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Optimizing Restaurant Operations with Service Physics: Insights from Industry Experts

• Erika Rivas

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In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, host Jeremy Julian interviews Brian Reece and Steve Crowley, co-founders of Service Physics, a consultancy focused on optimizing restaurant operations. The discussion delves into the concept of service physics, which helps improve productivity for staff and guest experiences in restaurants. Brian and Steve share their background, the principles of lean manufacturing and Kaizen, and how they align business goals with operational efficiency. They emphasize the importance of using data to drive changes, the value of customer and staff feedback, and methods to ensure long-term implementation success. The episode concludes with information on an upcoming workshop in Dallas aimed at making their methods accessible to a wider audience.

00:00 Service Physics

00:14 Introduction and Guest Welcome

01:29 Meet Brian and Steve: Background and Journey

04:08 Service Physics: Concept and Mission

06:58 Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen in Restaurants

12:41 Evaluating and Improving Restaurant Operations

16:01 Aligning Business Aspirations with Operations

19:41 Addressing Sacred Cows and Customer Feedback

23:50 Myth-Busting Customer Value

25:02 Empathy Through Technology

25:52 Empowering Staff Voices

26:56 Problem-Solving Acumen

29:33 Guest Experience Challenges

35:18 Engaging with Service Physics

42:10 Transforming the Industry

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better. In today's episode, I am joined by the founders of Service Physics. Service. Physics is a professional services organization that, uh, helps restaurants to optimize their restaurant experience so that they can drive the best productivity for their staff, for the guest, and deliver on the guest experience that everybody promises. Brian and Steve go really deep. I got super nerded out on the, the things that they've done for people. Love to share that episode. Um, please stay tuned until the end.'cause we talk a lot about how some of the biggest brands in the country continue to optimize to make things better. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS Northstar. We sell the North Star point of sale solution for multi-units. Check us out@cbsnorthstar.com and now onto our episode.

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 have got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out today. We are joined by a different style of guests. I think this is the first time I've had, uh, a team like this on the show, but I'm excited for, uh, for Brian and Steve to share a little bit about what they do. But I'm gonna kick it over to you, Brian. First, why don't you introduce yourself. You can introduce your partner, talk a little bit about kinda your guys' background. Then we'll talk about, uh, what you guys have been doing the last few years.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Yeah, thanks for having us on. Really excited to be here and, connecting with you and your, and your audience. my name is Brian Reese, one of the co-founders along with Steve of service physics. Uh, we're kind of a consulting company that does consulting wrong, we've never been consultants, but we've got a unique view on the world and, uh, really, uh, see a lot of opportunity for the restaurant industry to kind of think differently about operations. so. I'm based in upstate New York, two daughters and I love, uh, barbecue.

Jeremy Julian:

I love it. ironically, I had barbecue, uh, today, uh, for lunch. So had one of my favorite barbecue places here in town, so, it's, uh, it's hard, hard not to get good barbecue here in Texas, so there's that.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Texas style is where it's at.

Jeremy Julian:

Awesome. Well, uh, you want to introduce your partner?

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Yeah. I mean, Steve needs no introduction really. But, uh, I will say, uh, he's, you know, we've been working together for 10 plus years. We met working at Starbucks, back in 2012 when I joined Starbucks. Uh, but I'll let Steve tell his 17 year, Starbucks story and that leads a little bit into the company service physics, and how we got here. Awesome. So, yeah, thanks for the, the, the brief intro. The longer intro is that, um. I'm based in Des Moines, Iowa. Uh, although we're calling you today together, we're not normally in the same, uh, room at the same time. We thought we'd use this opportunity. We're in Boston, Massachusetts conducting some business meetings and visiting some clients. Uh, I'm originally from Boston, so this is kinda a little bit of a homecoming for me. lived all over the country. We started the company when Brian and I both lived in New York City. Um, during COVID, we both took the opportunity to. Uh, live in other places. And now hail from Des Moines, Iowa, uh, which is really great. Uh, we don't have a, a company headquarters, um, anywhere that everybody goes to work in every day. And we've got about a team of 20 people that are distributed, not only nationally, but uh, internationally. and we like to consider our office, our clients, restaurants. so we put a lot of value on going to see being where the real stuff is happening, collecting data, working with the team. and so working, from the middle of the country is great because it doesn't take me a full day to get from coast to coast. I can be anywhere, you know, first thing in the morning and, even sometimes get home during the same day, uh, which is really great. Uh, Brian mentioned we met working at Starbucks. I started working at Starbucks, uh, in the nineties. at that time, Starbucks was talking a lot about, open the 2000 store by the year 2000. That was kind of the, the battle cry. we did it. Uh, I didn't have much to do with that at the time I was a barista. but over the course of a couple decades, held all of the field positions, uh, in operations. And about halfway through that journey transitioned into a corporate headquarters position, working in operations strategy, uh, which coincidentally, and this is sort of one of those, Lucky unlucky moments as, as the country was facing the great financial crisis and Starbucks was in a lot of hot water, I was able to join an operations strategy team who at the time had partnered with Toyota, uh, to learn about better ways to think about work, uh, and operations and creating flow and simple, uh, repeatable, uh, work routines for. Uh, employees, and it was during that time we started to codify, uh, the practice that we now call service physics. Brian and I went on to work together again at Anheuser-Busch in Bev's innovation arm called ZX Ventures, where we were, basically hyper scaling. We opened above 550 bars and restaurants in five years across 13 countries. Uh, and no matter what. Operating format brand, local, cultural or regulatory differences that exist. These ideas around service physics we're transcending all of these, uh, boundaries and obstacles. And we just had this moment, uh, at one of our brew pubs in Patagonia, Argentina, which we now consider the spiritual home of service physics, uh, that this. Practice was too good to be reserved for the biggest beer company and the biggest coffee company in the galaxy when 99% of the industry is small, medium sized business, uh, in an industry that has a broken equation, between, you know, the employees, the customers, and the owners. It's known for being a low, uh, margin industry, a low wage industry. And if we're all really honest, nine times outta 10 when we go to a restaurant, there's something that happened that we wish didn't. and so we know that there's a better way, and service physics as a practice is the way to do that. And our mission as a company is to make service work better for people. And it's meant to have a double meaning. Both make the work better for the employees to do and then make service work better for the people who are receiving it. and then that always boils down to a better margin for owners. So, that's who we are and what we do.

Jeremy Julian:

Love that. well, and I know we'll dig quite a bit in tech, kind of how you guys do what you do, for our listeners out there, and I've got so many introductions to give you guys after that intro of people that I know are, aligned with what you guys do and might do it a little bit differently or do it in a different way that could be adjacent to. And I think we could probably also, uh. Also wrap about some of the, uh, former Starbucks people that have now spun off that we also do business with and have been on the show. So, but you guys, talked about kind of, I don't wanna say lean manufacturing and Kaizen. I know that that was part of what we had been talking about for our listeners that are less familiar with, with even what that means because I got some books on my shelf over here and Six Sigma and just all of these different things related to, a lot of times people that I talk to that are in the restaurant industry, don't consider. The manufacturing practices of Toyota to resonate with what's going on within what I still call, I think restaurants are still manufacturing plants. There's many manufacturing plants that are taking raw goods and turning'em into a finished good and selling them to'em. It just happens to be perishable goods and it happens to have a very tight timeframe. But I'd love for you guys to educate our listeners what is Lean Manufacturing and Kaizen just kind of at a macro level because I think it'll really dig into what service physics is helping to educate, um, your guys' customers on.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

You or me? Well, I'll tee it up for you. I, You know, the, what is lean question, is the perennial question. And it's actually very difficult to describe because it's, it's a lot of things. And even if you go to the Lean Enterprise Institute website, I think they told us that the, what is Lean page is the most popular page, uh, on there. And so it is a, it's difficult to grasp because it's a lot of things, and I think most people would say it's a bit of a mindset. Uh, and so it's a continuous improvement mindset. Things can always be improved. Things can always be better. Uh, and it's usually. Uh, and, and one of the things we really espouse, it's a minds before wallets approach. So let's go look at the work that we're asking people to do every day that creates value for the customer. And how do we remove everything from that process that is not adding value? So how do we get rid of all the waste? There's lots of waste in every production process. And, it's sort of just a fact of, of, uh, reality. That's why we call ourselves service physics. There's a physics to the work, uh, that, you know, just requires, uh, you to pick things up and move things around. but if we can reduce the amount of motion waste or waiting waste in a production process, that gets back to that making work better for people. so Steve, yeah, the thing I would, I would add to that, and this is a little bit of a, a provocation, for you, but. Lean is a technology. Um, and so we often think about technology as being digital or having wires and clouds and APIs and all these things. but you know, when we were invited to be on the podcast, the first thing I thought was like, what business do we have talking about, you know, digital technology? But then when I started to think about. You know, the definition of technology, it's more about the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes than it is about like hardware and software. Um, but even

Jeremy Julian:

it's also taking a process and and accelerating it to help create a better guest experience and a better staff experience, which ultimately is a lot of what you guys do. Sorry to interrupt you, but I just think it's so critical to understand that it, technology for technology's sake, and I say it all the time, is worthless technology that makes the guest experience better and the staff's experience better and ultimately the shareholders' experience better is where it's at. So sorry. I'll let you, I'll let you keep going, but that is so critical for people to consider because they don't.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

No, you're, you're absolutely right. And there are all kinds of examples in history where technology has outstripped operational practices. So like a really good example is the Civil War, right? So there were massive upgrades in the technology around weaponry and communication. yet we still lined up in these traditional battle lines and, you know, just massacred each other. and so it, it's really important that. people think about. Lean as on a, a as a long game as a transformation. Um, but it really is about daily transformation and making small upgrades all the time where the technology and the operations match each other and work together. but to, to hit the nail on the head when, you know, the audience is probably still thinking like, yeah, but what is it? Um, there are a few core concepts I think that. really embody the practice. Uh, and Brian mentioned there's, there's a lot to it and part of the, the, genesis story of service physics is really recognizing that there's too much to do all at once. And really, if we can just distill it down to like a minimum effective dose of knowledge to get people started, then those people get off to the races and now they're on a learning journey that really never ends. Um, but when we talk about lean specifically, we're really talking about the practice of differentiating between activity that creates value, which we define as work and activity that does not create value, which is waste. And so if you think about it as a pie chart, um, you know, it's a big circle that represents some amount of activity, is creating value, and some of, some amount of activity is not creating value. Most business activity. Is super wasteful. and all you need to do is go and see it. And once you go and see it, and you put the right processes in place, where most of what people do is creating value and instead of, creating waste, then we can think about like what, you know, digital technologies or equipment can we bring in to take the processes that already exist and start to remove more friction from them. and so I think it's a really good place where like these two technologies come together.

Jeremy Julian:

And I love that and I, I want you guys to dig into kind of how you guys go about that. But I also would love,'cause I went on my own lean journey a while back and, and especially in restaurants, I'm certain of it, you guys run into this where it's like, but it only takes me 30 seconds, but it only takes me 30 seconds to grab, Even in a Starbucks case, I had a guest on that's building an automated, um, not an automated barista altogether, but a barista that can help with some of the mixes. You know, so many of the drinks are, are mixed drinks, um, and are cold. You know, we talked about some statistics and the amount of math that you have to do. It's like, how do we get it faster for the baristas so the guests can be better? Those types of things. as the, you know, customer's pals have changed, but it's like. You talk to people and it's like, well, it only takes me 30 seconds to go grab the oat milk. that 30 seconds, if you, if you do it 10 times a day, is how many minutes a day that you're now cutting out of, to your point, waste. Um, so talk me through, I guess just in general, at a high level, you guys are at a place where. You guys are trying to find those areas of opportunity to accelerate. So I guess let's, let's start with you, Steve. You know, where are those areas when you guys go in and look with brands? And funny enough, as I look through the brands that you guys have worked with, 1, 2, 3. Four, five of'em have been on the show at some point. Of the brands that you guys have, that you guys have worked with, at least that your guys' pr company sent over. Um, so I guess how, where do you guys start as you guys are evaluating brands that you might work with to, to figure out where the lowest hanging fruit is?'cause oftentimes that momentum, I know will, will accelerate things.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

So you're not gonna love this answer, but it depends. we'll start wherever we can, uh, because for us it's, you know, very important to build the relationship, but the work can't begin until first we understand what the businesses aspirations are, what are they, what value are they trying to bring into the world? And that can happen before we ever step, step, foot in an operation. Uh, but the very next thing we do is go and see. Um, so we use that, that phrase go and see quite a bit. There's no substitute for being in the, the presence of what we call the three reels. Uh, real people, real place, doing real work. You can add some more reels, dealing with real inventory and real customers and real, all the things that get real when you get into the operation. Uh, and we have a standard, Sort of like baseline of data that we like to collect that really is trying to match inflows and outflows and find bottlenecks, uh, within the operation. So it could be things like, uh, what is the, the utilization level on each piece of equipment. Um, what we hear often, uh, I'd say more than 80% of the time is operators asking for higher capacity, larger, more efficient equipment. but then when we go and collect the data, uh, we've yet to find one restaurant across, you know, tens of thousands of restaurants of data, that we've collected that is using their equipment more than 50% of the time during peak periods. and so you, you start saying like, we need another double fryer, so we're gonna have to like, extend the hood and move this refrigerator down, install new electrical. And it's like, but yeah. The two double fryers that are here use less than half the time. So there's something else going on. Uh, the next thing we'll do is, is look at how people are spending their time. Are they actively working on something? Are they idle, not working on anything? They're ready to do work. Are they walking between two points? Are they completing some tasks that could be done later in the day? And then we try to get a match between, the equipment. Utilization and the human utilization. And, you know, the practice of lean helps us put people and equipment together in sort of like a well orchestrated, uh, ballet so that we can keep that equipment running, keep the machines busy so we don't have to make the people busy. And often the people are like busy. Moving around from place to place. Uh, and so motion Kaizen is usually like the first place we go to, to drive improvement because sometimes it's impossible to see the other opportunity that exists when there's a whole bunch of like noise and the motion that's happening on top of that. So, uh, again, understanding what the business aspiration is. Going to the operation to collect some data, understand the current state, and then doing some motion kaizen to calm the noise a little bit. And then we start to think about like, how does this system, perform today versus how could it perform in the future to get to what the business's aspiration for value delivery are in the first place.

Jeremy Julian:

Love that. I'm gonna pivot to you, Brian. so how often do you guys walk in and have a misalignment from what the business says they want? Versus what actually happens when you get into the operation.'cause we see that often, we're gonna go to the moon, but then everybody in there is like, no, no, no, no, no. We wanna go to the beach. Like we're not gonna the moon, we're gonna the beach.'cause that, that's really what we want to do. And, and now you guys are stuck in this consulting place where you've gotta, now only, not only the executives are saying, we need to go here, we need to drive sales, we need to drive customer engagement, whatever that is, we need to reduce waste. But then you get in on the ground floor and all of their. bonuses and all of their metrics and all of those kind of things are very different. Does that happen often? I see both of you guys smiling. For those that are sitting on video, you're like, yes, can you go in and talk to some of my customers?'cause we need some more of that. So I'd love to, I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Yeah, I mean unfortunately it does happen more often than we'd like. but another piece of the lean approach is, systems thinking. Uh, and so the reason I bring that up is, you know, we've, Stumbled into, or, you know, just sort of, developed an evolved our sales process that we can kind of weed out some of that misalignment ahead of time. So we really try not to, you know, start an engagement without a really clear alignment to, that scope and, and to your point, like, are we gonna the beach or are we gonna the moon? We try to align that before we sign on the dotted line, together. And, I think for better or worse, oftentimes that has. Uh, killed, uh, opportunities for, for us as a business. But, uh, to your point, there's no, uh, and, and maybe like a another, uh, lean saying would be there's no, nothing so wasteful as improving that, which should not be done in the first place. So if we're trying to improve a system that's designed to go to the moon, but management wants to go to the beach, that's just all waste and all, all, Time spent, not rowing in the right direction. So we really try to avoid that, as much as possible. but in the occasions when, you know, we are potentially misaligned, we always, go to the data. Uh, and so it really depends on, as Steve was saying, kind of what the situation is. but I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we have an app, uh, on the app store that allows, uh, operators to go into their operation and collect this data, the same data that we would use. To go and understand, you know, um, not just like the typical metrics of sales or throughput or, you know, average order value and, and some of these other things. But, you know, what are those leading indicators? what's happening in the operation and how can we quantify that and show that this, upstream process, area is actually what's driving or limiting your ability to sell more, uh, to, to your customers or driving those really high wait times or, you know, those kinds of issues. So, uh, we really try to let the data do the talking. And in fact, you know, we'll go into an operation and meet an operator for the first time and they'll say, well, what do you think? And we say, well, we don't have any data. And so we'd prefer to wait until we have the data to, to draw any conclusions because. You know, opinions are, are just that. And so much of, and you know, we say we do consulting wrong. So much of, uh, restaurant consulting is folks leveraging their, you know, experience and just giving their opinion. Uh, and we really lead with data and try to let the data do the, the convincing, uh, that maybe the moon is, is the right place to go instead of this beach. And, uh, so we'll, we'll take that approach, uh, when, whenever there seems to be a misalignment, just like what does the data say and how can we, how can we look at reality? Uh, versus, um, a made up fiction of reality. Can I add a a little bit to that before the next question? So, um, Brian mentioned earlier that lean is really a, a mindset, it's a way of thinking. and. One of, you know, Brian and I both worked in Fortune 500 companies for more than a decade. Uh, and Brian was in with the Department of Defense before that. So not a Fortune 500 company, but also a massive organization. and we know what it's like to try to drive change within an organization. There's a lot of politics, there's a lot of competing priorities. There's competing for budgets. One advantage that we have. is that when people come to us, they've already, completed the most important step of problem solving, which is admitting that you have a problem in the first place. Um, and so we we're already past that when things don't go wrong, and Brian said that we could kind of weed some of this out in the sales process is. When folks come to us because they've been pushed to us by somebody else, or they, they're, too proud to admit that there's something wrong, um, it's usually not going to be a good match. the mindset requires us to really love problems, uh, not try to sweep them under the rug. Like the bigger the problem, the more upside there is in solving it. Uh, and so let's, let's get up under it and find it.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and I think that was where my next line of questioning was going. Uh, Steve was really wrapped around. I'm certain you guys often also find sacred cows within the businesses where the data shows you that you need to kill this menu category. Uh. But the CEO, it's his favorite menu category or some board member, or it's what built the brand or, we talked a, a little bit earlier, you know, cheesecake Factory, for many, many years still had some of their CEO's favorite menu items. Fortunately, as years have gone on, have, but they used to have liver and onions still on the menu. In the nineties, you don't really need liver and onions. I mean, and again, probably there's people out there that are eating liver and onions every day, but like, it's not really, you know, in the, even the nineties, which is a long time ago, but still, it wasn't necessarily something that you would want to have. I'm certain you guys find sacred cows, whether that's menu items, whether that's the way you do business, whether that's the, we're absolutely not gonna go to third party delivery, or we're only gonna pick one third party delivery provider. Help us understand kind of. How, not necessarily how you guys deal with the executives, but what is the mindset shift that, that you guys help people have to come through to recognize that there is a sacred cow that they at least need to evaluate from the data? Because as I'm thinking about our listeners, there's a lot of times they probably know there's a problem out there. They just aren't willing to look in the mirror in a very hard way to say, let me go solve this problem.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

I have like three things I wanna say. I know, that's a good question. Well, one, uh, I'll just kind of tee Steve up with one, one, uh, thing that, I always go to, which is the voice of the customer. So we have, we talked earlier about, you know, lean being all about. creating value for customers. And so I think it's really important to get clear on what that value is. And so we've developed a practice around, uh, it's a consumer insights practice, but allows us to get really clear on what value is, what are they expecting when they pay, you know, your restaurant for, for the experience, for the product, for the service. And so we can get really clear on what that is. And, uh, we've got a few stories of, you know, when we go and actually talk to customers and ask them to rate. Your restaurant against what you said. The value was, there's always something at the bottom of that ranking, right? And it's like really at the bottom and almost every time that is some sacred cow that the founder or CEO is like clinging onto. And we've actually seen some success in saying like, look. This is what your customers are saying. We quantified it, we talked to them. This is just not important to them right now. Let's move on on these things that we know we're really, nailing in terms of value delivery and we've got some opportunity, you know, to, to deliver more value more consistently. And so let's put this one on the shelf for just a little while, while we go focus on what's gonna really move the needle for the business. Uh, so again, it's just bringing that data back into it, but, I'm amazed how many business owners don't. talk to their customers with any irregularity. Uh, so I, I would always advocate for the invoice of the customer.

Jeremy Julian:

Or even experience the brand as a customer. I, I tell people all the time, go order on DoorDash. Go order on your website. Go walk in without anybody knowing you're the CEO, you know, there's a show on NBC Undercover Boss. They, you know, dress them all up and make them go experience their brand and they're like, this was awful. Why is anybody even come here? It's like, well, why don't you do that? This is your opportunity. So, sorry Steve, I know you said you had some ideas on kind of that, but I, I want. Our listeners to hear that. Oftentimes we get stuck in these ruts and we don't evaluate, is it even really working? And we start to do these things or we, we have menu items or we have ways about going about doing business that really aren't working. And maybe it worked, three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, but it's not anymore. It. And we still do it and it's hurtful to the staff. And I think of even something like curbside, there's certain brands that are still trying to kill it on curbside, and there is no curbside anymore. It's all third party. So sorry, I'll let you, but that's an example of where curbside, 10 years ago was the hottest thing ever. It's no longer nearly. So keeping eight spots out in front of your restaurant for curbside for some brands probably doesn't make sense. So sorry Steve. I'll let you keep going on on those thoughts though, man.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

no need to apologize, and I totally agree with you. And sometimes the things that we do had a, had a purpose at one point in time, and we've created a new story around why we still do it, and sometimes it's still important, yet the story behind why it's important. Has changed. So we worked with a fast casual brand in New York City about four years ago, uh, where the leadership was convinced that the sort of follow your food model in there, the line they had set up was all about, showing, um, variety and availability, as value for the customer and, and our insights. What we found was that. The primary value was that the customer wanted to make sure that the order was accurate, so the things they wanted to end up in their bowl was actually ending up in their bowl. So we were able to kinda like myth bust, like it's still important, but it's not important for the reasons you think it's important. Uh, and another example from a, a cannabis company we worked with years ago where the founder was hell bent on this value, uh, of nostalgia. Uh, being part of the customer journey, we needed to bake it into the operation through work routines and standardization. and it was the lowest ranked, value out of all the things. And so the leadership team who was struggling to get the founder over that hump was able to like point to the data. We were outta the conversation at that point. We just provided the opportunity for them to shift things in the right direction. so I think to echo what you said, it's super important to get that. Experience from the customer's point of view of like how they're experiencing the brand. Equally important is experiencing how the worker is experiencing this. Uh, and so a recent, this is a, a, a digital technology or equipment technology. That is new and we're using quite a bit is the meta RayBan glasses. And so you can put these glasses with clear lenses on anybody working in the kitchen and record three minutes of video. And it is remarkable of getting empathy from leadership to understand what people are going through. Because you see how many times they're looking at a KDS screen, how many times they have to move something down the line because something's in their way. How many times they have to depart their station to replenish something or get something that should, that's in the wrong spot. And just in those three minutes, you've opened up the, you know, the leader's mind to all of the opportunity that exists. And then you put that alongside some, alongside some quantitative data and then an opportunity for like what the ROI of solving that problem is. And it's, it's super, super effective.

Jeremy Julian:

it's funny that you say that'cause that was where my next line of questioning was, is how do you also make the staff understand this? But again, all too often I think the staff has a lot of the answers to some of the problems that you might have out there. But for some reason their voice isn't heard. You guys talk about, Brian, you talked about, you know, the voice of the customer, ensuring that the customer's heard, but how do we also create a culture where the staff oftentimes has good ideas that they can solve these things? And I know certain brands, it's, it's culturally embedded in who they are and what they do. Where, you know, the, the, the, the, cream rises to the top and these, these people continue to work their way up and, and they listen to them and they make changes. And then there's other brands that are like, no, we know better. We've been doing this for 30 years, shut up and just do your job. And I don't really care. I love that idea of the RayBan, suggestion because that is a real life, tangible way to live in their shoes, but not screw up a Friday night shift trying to run the pizza station.'cause you don't know how to make a pizza'cause it's been 30 years since you've been on the line. So are there any other examples of how you've seen people do it effectively? To take the data that you have at the staff level and bubble it up to the top?

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

One thing I I'll, I just wanna hit on this point of like helping the worker solve problems. So, I like, I believe in empowerment and I believe that people do have a lot of good ideas, but I do not believe that as humans, we are born problem solvers. And so I do. believe that every organization should invest in problem solving acumen in their team from day one. Um, let's understand what a problem is, how to define it. Understand things like motion does not work. Uh, and in that case, and this is to answer your question, like a good way for, somebody to step outside of the work they're doing and watch what's happening, to start to gen, to understand that there's a problem in the first place. Because if you go to work every day and you're working 40 to 60 hours a week. On your feet. It may not seem like walking back and forth with the refrigerator is a big deal to your earlier point. It's just 30 seconds. It's just five seconds. It's just one second. Um, but if you give them, and this kind of back to like the minimum effective dose of lean, there's a very effective tool with a low barrier to entry we call spaghetti diagram, which is just a piece of paper and a pen. You draw the layout of the area and you put a pen to paper where the operator starts, and then you move that pen along the paper. To where they're going. Um, and you, you end up with something that looks like a plate of spaghetti. It's all their motion. But as an operator, when people do that within 30 seconds, they'll always say like, why is she going over there? and they want to get up and fix it, but you've gotta stop them and say, don't worry about that. Now when we're done with this in another 60 to 90 seconds, we're gonna have at least 10 things that we need to ask. Like, why is that thing over there? Not Why did they go, they went over there to get something. the question is why is it there in the first place? You get enough of those things. There's lots of things that, a lot of problems that can be solved locally, like where things are. Uh, and then there's, you know, the, the larger the organization, then we need to start thinking about what things are actually. pervasive across the enterprise, and we need to solve programmatically. Uh, we talk a lot about if you've ever seen schoolhouse rock, there's a cute cartoon on how a bill becomes a law. Um, we're probably aging out, in terms of being able to use that reference for much longer. Uh, but we like to think about how a problem becomes a program, uh, because we're in businesses. And we're in a particularly like messy business because it's physical retail and service. And so there's hundreds if not thousands of problems everywhere all the time, and we can't solve them all. Um, so we need to start thinking about like, these are your problems to solve and it's okay to solve them. Um, we're gonna teach you how to become better problem solvers so that you do it. But then there are some problems that apply to everybody, and they need to be solved organizationally with a program.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. I, uh, I appreciate that, and I promise you, I'm gonna chew on your, you know, people aren't naturally problem solvers, but I, I'll, I'll respect your opinion. You live in that world. but, uh, the last line of questioning before we kind of talk about how you guys do this and what engagement would look like is really wrapped around, modifying the guest experience. So, back to my barbecue example. I was at a, at a place that, you know, I went to the barbecue. Counter, I ordered my brisket sandwich and, and whatever else. Then I went through the, the line and I, I made my sides and there was a queue to pay, and they added a second cashier, which is really the takeout second cashier. But it, it created a, a, an environment for me. Where I was like, okay, do I stand in queue and I wait one more? Do I walk 10 feet across the way and it's this weird deal? And I had, I was there for business, so I had a couple other people with me and were they gonna follow me? Were they not gonna follow me? But I even, even going back to former employers of your guys', I've sat at Starbucks, I was sitting at my daughter's softball game the other day or practice and I was sitting working at a Starbucks for a couple of hours while she was at practice. And it's this very def different guest experience than it was 10 years ago at Starbucks because of the way they do those things. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys go in and go, this is really hard because in Starbucks, not all of'em look the same. Not all of the Davis's hot chicken look the same, not, you know, not every drive-through lane looks the same way. How do you guys, deal with that side of things? Not every kitchen, again, we talked about Cheesecake Factory earlier. Every kitchen in their brand. They've got 12 different prototypes across their 300 stores, and every one of them is a little bit different. Plus the menu mix is a little bit different. In the Beverly Hills store, they sell more salads than they do in Woodland Hills, and so they need a high, a bigger pantry and they need a less, so help me understand how you guys even consider those things, because there's both the guest side and then really what works at one doesn't always work in all of them. the problem solving mindset, to your point, Steve is great, but how do you guys, I guess, normalize that, for both the guests and for the team members on the other side?

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Man, just to, uh, really reinforce what you're saying there. it. It, uh, never fails to surprise me or, or just be amazing, in an industry that is known for hospitality, for warmth, for empathy, how terrible sometimes the guest experience is because it just feels like, it's like nobody's paying attention to, you know, that, like I love what you said. You should go in and, and experience your concept as a guest because,

Jeremy Julian:

decided to put that cashier right there, like that was the dumbest spot in the world to put that cashier. I'm like, who's designing these things? Sorry. But I literally thought to myself, I'm like, this is the dumbest thing. As I had lunch today, ahead of our call today. So, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off,

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

And, uh, I just think it's, it's so emblematic of where the industry's at. And actually part of our, our mission is to really transform the industry, to make the service work better for people. but that really is how do we make that work that the team is doing, serve a guest experience. But now we have to think, okay, well, what. Is that guest experience. And I think, again, when, when you talk to a founder or a restaurateur, a lot of times you get this sort of like, what we call, uh, fiction, right? We've got this idea in our heads about what we want the guest experience to be. And it's, honestly, it's not very. it's not very granular, it's not very tactical, right? It's like we want people to, uh, be overwhelmed with a sense of awe in the, you know, in the variety of, you know, and you're like, okay, hold on, but where am I paying? And so I think it's just like, how do we take this down? And, I think the other thing that happens is. You get a little measure of success, uh, and you start to expand and all of a sudden you start solving your problem, not the guest's problem. Right. And we call that operations for operations' sake. And this is back to solving the, the problem solving thing. Like, are we solving the right problem in the way that's still gonna create the value for the guest? Uh, so, um, you know, I, I just think there's no, there's no substitute for standing and watching. whether it's watching your operation, how did, how are those pizzas getting produced or actually watching your guest experience so that, that, uh, customer who's ordered from their phone, are they walking in and knowing exactly where to go and how to get their order? Or are they having to like, take a beat, look around, see if there's a sign, decide if maybe they want to ask somebody. Do I just wait? Maybe somebody's gonna call my name. Like, those, guest experiences are terrible. Uh, and just to like, you know, uh, this is not a, Small problem. Even at Starbucks, I used to, rib the story design folks. Uh, every time they would show the design for a new concept or a new store, there was never a person in the picture. It was always a, this beautiful, like, you know, there's this wood paneling and this marble tile and all, but not a single person, not an operator, not a guest. So I just think there's an opportunity in the industry to be more human centric in, in thinking about not just the work that you're asking your operators to do, but also like really being intentional about the guest experience at a very. Granular and tactical level. so there's some, uh, tools. Your, your listeners can, you know, uh, research a little bit. Uh, journey mapping does, empathy mapping. Uh, these are all ways to put yourself in the shoes of your guest and say, what is that experience that I want to create for them? And then tactically. How many point of sale do I need? What are the different roles? How am how is the guest engaging? Is it a sign, is it a person? Is it a, a, a mark on the, on the, um, on the floor? and that journey starts as soon as you, uh, have the, the restaurant insight, right? And all the way through, I've received my, my order, and I now I'm gonna enjoy it, whether that's here at home. So, uh, I just really, uh, would advocate folks go and, and observe their guest experienced, especially if you're gonna make a change to it.

Jeremy Julian:

and I, I, I'll add one piece to that'cause it often comes up, oh, I want handhelds for tableside ordering. You know, in our point of sale world, it's like, does your kitchen have any more capacity to produce more food? Or are you just moving the problem from here to there? Um, I tell a very true story of a brand that I used to go to on a weekly basis, and then they really screwed it up with COD, where they didn't do a good job of managing digital orders with in-person orders. And the digital orders were flying out the door, but the in-person orders were awful. And so as a guest, I was like, this sucks. I'm waiting for 45 minutes for fast casual food. That's not gonna happen. I'm done. I'm done coming. And it was the third time that I'd done that because all of those orders would, would jump to the front of the line and they hadn't done a good job with it. And I think all too often we don't think about those things. And so, Steve, walk us through what it would look like for people. You know, we're at a place where we've talked a lot about the problems that you guys solve. I know we could talk for days about the hundreds and thousands of hours that you guys have spent out in stores, out working both in your guys' career before service physics, and then since you guys started the company. But what does it look like to engage with a brand? What does their, their engagement look like to once they know that there's a problem? Back to what you said earlier, how do they engage and what, where does that first step in the journey go?

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

So again, I think meeting with the leadership team to try to draw out of them why we're doing this in the first place. We often talk about, something we call the story of work, and so every story ever told has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Uh, our work story begins with the question of why we get outta bed in the morning. Like, why have we chosen to give our time, which is like the most, precious resource we have. In fact, no matter how wealthy we ever get, we can't buy our time back. It's what's gone is gone. But we get outta bed every day and we go to give this time to a company. It's invaluable. and then that story ends with. What the customer gets, whether your customer is an internal employee within the organization or the customer that's actually like ringing up at the POS and getting, getting food and service. we often gloss over the middle of the story, which is the most interesting part, which is not why we get out of bed and not what the customer gets, but like how that goes down, how the work happens. and so, you know, getting the why is super important. And then we'll go and collect the data and start to understand the what and then more data, really understand how things are happening. Uh, and that's when we, we sort of like bring the team into service physics. And, and Brian mentioned earlier, we do consulting wrong. We don't have a single person on our team of 20 people with consulting background or sales background. It's amazing that we've been able to stay, uh, but we're also not professional, podcasters. So, let us know how we do. but we're good problem solvers, right? So,

Jeremy Julian:

you guys have a passion. I mean, the one thing that, that, that oozes out of both of you guys is this passion to help make things better, to solve problems, and to truly look at where things are at and how can we make incremental changes to make the lives of the staff and the guests better.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

I'd say we, we, um, engaged with Sweet Green a few years ago and before they hired us, the COO asked to interview our existing client base. And so we gave him some names and he came back to me a couple weeks later and I was ready for my feedback. I was actually a little bit nervous. We were still new and getting our feet up under us, and he said. He's like, Steve, here's what I learned. Every client I talked to said the thing they love about working with service physics is that you make their problem, your problem. Right, which is actually not a tenant of lean. Lean tends to be like, you're gonna own your problem and then your coach is gonna like, help pull you through that problem. Uh, one of the things we've learned is like, yes, that is important. Building capability is really important, but you know what, this is a competitive environment and life is short and is when things are just like actually pretty clear. And if someone just had a different point of view, there is a best way to do this, then we should help them. because not everybody has enough time to go on that journey. Uh, we love to bring. Uh, team members from the client team onto our team. Like that's a, an ideal engagement where they'll like dedicate a team member to us, you know, halftime or full-time, uh, that way when the project's over that capability resides in the organization and, you know, they don't need to keep hiring us to solve the same problem over and over again, which is not why we started the company in the first place. So, um, hopefully

Jeremy Julian:

am say so you're not one of those consultants that creates work for you to continue to get Bill billing. You know, there's never consultants out there that do that. I'm sure you guys have never signed off on those transactions at the Department of Defense or in some of those other Fortune 500 companies that you guys have worked in. Right.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

One of the things that, you know, we learned, from our coaches at Starbucks, the Toyota folks, is that the technical solution is usually easy compared to changing people. Uh, people are working in this industry, they're in environments that are set up in a certain way. there's, uh, you, you've heard phrases in the industry like, time to lean, time to clean. And it's like, well, what if it was just like time to be ready for the next customer to arrive? Like, that's also important because if we're off cleaning when the customer arrives, then we're gonna create a delay. so.

Jeremy Julian:

be spending time educating ourselves? Could we be time, spend, time getting to know our team members so that we, you know, we're helping? Yeah. I mean, there's so many different opportunities, but yeah, that, that old, old adage of time to lean, time to clean, it's like, no, let's help make the business better. And yes, cleaning has to happen, but we're gonna schedule that. sorry,

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

And so, yeah, so the technical solutions, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're available. They're not, you know, they're not. Complex. Sometimes they're a little bit complicated, but really we're trying to design the work to be simple and repeatable. But if you cross your, if you cross your arms like this one way your whole life, and then somebody asks you to do it differently and then to keep doing that a hundred times a day, it's gonna take a while for that to embed. So the sort of like quote unquote consulting part of it, the technical part is a piece. There's a really important component that takes months after that, especially in large organizations, which is. What materials are we gonna use to create the case for change? How are we gonna cascade this information through leadership to the frontline so that everybody in the organization can walk in and say like, Hey, what's happening right now is expected, or this is unexpected. And then be able to support and coach and to keep the sandcastle from crumbling into the sea because these are service systems, not hardware and software. it's like, it's like human software without any housing in it. Um, and so it's super

Jeremy Julian:

it's cultural change at the end of the day. I mean, culture is really what, who, how do we act here? And you have to change how we act here. If they're making these organizational changes on the way they, they do things and it's gotta be supported from the top all the way down and from the bottom, all the way up, or, or you don't end up getting sustainable change. You guys come in and do an engagement and six months from now you're like, what the hell happened? We, we had them working so well and now they're, they're back to their old ways,

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

Well, it's really funny, uh, because you, you said, you know, the consultant that, uh, figures out how to make more work for themselves as part of their deliverable. I think, again, probably more lucky than, than smart, but to your point, the change and the culture shift takes time. And so while we can, you know, the technical consulting work that we do for these large organizations, we can get done in a matter of months. But then when we talk about, okay, well now let's make sure it implements and delivers on that. Uh, on that business and, and customer value, that is what takes a long time. And so we establish really, uh, long-term in-depth relationships with our clients because we're, we're in the trenches actually helping them to implement and to change, uh, the hearts and the minds of, of operations. But that translates also into the other folks in the, in the headquarters or the sports center as well. Everyone, sort of, gets in the boat and starts rowing and, and we've developed a few, Engaging, activities and workshops, uh, that we do that really helps bring the hearts and minds of, you know, those executives, uh, all the way down to the frontline, dishwashers, et cetera, uh, into this new way of seeing the business. And it is more just about, more than just. Efficiency. It's about how can we make the work better for people? And so, this is a cool opportunity to talk about, uh, a workshop that we're, uh, we're putting on. So we, we've lamented, you know, our mission is to transform the industry. We really want to make work service work better for people. And given that the vast majority of restaurant industry is, uh, you know, independent operators and, you know, single units to, you know, maybe low, low teens, So how can we take these services that we've been offering to these large companies and actually make them accessible and make this practice accessible, for folks? So, uh, we're really hoping to bring those workshops that we've been, selling to these like massive organizations and, and finding a lot of impact in transformation, uh, in, in terms of culture and mindset. How can we make that more accessible for all the operators, in, the, in the country? and so, um, in August we'll be doing, uh, our version of service Physics 1 0 1. It's the original workshop, uh, with, a lot of, uh, builds from what we've learned doing service physics as a company. It's the original workshop that we, built, six plus years ago to do that minimum of effective dose of lean. Uh, so we'd really love to, you know, kind of stay connected so that when that's coming out, uh, folks have the opportunity to, uh, to participate. Uh,'cause we, you know, we really wanna see the industry at large. transform and, and really think about work differently. and so this workshop is our next, problem solving step to see how we can, kind of reach out beyond just these like, you know, deep pocketed large company companies. And it's in Dallas, so you it's in there, you hometown. Yeah.

Jeremy Julian:

we, we better, we better figure out how to, how to make our way there. so where do people find that? Where do people find you guys online? You know, and I know, I know the website, but, uh, I guess why don't you guys read off the website and then what other ways would you say that people should stay connected? So if they can't make the Dallas workshop, but they want stay connected and learn, how should they engage and, here's where you guys do your sales pitch. How do they engage with you guys? How do they sign up? They're a large brand. They got, Billion dollars in sales and they're gonna need to figure it out down to the mom and pops. You know, tell'em how to engage and how to stay connected so they can continue to learn and continue to grow and make, make the world a better place like you.

Brian Reece and Steve Crowley:

At www.servicephysics.com and keep it simple. Uh, we also keep it simple enough that our email addresses are our first name and that domain. So steve@servicephysics.com. brian@servicephysics.com, or, uh, if you don't want to go right to us, contact@servicephysics.com. LinkedIn's a great place to follow us, uh, individually or you can follow the company page, which try to put updates there. and. That's it. We, we we're trying to get, More active on the national circuit as well. We've done National Restaurant Association the last couple years in a row. We love to have the booth there and have, former colleagues, uh, folks who've been talking about doing work with and just anybody else who wants to stop by This year, we did the spaghetti diagrams. We had a giant screen up with a couple of, cooks working in a restaurant and have people, you know, sort of trace their, their motion through the restaurant. It's, you know, within 30 seconds you've kind of got it and you can go back home and do something with that. But yeah, we, we hope to see as many people, uh, as possible and, and, you know, whether it's to engage, uh, and learn more or, you've done some research on your own and you've had a win. Uh, anything you can do to help us understand and contribute to the larger, body of knowledge of, of service physics, uh, would love to hear about it.

Jeremy Julian:

Love it. Well, uh, you know, if, if the service physics thing doesn't work out, you guys did great on your podcast. You know, you're not professional podcasters, but I, uh, I appreciate you guys jumping on. Um, to our listeners, guys, I know you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. Um, hopefully you guys learned something today from the service physics team. If you haven't already subscribed, please do so to the show on your favorite listening platform and make it a great day.

Thanks for listening to The Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.

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