm sure a lot of people will recognize the face if they're watching it on YouTube, but Matt, why don't you introduce yourself to our audience before we jump into kind of what you've been up to the last couple of years?
Matt Plapp:thanks, Jeremy. I am Matt Plapp. I am the chief energy officer, the CEO of a company called Restaurant Marketing that Works. We own two entities, America's Best Restaurants, which is a media marketing firm. And we own a platform called Driver, which is a customer acquisition and loyalty software.
Jeremy Julian:Love that. And I know that, you and I just had breakfast when you were in Dallas and talked a little bit about where, I'd love for you to just share with our listeners that might not have heard the first time you were on the show. where did restaurants even come from? Because I think, you've got a really remarkable story and I love telling stories of people that have really, gone from a totally different industry and are killing it in the restaurant industry. Cause it's not an easy space to get into as you and I've talked through.
Matt Plapp:Oh, no, for sure. So I guess technically restaurants go back to my youth because my dad had an insurance company that worked with a lot of restaurants and he didn't, I used to joke that I thought my mom couldn't cook for awhile and it wasn't that it was that my dad wanted to give business to his clients network have, have a good time. So we ate out a lot as a kid when I was in radio back in the 90s or 2000, I had a lot of restaurant clients because I saw that there was a niche for all these mom and pop restaurants that. Technically couldn't afford to be on radio next to the car dealer spending 20 grand a month But there's opportunities for them to trade and do some stuff that would be beneficial to both sides so I became the restaurant trade guy and then when I started this marketing company in 2008 the idea was to Be an at large marketing consultant for small businesses because I had a friend of mine that owned a bunch of car dealerships And I was tired of hearing the same radio commercial for five years And I'm like, how do you not understand how to use radio better? And why aren't you on Facebook? And so that was the start of this company in 2008 from 2008, 2015, we built up a 34, 34 clients of which 31 were in all different industries, but we had three clients that each owned three restaurants. And so I had nine restaurant clients and watching all of the Our digital marketing more than anything, email, text, customer acquisition through in store marketing, through Facebook ads, watching how that worked seamlessly at each client and the restaurant space made me go, huh, if I have nine here locally, maybe if I had nine in every city across the country, we could create something special. And so we decided to diversify our company and get rid of our local clients and slowly scale up to restaurants nationwide. And here we are eight years later and, full force about, to 2200 to 2500 restaurants between all the entities.
Jeremy Julian:Yeah, and anybody like I said that follows Matt sees that he is a champion for the local business and part of why restaurant technology guys exist and he and I were able to wrap on this is really to help restaurants succeed because at the end of the day, they've had an impact on both of us and a lot of people that listen and so watching restaurants fail. is really hard and watching restaurants succeed. It's some of the best business in the world. It's created some really great people. And so talk me through a little bit, Matt, about what does that even mean as far as helping restaurants to succeed to you, especially as it relates to getting the word about out, about who they are and what they do.
Matt Plapp:Yeah. I subscribe to a theory that we use internally. ABR attract, build, retain. I always jokingly use my marriage as this. And 29 years ago, I attracted the wife. My track, the attention of my wife. I built a relationship with her and somehow retained her 29 years later. And I think that restaurants fail at each step of the way because they're not marketing people, the restaurant tours in 2024 and beyond, there's one place. That were guaranteed to find anybody their cell phone. And so when I was in radio in 1999, It was tough for a mom and pop restaurant to know where to focus their marketing to gain attention. Was it radio? Was it TV? Was it direct mail? Was it a billboard? Was it a bus? Was it sports marketing? And all of those came with a dollar sign. Today, we know they're on their phone. I did a presentation last week in Las Vegas for David Scott Peters, for a group he's got. And I had a slideshow up that I talked about people's attention. And you can't make this stuff up. I'm in the gym the morning of the presentation. I look out, the guy cleaning the pool is on his phone and cleaning the pool and I'm watching because I'm like, this dude's going to drop his phone. This is going to be funny. I'm going to film this shit. Never did it. But he was on his phone for 30 minutes. while he's doing this, it occurs to me that I'm on my phone, so I'm getting a kick out of that. I looked to my right, Peter, my video guy who's there lifting weights. In between sets on his phone and then I feel something to my left and I look out and I'm not making this up, Jeremy, I look out and the guy that is cleaning the roof of the circa casino five floors off the ground on a several scissor lift is leaning over the mezzanine thing on his phone
Jeremy Julian:my goodness.
Matt Plapp:I'm like cracking up. And so then we're walking back to the hotel and I'm, me and Peter are talking like, dude, I'm adding these two pictures to the day slide presentation. We all know it's everywhere. If you're at a stoplight and you got to wait for the person in front of you, they're on their phone. it's everywhere. We know this, but it's even more places than we realized. So we're walking back and we're staying at this place called Main Street station. And we're walking through the lobby. They're putting all new carpet in. And I'm like, these guys are working their butts off. I said, look, Peter, these guys aren't on their, I look up and there's a guy on his phone. Like they were all working hard except for this one lone dude hit a middle floor. So my presentation walked through the fact that none of us are confused where people's attention lies today. It's in their phone, it's in their email inboxes, their text inboxes, their messenger inboxes, their Facebook account, their LinkedIn account, YouTube, Twitter, whatever, we have to understand how to attract their attention there. And so that is the core premise of what we help people do is, how do you get somebody's attention on their phone? And then if you want to do it over and over, it's called, it's building a relationship with them. It's, if I walk up to your table at your restaurant, I say, Jeremy, are you loving your meal tonight? Oh, this is unbelievable. Hey, I noticed you come here all the time. Are you in our VIP program? Are you in our awards program? No, I'm not. I want to give you a free appetizer your next visit, scan this code, do A, B, and C. Now you're building a deeper relationship, but more importantly, you're able to retain them easier because now you control their data. And it's the number one missing component that restaurants have. They don't control their customers data. So it's hope and pray. And then the last part about it is retaining their attention. If you want to keep my attention for your restaurant, On my phone, you have to be able to reach me seamlessly. Email was supposedly dead in 2010. Somehow it's still here and it's kicking stronger than ever. And restaurants still are not trying to acquire that customer data. And for the life of me, I don't know why.
Jeremy Julian:Yeah. and I'd love to talk a little bit deeper, Matt. before we jump into kind of the, let's talk a little bit deeper about the attraction side of it, but I will tell you funny enough, I was looking through my budget and looking through my bank account and I looked at where I spent money in restaurants and I guarantee you when I look back at the advertising I saw and the emails I got, I went to places more often than Then not because it was top of mind. It wasn't because they had the best food out there. It was because it was top of mind. I saw it and we don't realize how many times those things, whether it's billboards on the side of the road or it's in where the attraction is on your phone, that you see these things and you're like, Oh, I hadn't been considering Greek food tonight, but I just got a text from the Greek restaurant. Greek food starts to sound good. we're recording this in the holiday season, same thing for my holidays. I purchased things for my wife for Christmas and for her birthday, which was 10 days ago. I purchased it based on the things that were advertised to me more so than even what I had. And I think all too often restaurants don't, Think about that because they're not marketers to your point. And so how do you help restaurants? And where do you see people even on the attraction side failing so much? Because I've watched your journey over the last 10 plus years, and it's amazing the results that you're able to get for people.
Matt Plapp:I appreciate that. let me tell you a quick story that'll support what you just said. I've been eating at a place called barley corns since the early eighties. So going on 40 years, my dad had them insured. My favorite wing joints, the first place I ever had Buffalo wings in the early eighties. Nobody else had them. Would you believe me if I told you that a restaurant I've eaten at for 40 years, Lost my business a couple years ago simply because I changed my driving habit. My daughter comes home from college. It was December of 2022. She's like, where do you want to go to dinner? Let's go to barleycorns. Okay, cool. So we go to barleycorns. We're sitting there and I go, huh? We've not been here in three or four months. And I put it in perspective, my wife and I. Eat out pretty much every meal. We don't cook it very often, maybe five times a month, if that. So we are the ideal customer for any and every restaurant that exists. And my daughter says, Oh, you haven't eaten in a while. Would they piss you off? They do something wrong. I said, no, the food's always great service. And my wife goes, it's just stupid car. What do you mean? She goes, you've got your sports car and that when you drive it to the office, cause my house is here on the same street, a mile and a half away as barley corns. Couple miles past that is the office I'm in now couple miles past that is the gym I go to the same exact road in northern Kentucky us 42. She said when you drive your sports car to the office You get on the expressway because you can go fast. There's no speed limit There's stop signs all that kind of crap And she's like you've been driving that because my business coach told me what gives you amped up gets you excited I'm like driving my car. He's drive it every day the next 90 days So I did I stopped going down us 42 I stopped going to my favorite buffalo wing restaurant that i've had zero issues with for 40 years Simply because the only way they had my attention was their sign. And so when you think about what success looks like today, there's a heritage restaurant in this market with great brand recognition, with a spot in my heart. I eat at Barleycorns all the time. But because I quit looking at their sign four to five times a day because my driving habit changed, I stopped eating there, but what's funny, all they would have had to have done is run a Facebook ad targeting married men within a couple miles of their restaurant who eat out all the time. And I would have been shown an ad for under pennies a day and would have kept going there. All they would have had to do with one of the couple hundred times I've go to their restaurant every couple of years is maybe once acknowledge me. Dude wears orange every time comes in here every week. Hey! Surely you're in our birthday program. I'm not, Oh my God, dude, we got to give you a free dessert for your birth, scan this, do this. so when you think about what happens and what we've succeeded with is I saw that with some of our first restaurants back around 2010, 2012 was we had a brand called Huffborough house, Newport, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and then eventually Cleveland. And what I saw with them was they had a restaurant in Newport as an example that was doing 7 million in sales a year. Not a small feat. I knew our average check. I started doing the math and I'm like, huh, we have this many people coming here. And yet our email list is 800 people. are we like intentionally trying not to get emails? What's going wrong here? And so I just examined our tech stack back then, our website. If somebody comes here, is there a seamless way they can tell me who they are? And you got to have an offer that they feel stupid saying no to. The book I'm holding up here, a million dollar offers by Alex Ramosi. How to make an offer so good people feel stupid saying no to nobody in their right mind Is ever going to turn down a free burger a free beer a free dessert a free appetizer But everybody's so scared to give something away and I always tell our customers it's not about visit one It's visit two through a hundred And if you control my data, you can control those instances more often because email costs you nothing. And if you strategically use email correctly, you don't bash people with specials or discounts, or, just word vomit your menu to them. If you talk to them about what's going on in the area, what's going on. With their life. Christmas is coming up right now. Have a email that goes out to all the women in your database. It says, click here, go to Facebook and drop a picture of where your elf on the shelf is hiding today. Drop one of your favorite pictures of your kids from Christmas the last couple of years. Now, all of a sudden, people open your email for something different. They go to your Facebook page. Now they've interacted with your brand three or four times. And that night when their spouse says, Hey, you want to get pizza? Let's go to Strong's. Let's go to Snappy.
Jeremy Julian: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. Absolutely. I love that. And I think, it's funny that, that restaurant tours don't think this way because if they were at a cocktail party, if they were at the kids sporting events, they'd say, Hey, come join me for this pizza. Come join me for, beer, whatever that might be. Come join me for wings. But unfortunately, for whatever reason there, it feels and I'd love your opinion on this. Matt is, Are they just scared to do that? Like, why don't they capture the email addresses? Why don't, you guys have worked with thousands of restaurants. Why don't they ask, is it tech phobic? Is it the fact that they've gotten beat up by other email offers themselves and they're fearful to do it because they don't want to ruin their brand by doing that. Help me understand what is holding people back from it.
Matt Plapp:I think it is, it's a combination of things. So to go there real quick, there's five things. I wrote an article recently for PMQ magazine. I ran an article every week and I wrote an article. It said, there's five must haves. Inside of your restaurant in 2024, number one, you'll like this, a point of sale because I run across restaurants that don't have point of sale. Still mind blown. They don't. I was at a pizza restaurant recently that was telling me they went to a point of sale about six months ago, but I went up there. They were telling me their story. They bought the restaurant 30 years in business. They took it over and they said, Matt, we got in here Friday night, 200 orders on the phone, pen and paper. Like what? This is 2024 and they just got a POS not too long ago. So number one, you got to have a POS. Number two, you've got to have a website that is in this century. Your customers are engaging online with Amazon, with Target, with Uber Eats. Like you have to have the same level of technology as them as in hooked up to your point of sale, online ordering, a seamless way for somebody to give you their name via a contest on your website. those are two big elements. You've got to have a customer management system. You've got to have a tool that all your customer data goes to. So you can easily communicate with them when you need to, we're in the process inside of our system driver, create what I call the easy button that a restaurant or can click on a weekly basis. When do you need 25 customers? It's not rocket science. If you have the data. You can look at it, see who's the easiest person to convince to come eat right now and you can't abuse it. Do it every day, five times a day, but if once or twice a week you hit an easy button and you invite people into something that makes them feel stupid for saying no and it's around what they are to eat, they'll probably come. So outside the customer management system, then you need to have a loyalty program because loyalty, even though it's only 12 to 15 percent of most restaurants customer base, It's the biggest chunk of their revenue that's possible. So you've got to have a program that incentivizes your best customer. I eat at a place called Strong's brick oven pizza. That is a mile from my house. It is amazing pizza, solid service. They have never incentivized me to spend one more penny to come one more time. And they don't have my data to call and invite me back when they want to.
Jeremy Julian:They also don't know when you leave and stop coming back, which is something that I find baffling.
Matt Plapp:Yeah. barbacoa is.
Jeremy Julian:when I stop ordering or my wife stops ordering and they're going to start giving me offers to incent me to come back.
Matt Plapp:And that's not hard. the article I did, gosh, I think it goes out this week for PMQ was three, three emails you must have for your restaurant. And it was the welcome email. It was the loyalty email, sales email, or loyalty emails. And then it was a sales dragon email. within the loyalty email, there was a thing called a win back. If Matt Platt comes to your restaurant, like barley coins every single week, and you have a loyalty system hooked up with his contact info in your POS, and I go missing for seven days, I'll say I come every seven days. And on day eight, I don't show up and SOS needs to go out. A manager needs to be notified. Matt Plapp has went missing and automate an email and automated text, a Facebook retargeting ad. There's probably a good reason I'm gone. It's not you it's vacation. It's changing driving habit. Maybe I got sick. Who knows? So there's a lot of things, but you've got to know that. And then the other aspect in there that I talked about was customer acquisition. a loyalty program is a Ferrari. It is, most of them that I have seen on the market are very finely tuned marketing machines. But a Ferrari and my son's Honda Civic with no gas go nowhere. So what I typically see as a major problem with restaurants is they do not have a strategy in place to get people's information For the first time to introduce them and indoctrinate them and then throw them in the loyalty So when you ask the question like why don't these things happen? The number one thing I found that I haven't conquered yet is that the restaurants for whatever reason Do not want to get away from simply asking people. How are you doing? If I walk into a restaurant today, I am guaranteed, Hey, how you doing, Matt? Let's be honest. You do not care how I'm doing. You want to sell me food. So I have a conversation that moves it along. Matt, welcome. Have you been here before? No, you've not. Oh my God, dude. that means you're not in Matt's VIP pie club, but before I sit you down and get your order, I'm giving you a free pizza for your next visit. Now I do that. It's easy for me. I'm a sales and marketing guy, a 16 year old that just got off a band practice, probably a little harder. So I think that there's some intricacies in there that make things like I just did harder, custom, employee turnover, employees, ability to sell employees, ability to articulate something like that. So I think that's the big issue. The other part of it is I don't think that restaurants have put in place the tech stack to make it happen. Autopilot because let's eliminate. You haven't have anybody in your restaurant do what I think you should do if you have a point of sale in place That encourages when somebody calls in to order a pizza. They have to put your number in to get the pizza And it stores data and historical information. That's one thing. If I go to your website, I went to a website yesterday and the websites pop up. This guy follows my podcast and it was funny cause I got to see he was using it. It popped up and said, click here to win a 100 gift card. Heck yeah. Click there. Put my contact information, went into it, got a welcome email, Matt. Welcome. You're in our, you now are well entered to win the gift card. Good luck. And I'm sure I'll get some marketing. But like having something like that on your website, if I order online, I found a gap the other day in a point of sales online ordering that our system integrates with that. If I order as a guest, I don't land in the marketing program. I have to be a registered user and my thought process is that doesn't make any sense. Like we're both giving the same exact information. Matt Plapp surely is not going to be mad if I order from this restaurant on a Thursday as a guest. Because I didn't want to fill this crap out and Friday, get an email that says, thank you for your business. Here's a promotion for your next visit. So I think that the biggest problem I've seen is that restaurants Either have a Frankenstein tech stack where they have this loyalty, this tax, this email, this none of them communicate or they have none of it at all. And a lot of it is because they're scared to spend money on marketing. they don't understand that just like you can't lose a hundred pounds that you gained in the last 10 years in one month. You're not going to gain the sales that you lost from having a overweight marketing program last 10 years. It's going to take a while. And so a lot of them, for whatever reason, aren't willing to invest that time, money and effort into something that's going to take a couple of years.
Jeremy Julian:Love those examples. And, I'm going to hit on a story that I just had last week. I went to breakfast with them at a brand new restaurant in town. I'd never been, it's a brand out of the West coast and the experience was over the top. The night before I had lunch with my son at a brand that collected my phone number, collected my email address, and it was very unpersonalized and I still haven't heard from them. I went to this other brand and it was a fast casual restaurant. I spent 40 bucks for the two of us to have dinner. I went to this other restaurant and I had an amazing experience and the server came and said, Hey, it was their first time here. These are the three items I recommend. Let me tell you about, I'm going to bring you one of the biscuits that, that we're known for you to try it out, to see if that difference in experience, I spent the same 40 for that experience. When I go to make a choice with my menu and with my wallet, I promise you, I'm going to go to that brand where I got that experience. And I talk about that because at the end of the day, Some brands, this brand that you talked about, that's doing 7 million might not think that they can do more than that. But at the end of the day, when you start to lose customers, whether that's a recessionary thing or that's, whatever it is, whatever the reason is, getting them back is almost impossible. If you hadn't had your wife ask you and maybe you're going back to barleycorns, maybe you're not. But had you not, they don't know that you're gone until it's now hundreds, if not thousands of dollars that they don't have out of your wallet spend. That's gone now. And It's really critical. Not only to capture those things, but to evaluate it and be intentional about it. Matt, tell me a little bit before we jump into driver. Cause I do want to get to that before we get done. Where do you see people doing it? like how many brands are doing it? especially in the SMB space, because it's hard. It's I shouldn't say it's hard with intentionality. It takes 15 minutes a day to do what you're saying. And to be able to truly drive behavior is not nearly as difficult as people But if you don't have a system and you don't have a plan, you're not going to do it. And so I'd love to get you to talk through who's doing it well, even in the SMB space. And what do you see them focusing the majority of their intentions on early on?
Matt Plapp:I'll say this, and this is exciting. 9. 9 out of 10 brands are not doing it right. And that includes the big brands. I think you saw it on LinkedIn the other day, the picture I posted about McDonald's, LinkedIn. It was a McDonald's ad about like healthy ingredients, great. What the fact that the largest restaurant marketer in the world came up with that campaign. Excites me because I don't work with the McDonald's of the world. I don't know that we ever will. Maybe we will, but right now we work with, small restaurants, one to five locations. Then we have clients that have 50 to 300 locations that are chains, but we work with smaller brands, I guess you'd say. So when I see McDonald's doing that, when I watch Papa John's have a Facebook page that has 7 million fans and gets a hundred interactions, I'm excited. Because what's happened is the brands that control the majority of advertising spend do not use it correctly. So a lot of people don't realize this, like Facebook advertising, 95 percent of what's purchased on there is bought by big companies. McDonald's, Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Chevy, Ford, they, especially the food space, they were of the opinion that you and I were long gone, Jeremy. Like our opinions are like, we cannot be influenced, which is such a crock.
Jeremy Julian:I'm saying that I went through my spending behavior through the month of December and it's ridiculous how many things I purchased. I got my wife a gift for her birthday. And I'm like, I saw an LinkedIn ad, not even a LinkedIn ad. It was an Instagram ad and I bought her a running head, headset because I got that advertisement. Cause I was talking to her about going out for a run.
Matt Plapp:yep.
Jeremy Julian:So sorry, I'll let you keep going.
Matt Plapp:so 95 percent of the advertising spend is controlled by major brands. The cool part about it is those major brands think everybody above my daughter's age are useless. My daughter's 22, she is who they want. And so when you look at that, you should get excited because if you go to Facebook today, anybody over 25. Even up to 75 or 80 is an amazing opportunity. Did you know one of the fastest growing segments in the restaurant loyalty space? Are the people over 65? My dad is a penny pincher. he's a member of some of our clients, local loyalty programs through driver. It was funny. I didn't know he was at one point. He got mad at me one time because I paid the bill and he didn't get the points. I did. And then I later realized when we acquired what was repeat returns then and turned to the driver That was one of their clients. I'm like, hey dan. I got your points. I can get i'm gonna go to cancel your account but His demographic are hardcore in the joining loyalty because it's gotten so expensive to eat out now And they're trying to find every dollar they can so the cool part about it is Paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram is the gold mine for a small business right now. And the fact that your customer base that all of us really want are not being sought after by the McDonald's and Coke's of the world means that the inventory is a plethora of it and you can buy it really cheap. So that is one huge opportunity. So the people that I see doing it right, the outliers are the operators that do not work inside the four walls. And that are hardcore into personal development. Give you an example, a guy named Avery Ward owns a restaurant called Little Italy Restaurante. He took over his dad's restaurant. I want to say it was seven years ago. His dad had it for about 30 years. It did 500k, 1400 square foot pizza restaurant. What do you think he grew that sales to in the exact location in five years? 500k.
Jeremy Julian:I don't know, 800,
Matt Plapp:three, was it 3. 5 million.
Jeremy Julian:holy smokes at a 1400 square feet
Matt Plapp:Same location and just recently moved into about a year ago, a brand new store and is on pace to surpass. I want to say 5. 5 last time I talked to him, he did it because he went into the restaurant, looked at it through a different lens. He hired a business coach, a guy named David Scott Peters. He actually, it's funny. He hired us to come film at his restaurant for America's best restaurants. One of the things we do is we give people a trial in our marketing program. He got a trial. One of the things we do with our clients is we give them educational resources. I bought a few hundred of David Scott Peters books. We have a bunch of them here. We mailed him a book. He read it, went down the funnel of David Scott Peters YouTube, hired David Scott Peters, joined his coaching program, and in a matter of a year, became very intent on becoming a great operator from educating himself. And so he took this business over in his mid twenties and within five years grew it to where it went from, 500 grand to 3. 5 plus, the same location, because he upgraded himself. And so the unicorns that we see are Avery. And the cool thing is Avery's probably one out of a thousand to be quite honest with you. He's got his own video guide. He's got a guy named Nathan. That is a full time videographer and social media marketer for his restaurant. And he
Jeremy Julian:clearly it's paying off because he grew sales by over 3 million. I love that story. Funny enough. after I saw you speak last week, I reached out to David Scott Peters. Ironically, he was a customer at one point.
Matt Plapp:on no way.
Jeremy Julian:next time you talk to him, he was on the show a couple of years back and he, he's dude, I remember you. Cause he was a customer and he had called to complain about something. I picked up the phone and on the point of sale side and we wrapped a little bit and he's, he's gonna be on the show again in another couple of weeks. after I get back from holiday, Matt, you've gotten, actually before I go there, cause I've been biting my tongue. if you haven't already connected with Matt on social, he'll talk about his handles here in a little bit. His dad is freaking awesome as well. every time I see him post a video with his dad and sometimes a son, I watch from start to finish. And your dad is amazing. You can share that with him, cut this little clip out and send it to him, but he's, he's a lot of fun to, to listen to you and he banter back and forth when you guys do your little videos,
Matt Plapp:We're going on the road Thursday. So we usually do on Thursdays thing called fire with dad. It started seven years ago that him and I, every Thursday started talking about business. Okay. And about two months in, I realized like we were talking to ourselves, who gives a shit? Nobody cared about that. So then we started telling funny stories about, the time he almost got kicked off a plane, the, all these different, him and I, my dad is a cartoon character, like Lynn Smith and him and I are just alike. You just, 30 years difference and he works in my office three days a week. And so this Thursday, we're taking a road trip. Me, him, my camera guy, Peter, and my COO, Doug up to, see a client of ours, Chris called MST pub up in Tiffin about three hours drive. And on the way back, we're going to hit Columbus and hit a Euro place, called King's Euros and then little Italy pizza and I think Capuano's. We're in four restaurants and my dad, I love bringing them along on this because surely we'll have some funny clips in the car. he's, it's great to be around my dad. My son works for me. my dad works for me and I say that loosely, he's here. He's getting, he's coaching my team, but it's funny how we get to interact, but he's a great guy and we have a good time with him. Yeah. Follow me on social media. If you go to mattplapp. com, M A T P L A P P. com, you'll find links to my daily blog, my daily podcast, and then my social media channels where my goal. On my social media is to spend less time selling you on hiring one of our companies and more time selling you on my theories, because I believe if you subscribe to our theories, no matter what loyalty program you use, the theories are going to work. And so I trust that at some point, five, 10, 15 years down the road, We'll be big enough that we'll have enough people that say, Hey, I believe in his theories. I probably believe in his product. We'll go down there, I give a lot of free content out every single day. After this, I have two podcasts to record for the next two days.
Jeremy Julian:I love it. I know Matt, you've recently got into the loyalty space. You talked about repeat returns. Where did that come from? Talk, talk to our audience a little bit about why that came about. Because, again, I've been following the story of where you guys have been at for quite some time. You were one of my first outside guests. I told you that when we had breakfast a couple of weeks ago. And so I've been a fan of what it is that you guys are doing. And now that you're getting into the software space, that's The impact, in my opinion, has the opportunity to be even greater for those that, that consider it. So help educate our audience. What is repeat returns now driver? What is this new branding? What are you guys trying to do?
Matt Plapp:In 2016, Everything that we did for our restaurant clients, I controlled. And so we would run, I bought their radio, their TV, their billboards. I ran their Facebook. If you go to Huffbrow's Newport and go back to 2012 to 16 and you watch their once a month cake tapping videos filmed on an iPad, Matt Plapp was the one filming it. So I controlled all the marketing and what I found in that process was all the nuances of the opportunities that existed. And the one thing I fell in love with was customer acquisition. I saw how, I got a growler on my desk. We had these growlers. Hofbrauhaus starts selling growlers. I keep it here. I have coins in it. I have a QR code to use it like a promotional idea. But Hofbrauhaus wanted to sell growlers. And they started marking them. They were like five years late to the game. Everybody else in town had growlers. We were the last ones. And nobody bought them. So I did something really simple. I went, at least to me, I went on Facebook, I put up an ad, I put up a digital, marketing funnel that said, Hey, click here, give us your information, walk in the restaurant. We'll hand you a free growler beer, not included just for coming in. Next thing you know, within a couple of days, 2, 500 growlers are gone. And of course, people that drove down to the restaurant after giving us their contact information and then redeemed, that was the key part. They had to have their screen. We had to lock the, a little digital redeem, on a landing page. They had to unlock that with a code at the bartender. And we knew not only that Matt Platt opted in to get the growler, but we knew that Matt Platt came in to get the growler, and then at the same time, we The bartender input, how much they spent when they were there to get their growler. So I could see that these people were coming in, spending 18, getting a beer, getting a sandwich, getting the growler, filling it with beer and then leaving. I saw that and realized the opportunity that exists for customer acquisition. And so we went on this journey and over six months, we gained 18, 000 people for one look for one brand, three locations, an email cell phone birthday from that. We started going nationwide. When we went nationwide. What I found was that a lot of these restaurant owners didn't have the belief in the data that Matt plopped it. I knew when we gathered 18, 000 people's information and that 30 percent walked in the restaurant within a month or two, like I knew the value of that. I know that is millions in sales in the future. And so I assumed foolishly that when we launched this company nationwide, that as we helped restaurants build customer databases through customer acquisition, like Facebook, Instagram ads in store contests, that these restaurants would be blown away. they weren't, as an example, we had a client one time, and this is like the extreme unicorn of failed clients spent 28, 000 with us in 14 months. The Sixth Location Pizza Restaurant out on the West Coast. In those 14 months, we gained 28, 000 people into his VIP program, of which they spent 440, 000 on the front end.
Jeremy Julian:Wow. That's
Matt Plapp:even making this up. I know these numbers because I almost cried when he cancelled. I'm like, what do you mean you're cancelling? I don't know how we did this. But his whole thing, I'm disturbed that this doesn't connect to my point of sale and that I can't see the LTV that while I like that we have 28, 000 people, think about that 28, 000 people across six locations in 14 months said, here's my name, my phone number, my email, my birthday, and how often I come to your restaurant. The question we ask is the first thing we ask right off the bat. How often do you dine at this restaurant? We give them three choices. I've never been, I come all the time. I come rarely for me. You're new, you're frequent, you're lost because if you come rarely, that's a problem. If you come all the time, Hey, high five, come back more often. If you've not been before, I have to bribe you like that lost customer to get you back. So I'm looking at this, let me get this right. If I, as a restaurant owner spent 20 to 30 grand and got 20 to 30, 000 contacts, I know that a customer's data is worth 10 to 20. very low end. It's probably worth more like a couple hundred restaurant owner, because you have the ability to sell Matt plapa pizza the next 10 years. Yeah. This guy didn't see it that way. And so he was an extreme example, but over the course of 2016 to 2020, we saw it more often where we would have a client, like my whole philosophy on customer acquisition was what we spend in month one, we want to recuperate in month two. So our average client was spending about 1500 bucks between us and Facebook ads.
Jeremy Julian:Ramosy of you,
Matt Plapp:Yeah. And if we can get, if we can get 1500, which ironic, I was, before I knew who Hermosi was, we were a client of his gym. I owned a gym for 10 years and our gym was a client of his
Jeremy Julian:of Jim launch. funny enough, I just, I actually was watching a YouTube video of his on the treadmill here over to my right earlier this week. And he talked about your marketing spend for this month. You need to be able to acquire that in, next month.
Matt Plapp:And this is what I've always did. I, before I even had heard of him, but it was, if we can spend 1500 a month and next month you get four grand in sales. And you take your food costs off of that and you recoup your ad spend. You just got the attention of all of the Facebook ads, the emails, the text, the met, all that stuff. You got that for free. You got the data for free and then your next month's spin is paid for by the people who walked in. That was always my vision and my goal was to show restaurants. If you did that over 12 to 24 months and then you took that data and you used it, you what smacked me in the face was April of 2020. We all know what hit March of 2020, April of 2020. I told my team, Hey, let's slow the machine down. We had three or six employees that time. I said, let's slow the machine down. Let's not add any new clients. Let's call all of our current clients and find out how we can help. It's like late March, early April. we started calling clients and this client, this one right here was in the middle of that. He's, he canceled that August. And he's yeah, we haven't been using the data. What do you mean? you guys gain it for us and it does a great job, but we don't know how to use it. And so I said, okay, we're going to start helping you with your distribution. We're going to do two emails a month for you because consumers were under the impression that restaurants were closed. No, we just can't serve you inside the restaurant. You can pick up, you can order, carry out, you can order delivery, whatever. And so we went around, do at that time, I think about 80 restaurants we had as clients and we said, Hey, we're We found a gap that none of you are using your damn data. And so we created, I hired three new people and we were losing money like everybody else was at this point, but I knew that our restaurants needed help. We had money in the bank that we could go on for another year or two. So I told my team, Hey, let's help our clients use the data. So we started helping them use the data. And then that got to around 2021, 2022, I think it was 2021. When I realized that in order for us to not churn clients every two years, We had to show them the promised land. I knew it was there. It's not a coincidence that if you have a, an email program that has 500 people in at one month and 5, 000 at a year later, that you're probably getting more sales out of that if you don't use it incorrectly. So 2021, if you've heard of a vivid vision, or let me grab a copy of one. I built this vivid vision and the front of it. And the vivid vision is basically that in three years, this is what our company will look like. And I wrote on here, December 31st, 2023. We'll celebrate in Las Vegas. We accomplished our vivid vision. And the second third page inside was a software that I wanted to create that would integrate with restaurants, point of sales. Now take this. I have no clue about software. Like I know enough to be dangerous, like not actual software. I could always build on top of other people's software. So we worked on that for about a year and a half, two years. I realized around 2022 that I didn't need to be building a new software company. So I started just thinking about what if we acquired somebody. And by luck would have it may have 2023. David Scott Peters invited a guy named Cameron Carrington to come watch me speak. It was a friend of his. He's in Las Vegas. He owned repeat returns. Cameron was looking to exit and go out the next place. And so we ended up talking and by November we acquired repeat returns. And I really didn't know what I had until this past summer. I wanted to try and make my marketing tactics work inside there. We know how to do customer acquisition. We now do Facebook ads. Here's this platform that customer data goes to. We're going to force them together. we found out through trial and error that doesn't work. So this past year we merged the companies and call it, we created the name Driver, D R Y V E R. And the idea is that we're going to help you drive your sales. The why is for you, you need lunch sales, you need appetizer sales, catering sales, event sales, dessert sales, more sales. And so the idea is that driver has three elements to it. Number one is a customer acquisition program that we help restaurants find people in their communities that are hungry, get their contact information, work to drive that first two visits and then help them put that data somewhere else. If they happen to want to use our loyalty program, Then we can integrate with our loyalty program. They can use it through their point of sale or through a tablet. We'd like ideally is point of sale. And then on top of that, we have a higher level coaching and consulting division where if you're a restaurant that's doing, let's say a million and a half to 2 million, and you're looking to get to, Two and a half to 3 million. It's going to take very strategic marketing plans. And so we've got people inside of our building that are high end restaurant coaches, couple of them are former restaurant owners that work with our team and the restaurant owner to coach them on exactly how to do what they do. That's what Avery is little Italy. Avery has been. One to one coach by one of my team members every week for the past three years. And it's not a coincidence that he got coaching from DSP. He got coaching from MPs team. He's got a good tech stack and here he is, going from 500 to 5. 5.
Jeremy Julian:Love that. and, the one thing that I want to, before we get off the call, Matt, I want to just, point our audience back to the fact that some of the common threads that you've talked about, both in yourself and in your clients is this idea of continuously improving what it is that you're working on, evaluated. evaluating what you did, what worked, what didn't work, and then making strides to do that. Where did that come from? Does that come from your dad? Does that come from just you? Again, I've watched the story and I think that all too often restaurant owners get stuck in the rut. They get stuck working Friday night shifts, working in the bar, whatever it is, and they don't invest in themselves, whether that's in their physical body, whether that's in their knowledge, that's reading, that's getting outside of the four walls and talking to different people. Where did that come from for you and how would you encourage our audience? Obviously if they're listening to the podcast, they've got at least something that they're doing that's helping them make them better. But where did that come from and how would you encourage our restaurant owners that are exhausted and are like, I'm done. I can't add any more to my plate. And why you believe so heavily in both physical as well as the mental side of the game that you do. Cause I know just on the side that those are big parts of what it is
Matt Plapp:So I have a mantra. I try to live by MBS mind, body, and spirit. And every day I have to work on my mind. I have to work on my body. I have to work on my spirit. And I have another mantra, lead, market, sell. That as a CEO of my company, it is my job to lead my team. If they see me eating like crap, they see me drinking, smoking, doing vapes, not working out. If they see me living a lifestyle, I shouldn't be surprised when they live the same bad lifestyle. If I don't market my company at a high level, like I'm always on brand. I have my branded ring on. If you're watching the video, I have my shirt. I have orange Jordans on there. I have my orange jacket over here, my shaker cup. I market every single day. And then I sell my vision, our vivid vision, the new one. Is a eight page document that even to the end says, here's what I want my headquarters to look like by May 17th, 2027. So mind, body, and spirit lead market sale. Now, where did I get this from? I honestly didn't start it till my late thirties. I think what happens to all of us. Is we have teachers growing up, we have coaches growing up, we get out of high school or college, we get a job, we learn a skill, we become pretty good at it. If you own a restaurant, if you're an entrepreneur, you've got a pretty good skillset at something, but we forget that even Tom Brady has a coach. Multiple coaches. And so I don't know what triggered it to me, but it was in my mid to late thirties, I'm 48 now I was around 35 to 38 and I had convinced myself I couldn't read, like I remember reading a book of Michael Jordan. I got three chapters in and outside of the fact I knew the book was about Michael Jordan, I had no clue what I read. And so I had a mentor gotting Billy Jean shawl out in San Diego, California, that I started going to his business masterminds. And I started looking around the room. The people that were doing it right, what were they doing? And the one key thing I found was they were growth oriented, that they were looking for the next tip. They were looking for the next idea. So I started reading, I forced myself, I started reading and now I read pretty much every day, multiple books a month. I find motivation by reading people like Phil Knight, from Nike. Like people don't really, that's probably the best book I've ever read in my entire life. And you know what Nike is today, but you would never think that he was a CEO of a company bumming money off his sales team on the road to buy dinner, selling shoes on the back of his trunk. So I have found that for me. We can relate to these people more than we realize. Like I can't lie, I'm the brokest I've ever been in my entire life trying to grow this company. I got out of my comfort zone. I not only am I'm probably too growth oriented and I take risks. I probably shouldn't take, and we're not funded by anybody except for me. And so I've gotten to a point where I realize I can be normal or I can be average, or I can just go have fun with it and do something bigger. And what's cool about it. Is that the majority, just like the marketing, the majority of these restaurants, competitors aren't doing it weren't reading every day. They aren't listening to podcasts every day. They're like, I listen to the music that motivates me. I have a playlist called MP every day. they aren't doing those things. And if you're not doing that, if you don't have a group that you go to, I fly every two months somewhere differently. To meet with a different group of entrepreneurs, because I have to get out of my kitchen. Like I'm in my building, I've got some great people I'm surrounded by, but I need to be, if I'm the smartest guy in the room, I'm screwed. And so I try and get myself out of my comfort zone, try and learn new stuff, try and educate myself. But like I have a mantra within our company, our core values, positive mindset, growth oriented, collaborative. One of the things I love to say, and I got this from her Rosie, when somebody says, how are you doing? I'm amazing. I said, how are you amazing? I'm a straight white guy in America. I have every opportunity. And for the most part, anybody that's in America has it. And then for most part, anybody in a lot of countries has it. So if you're not positive mindset, you're screwed, but you've got to be growth oriented and you've got to be willing to learn and realize that, I got this thing on my wall here. I'll take it off. It's Warren Buffett's wealth curve.
Jeremy Julian:yeah,
Matt Plapp:know if you've seen this or not,
Jeremy Julian:I have
Matt Plapp:we know Warren Buffett is this billionaire now. Like it's 83. He was worth 58 billion. Dollars. But at 33, he was at 2. 4 at 43, he was at 34. So it just didn't happen overnight. And I can promise you, it didn't happen by not reading, by not studying, by not being focused. And so I think we owe it to ourself. But the biggest thing for me, it's leadership that like you're leading a team. If you wonder why your restaurant's not closed correctly, why it's not clean correctly, why the recipes aren't prepared correctly, why people are late. Look in the mirror because they were probably emulating the leader of the company and that leader Isn't doing what it takes to get to the next level your people see it. They aren't going to either
Jeremy Julian:well and your success story of the Italian places is case in point of somebody that invested in themselves Invested in their team and the results went from a half a million dollars to three plus three plus million dollars And I promise you he's doing much better off financially And he's able to take the time and invest in, in that. And so Matt, you said it earlier, how do people connect? How do people learn more about how to engage with your team and gauge with your content? You're so prolific. I love that you put the stuff out there. So thank you for that. but yeah, how do people get connected? How do they get on your email list to learn more about, how they, how you can help the restaurant?
Matt Plapp:yeah, so there's two websites you can go to and you can probably find both from each one But mattplap. com my name matt at mattplap. com is my email. It's my website Everything's on there. And then our other url is restaurantmarketingthatworks. com If you go there, there's a path to driver, a path to ABR path to my podcast. And I'm an open book. I had a guy last time in a hot tub last night, about 10 o'clock. And I get a text message from a guy and he's Matt, I'm reading your PMQ series and in couple of the articles I published my phone number. Hey, if you're reading this, text me, you'll be in a drawing. I'll send you a free book. And I practice what I preach. So I'm always available. So yeah, matplotlib. com is easiest place. And I'm an open book. I love talking marketing. I love helping people no matter if they're a client or not. I feel that if I keep giving enough, it'll eventually come back.
Jeremy Julian:I, I appreciate that. And again, you and I are pretty symbiotic in that regard because, That's ultimately why this podcast exists. Cause I, I love seeing people succeed. I love watching your journey. So thank you for sharing a bit of it. Thank you for continuing to push outside of your comfort zone, push your clients to our listeners out there. You guys are obviously investing in yourself by listening to the show. So thank you guys for that. If you haven't already subscribed, please do Thank you, Matt, for your time. Have a happy holiday and make it a great day.
Matt Plapp:Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.
