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Unlocking Hidden Revenue in Restaurants: A Conversation with Geoffrey Toffetti of FPG

• Erika Rivas

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In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian welcomes Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group (FPG), to discuss how restaurateurs can unlock hidden revenue, improve staff performance, and elevate guest experience without additional advertising costs. Geoffrey shares insights from his extensive career in hospitality and corporate consulting, detailing FPG's innovative solutions that utilize real-time analytics and AI-powered training. The conversation highlights the importance of systemized training for frontline employees, focusing on maximizing revenue through service-based sales techniques. Listeners will gain valuable knowledge on making meaningful investments in staff to drive up to 10% revenue growth, improve tips, and enhance overall restaurant performance. The episode also covers the practical steps for implementing and measuring success in these initiatives.

00:00 Frontline Performance Group

01:26 Introduction and Welcome

01:59 Guest Introduction: Geoffrey Toffetti

02:08 Geoffrey Toffetti's Career Journey

03:18 Current Role at Frontline Performance Group

03:47 Focus on Hospitality and Restaurant Industry

05:21 Identifying and Solving Industry Problems

10:44 Service-Based Sales Philosophy

14:29 Training and Technology Integration

20:27 Measuring Success and Analytics

24:56 Engaging Different Demographics

27:46 Results and Success Stories

29:34 How to Engage with Frontline Performance Group

32:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts



Speaker:

This is the Restaurant Technology Guides podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. In today's episode is a great one for anybody in the hospitality or restaurant industry. If you've ever wondered how to unlock hidden revenue, increase staff performance, or elevate guest experience without spending a dime on advertising, then this is a great conversation for you. I'm joined by Geoffrey Toffetti, the CEO of Frontline performance group. He has spent decades really launching, a product on how to help frontline teams turn service into extraordinary results. They've got real-time analytics, AI powered training and restaurants that are seeing. Upwards of 10% revenue growth bus just by investing in their staff and helping them to run a better restaurant. Whether you're a single location or a national chain, this episode is gonna help you make your business better, make your bartenders better, and your servers better, and truly drive next level performance just by investing in your staff. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer for CBS North Star. We sell the North Star point of sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out. CBS northstar.com and now onto the episode.

Jeremy Julian:

Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us, like I like to say each and every time. Thank you guys for joining'cause uh, I know you guys got lots of choices. Today I am very intrigued about where this conversation's gonna go, but Joffrey, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit and then we can talk a little bit about what the business does because I, I know you and I wrapped for just the last 10 minutes or so before I hit the record button. And I am so excited because I think way more people than realize need to be hearing your guys' message and what you guys are doing. So why don't you introduce yourself and then we can talk a little bit about what you get to do

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Sure. Uh, my name's Geoffrey Toffetti. I live in Orlando, Florida with my family. married with two, one adult son and one almost adult son. and, uh, grew up in St. Pete, Florida. Born in New York, but lived in St. Pete most of my life and actually started my career in hospitality. Worked for a big beach resort, called the Trade Winds in St. Pete Beach, and worked my way up from valet through the front of the house to director of guest services before leaving the industry. In 2000 to move to Orlando to join a, um, a.com startup at the time, not the, not FPG, company called Zero Chaos. Um, yeah, so I've had a interesting in and out of hospitality career, um, but it kind of set up, set me up to do what we're doing because I had corporate, classic corporate work experience supporting the Fortune 500 and then also on the ground. Frontline experience. So it, it kind of came together, uh, in my current role.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that. and I love, really quite frankly the convergence of kind of hospitality. When you talk about hospitality, that being kind of hotel and lodging and how so many of those skills transfer over to the restaurant industry and what the majority of the people are, that, that are listeners are a majority, kind of food service. They may be attached to a hotel, those kind of things. So talk to me a little bit about your current role. What have you been up to lately?

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, so I'm, I'm currently CEO of Frontline Performance Group. I joined the company 14 years ago, but the company is third, it's 33rd year. Uh, and it, FPG has always worked with frontline employees. Not always in hospitality or in restaurant, but always where the hourly frontline employee is interacting with the guest or customer. And there's an opportunity to enhance the experience and charge more money. So any call centers, reservation centers, car rental, theme parks. We've worked in a, a lot of industries, but right now we are primarily focused on hospitality and restaurant and bar. a lot of restaurant and bar in hospitality.'cause we have so many hotel customers. We work with about, uh, 2,700 hotels worldwide and, and growing every month. and we support all of those hotels at their front desk and maybe a few other, a smattering of other touch points. Um, but now we're, we're hyperfocused on restaurant. We've been studying it for years. Uh, we've been working on our technology for about a year and a half to enable what we do in a restaurant environment. Uh, and I'm really excited for this conversation'cause the, the topic of this podcast is perfect for where we're going and what we're attempting to do. Um, and, but so far we're having great success and there's a lot of enthusiasm from our customer base on this because of what we were talking about before we were recording is there just seems to be a complete lack of, solutions targeting the performance of the, of the servers and bartenders in, in food services. Uh, it seems that everything is focused on everything else and leaving that kind of. Just hanging out there. And that's the only thing we do. So it, it's a perfect gap in a huge market for us to step into, uh, and help restaurateurs and, and restaurant companies address that potential because there is a, there's a vast amount of revenue untapped in your existing customers and with your existing staff. Uh, and I would love to dig deep on that while we're talking today.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. No, absolutely. and I'd love for you to share a little bit about where you see, obviously you guys see this as a huge market, huge opportunity, but talk me through even what it is that you guys focus on, because it's the largest part of the workforce, but often the least invested in, and again, you and I were talking about this prior to hit and record, but it's like they didn't, they don't invest high turnover. You know it, it's this, oh, go follow this person on a shift for an hour and now you got your own shift. We know that doesn't work. It's not effective, but it is a lot of times how restaurants and, hospitality works. And so I'd love for you to talk through what do you see as the problem prior to walking through where you guys are at solution wise and how you guys are going about it.

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, I, I think that was a great introduction to the problem that you just described. So the problem that we see is. There's no systemized training for revenue generation. There's no sales process that they're trained to. Um, you know, if you go to a work at a car dealership, they're gonna put you through a rigorous training program to understand how to sell their cars. Uh, they don't leave it open for chance that you're gonna know what to do. They teach you. And that isn't happening in that we've observed in food and beverage. It's exactly what you'd say. You hire someone, they tail someone for a day or two, and then they release them into the wild and hope that they do well. Uh, and then they don't really measure how they're doing. They might measure it sporadically, but unless something significant happens, they're probably not gonna call attention to someone. you show up to work on time and you're pleasant enough, you're probably safe. Uh, and that's not how we view it. We view each person is basically a, a profit center, and should be nurtured as such. Uh, and we, because we, when we analyze data, we're looking for things like, what is the differential between the top 20 and the bottom half? How big a gap is there on your key metrics between those people? Because that gap can be closed through training, through incentivization, through recognition programs, through accountability. And so that's, that's the approach we take is we, we say we're going into restaurants now and we're looking and we're seeing a 30% differential between the top 20% and the bottom half. That is a tremendous amount of untapped revenue potential. When you're operating on a sub 10% net margin or sub 20% net margin that could double your, your profit, and it's there. It's the same customers, it's the same kitchen, it's the same staff. It's just a different skillset being infused into the team that allows that bottom 50% to perform where your top 20% is performing Now. And the top 20% will get better because you're gonna be investing in them too. Um, so that's what we're

Jeremy Julian:

Besides the fact that there's a competitive factor, a lot of times'cause you got the bottom pushing them up and so they'll be like, no, I'm not gonna let you catch me. I'm gonna go do this. I've seen it myself. When you invest in the team, you see that same thing. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just, I think it's important to realize that your top performers will continue to excel and even, exceed expectations and, those bottom, as those bottom performers start to

Geoffrey Toffetti:

That's correct. And, and we believe very firmly in leaderboards. That's a big part of accountability. And when you have a a, a shift by shift leaderboard, uh, across a, a variety of key metrics, that's exactly what happens. And, and to be fair. when we go into these, these establishments, the people that are in the middle or the bottom half, they don't know they're in the bottom half because no one's ever told them that they're in the bottom half. and it gets particularly interesting when you put a leaderboard of average tip percentage, which is something we're bringing too, is because that's the service component of things. And people are shocked when they see they're, they're averaging 18 point half or 19%. They feel good about themselves and they don't know their peers are getting 22%. And that's money in their pocket. So there's a lot of what's in it for me, for them to get engaged in the training and when they realize that they can make more money. this is what's interesting. If you train servers, they make more money. So there's like an, it's not just training for training's sake, it's, we want to help you increase your income and increase the profitability of the outlook.

Jeremy Julian:

and it's funny you say that'cause I was, I was just at the show in Orlando last week, FS Tech where when we're recording this and somebody from stage said, when we look at Technolo technology and investment, is it making the guest experience better? Is it making the staff experience better? And is it helping the restaurant to grow their revenue? And to your point, better tips for the staff member. Better guest experience and ultimately higher check averages, which means the restaurant is going to, end up being a better off and making more profit. And Joffrey talk, talk me through a little bit just'cause e everybody gets a little concerned about, we're just gonna keep driving towards higher tips and, inherently, servers are gonna. Or maybe not delivering that same level. And so I'd love to talk through some of the things that you guys think about on the downside of this.'cause just driving the guest check average up doesn't necessarily always create better guest experience. Doesn't, you know, and I'll, I'll share real quick a story that I, I watched on on LinkedIn last week that said be really careful not to throw a$10 dessert to lock a table for another hour. Split between two people because that might not necessarily be, you'd rather them go to the ice cream shop and reseat that table. If that table could have gotten up at seven 15 or seven 30 and I reset it and now I got a full entree and, and so you get a little bit of that juxtaposition. So I'd love for you to talk through kind of some of the downsides and some of the things you guys have to think about when you guys are looking for a balanced scorecard for the staff

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, I, first of all, our sales program, our sales philosophy, we call service based sales. Everything we teach, everything that we promote is to do it through service. So in order to do that, you have to be having the right kind of conversation with your customer. You have to be asking them questions. You have to be listening to what they're saying. They're giving you clues all the time. And then you, you leverage that into. More of a, a higher revenue transaction or more add-ons or more drink replenishments or whatever it is that's gonna drive the check. And your point is exactly right. If you're, someone's been sitting there for an hour and a half, you don't wanna sell'em a dessert necessarily. If, if there's people waiting, um, that's a perfectly valid point. But there's a lot more you could have sold at the beginning of the transaction. Um, you could have locked'em into appetizers, you could have locked them into modifiers. Uh, we love auto replenishment. We love asking guests, you know, if we're busy today, would you mind if I automatically replenish your drinks when I bring your entrees? You can almost guarantee another round that can be 20, 30% on your check. but yeah, so you, you, we don't want to, we, first of all, you never want to push anything. You never want to be salesy or cheesy or, or any of that. You want to have a, a legitimate dialogue with people, but you wanna be assertive and confident in your recommendation. There's nothing more irksome to me when I ask a waiter for their opinion and they gimme eight things. You know, give me the one thing, the two things, or ask me a qualifying question. Do you prefer steak or chicken? You know, it's simple stuff that just isn't.

Jeremy Julian:

Or my favorite is I don't even eat here. So I don't know. Like I've had that

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah. I've never tasted that

Jeremy Julian:

all know how awful that experience is.

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, exactly. there's a lot of, when you start studying a problem, you start realizing there's a lot of little things that can be corrected very easily to improve the guest experience. And, but like what you said, people are saying, does it improve the guest experience? Does it improve the dining? Is how do you improve the guest experience? Often is there's stuff you just avoid doing. don't disappear in the middle of the meal for 20 minutes because you're like, I finally delivered their entrees. I can go in the back and hang out. Um, you know, make sure that you bring the condiments that you, they request. There's like those things, but, but what we're finding is just the awareness that there is a performance gap. And the realization of the servers that if I increase my average revenue per guest and I deliver better service, I'm gonna get a double plus, I'm gonna get more revenue and a higher tip average, which is going to, it compounds the income effect of being a higher performer. and yeah, so it's not, it's not sell everything all the time. It's sell the most that will maximize the experience of the guest and maximize the revenue.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, so talk me through how you guys do that, because I think, again, I've talked about it on the show before. My wife and I went out for an anniversary earlier this summer. We went to a high-end restaurant, had one of the most amazing service experience carbon in Dallas, recommended to anybody that's here. If you've been to the one in New York, it's also amazing, but it was, it was over the top and, and the guy ended up getting us the, 45 day age Wagyu because he was just so good at, you know, it was one of those experiences where I was like, wow, I don't know that the service could have been any better. But you could tell that he knew exactly what he's doing. They had invested in it, even the front desk, they had invested in greeting us when we walked in. And so you could tell that, that, however, Mario and, and his leadership team had put those things together. The manager stopped by before the end of the meal and dropped a business card and said, if you ever back on the side of town, make sure you, reach out to me. So they went way over the top and, and when you have an experience like that. You want to go back to that, talk me through kind of even the sequence of service. When you guys go into a brand, do you guys start all the way at the person coming into the front desk and you, you know, you train there, like, walk me through that before we kind of get into the tech that you guys are starting to do. You know, really that that's helping with

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, part, I have to mention the tech a little.'cause we have, we deliver our training digitally. So we have a, our own learning management system that's proprietary to us and it has all of our own proprietary content. And that content does span from general service like please and thank you. ladies and gentlemen training, I mean we've worked with the num, the top luxury hotels in the world, so we are very good at service standards and we don't think there should be a difference between. You know, that restaurant and your neighborhood restaurant when it comes to engaging with you. I mean, it's just humans and humans, right? But it is a training problem. There's not, they're just not aware of it. So when we go into a, a, into an establishment, there is some fundamental training that is provided, human, virtually instructed led, like a, like a webinar. Uh, and then it leads into the coursework that, that is very small, you know, less than two minutes per segment. Highly specific skill specific. Uh, and, and very tactical. We like to say it, it's taking common sense and making it commonplace. We're not reinventing the wheel. It's just a matter of systemizing it so that every single person in the outlet goes through the same training. They sign up for the same standard, and then measuring it, uh, and showing it to them and showing them, okay, you are not meeting whatever standard we have. Uh, you are still def have deficits, and here's training to help you close those deficits. Um, you know, it's never punitive, but it's, you, we baseline everyone's performance pretty quickly'cause that that's what the analytics does and then it tells us exactly where their issues are. It's not just general, like your check average is too low, it's your check average is too low because your, your drink replenishment rate is too low. Or you are never adding or modifying the dish, you're never selling an add-on. It gets very, very specific. Uh, or you're only selling low margin add-ons and never selling high margin add-ons. So it's highly scientific, but that's the approach is recognize everyone has some foundational amount of training that needs to occur. The baseline of training and then the training that continues from there is based on their individual performance. Was.

Jeremy Julian:

Well, and, and I guess, how customized do you guys get, you know, you, you use ladies and gentlemen, for anybody that's ever stated Ritz Carlton, you know, or read any of um, uh, Schultz. You know, I, I've read his book. It's amazing. You know, he talks about ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. So I'm assuming that's kind of from that hospitality industry where that phrase came from. But that is something specific. Everybody's heard, it's my pleasure at a Chick-fil-A, you know, it's kind of their signature when they, when they, they deliver something. And so I'd love. I'd love to kinda, understand exactly where, across the board, how customized, because yes, looking somebody in the eye, getting down at table level, a lot of these things, making sure that you take notes on what condiments they wanted and bringing, those are just generic across the board type things that have to happen. And then there's certain things that make it specific to that brand. Do you guys go to that level or is it just the high level in the analytics?

Geoffrey Toffetti:

no, the, the training, it can go as deep as they want. So the fundamental training is, is more, don't use bad language. Stand up straight, look people in the eye, you know, use their name. If they give it to you, use your name. You know, all the fundamentals. Uh, and then when it gets into specifics, the sales approach on an appetizer is a little different than an add-on.'cause the timing during the meal service is different. Do you take the drink order before the appetizer? Yes. You know, we advocate for, we have a, a process that is, is included because one thing in a sales environment, if you don't have a defined process, then you're kind of just throwing spaghetti against the wall. Um, you know, so you have to have steps and then the training is rooted into those steps. So we have something we call the five course framework, which is basically just the, the structure of how sales should occur. And it doesn't matter if it's fine dining steakhouse or your local, you know, Mexican joint. This process works every time. It's, and it takes them through the, the cadence of the, of the experience. What we don't get into, we don't get into like menu design and we don't get into aesthetics, and we're not experts at that. We're experts at the table or across the bar. so the training gets very, very detailed if you go beyond that surface level. So if the manager, for instance, notices that someone, or the analytics is highlighting that someone, is not selling something, you know, they're never selling the top steak or they're never selling the, the more expensive wine. There's training in there for that, and it actually will provide them example dialogue. So our, the people that we put on video are actual experts. They're are homegrown experts. They're not actors. so they do a lot of training videos where they'll demonstrate exactly how you position, you know, whatever it is you're positioning. Uh, they will give'em examples of dialogues they can use, um, to make it very, very service focused. and yeah, so it, it gets very specific.

Jeremy Julian:

I love that you guys get to that level. you talked a bunch about how you guys then measure, which I think is the second side of it. So we've given them the tools we have provided them the training, but now in leadership, it doesn't matter. If you don't measure it, you know what, what gets managed gets, you know, and measured are the things that the staff will perform. And so help me understand how you guys go to that level, because to your point earlier, and I, I alluded to it, selling a dessert when you're on a, you know, two hour wait and you're gonna split a$20 item, you probably don't want, you know, you give'em 20 bucks to go to go get some ice cream

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, give them the dessert so they can leave. Give it to go

Jeremy Julian:

Hey, about you take that dessert to go so that I can reseat the table and obviously we're chuckling'cause we're in this industry, but we, we've seen it, we've seen that happen and we've seen them not get that extra table turn because they didn't train the staff to do that. And it hurt. On the flip side, we've seen it done well and, and it, and it, the experience is great. And so talk me through the data elements and how you guys balance that. Because guest experience, profitability and selling the high end steak or the high end wine. All are, part of the

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, the analytics is the thing I think that I find most exciting about food and beverage because in, in the front desk work we do, there's a limited data set. It's really not very complex in f and b. There it's a very data rich environment. It's almost so rich that no one uses it because it can overwhelm someone to try to get to that answer that you just asked about. So what we're doing is we're we are taking this highly complex data set. And we are normalizing it down to a simple set of metrics and then we are engaging ai. I know it's a big buzzword, but we are engaging AI to, to interpret the data in real time. So the thing like, we're not a BI platform where we're gonna have fancy reports, we're gonna give'em to a manager and we're gonna hope the manager knows what to do with it. To affect change, we are actually giving the manager natural language guidance on what to do with. It. We're actually telling them what the data is saying. We're not showing them data. I mean, they can download it if they want, but it's more like never seat J with more than six people because his revenue per guest drops 15% when he gets to his sixth or seventh person. That kind of stuff, that highly specific, personalized stuff is what we're actually feeding. That's the intelligence we're feeding back. So when we're looking at the data. Essentially what we're doing is we're taking the top performers in a given meal shift in a given outlet, and we are benchmarking the construct of their checks. So whatever they sold, you know, in it could be one day or it could be an entire month, whatever they sold is going to be, become the benchmark across a few different categories. So things like your appetizer, adult beverage, you know, uh, add-ons, desserts. We're gonna benchmark the profile of their check. Then we're going to, the AI is gonna take that and it's gonna go into everyone else's checks and it's going to identify the greatest revenue opportunities for that person at that time. And then it's gonna structure a personalized improvement plan, which can include specific data or specific videos. They should watch that address specific issues. It's gonna give the manager some dialogues they can use to engage the person. And it's also gonna recommend pairings. We we're a big believer in, in. In the restaurant industry, that peer-to-peer learning is critical because it's a high-paced environment. So if someone is really good at selling wine and you take someone who's not good at selling wine and you tell them, we're pairing you so you can improve your wine sales, then they're just listening to each other. It's a natural environment they're gonna, they learn actually very quickly that way, and you can see that, see it in the data. Then the key is whatever you've recommended or prescribed to help remeasure it. So we don't just say, this is what happens with a lot of training. We've been a training company for decades. You go and do training. You never know if they did it or not. It's hard to figure out if it actually happens. So we have AI agents that are watching that. So when someone has recommended a specific thing, it goes back and monitors that thing for that person. If they, if it sees improvement, it recognizes it. If it doesn't, then it, it, it gives more remedial guidance. and if it, if it normalizes and say, okay, that ratio has corrected itself, what is the next thing that this person could be working on? Uh, and that includes the tip averages too, because if we see low tip average and low revenue, you've got a lot of problems in there. But if you have a high tip, average and low revenue, you're probably too nice or you're discounting things and you shouldn't be discounting. It also monitors discounting and, and giveaways. So it's a very, very data rich, but instead of trying to put it on charts and graphs, we do some of that. There are charts and graphs, but we're, the AI has taken it to a point where it can now give direct feedback to the manager in very easy to digest, you know, guidance that they can take action on in a matter of minutes.

Jeremy Julian:

yeah, no, and I think that, we got through 20 minutes of the show before we talked about ai. that might be a record in 2025, but I'm good. it's amazing how often it comes up and I'm teasing about it, but it's true because it does allow you the ability to ask things in ways that is natural language. I'm gonna pivot just a little bit. We know that, and again, I just was at this conference, we've talked a lot about frontline workers being in this younger demographic and wanting and needing different things. I'd love to hear how, you know, uh, you talked about it earlier in kind of the two minute video being a, pretty critical piece of, of what you're doing. I've got a nine yearold, or a soon to be 10-year-old daughter at home, TikTok and all of that. they've gotta, that's how they consume this information. I guess, how do you balance that with the seasoned server who's been there for 25 years, who is, you know, in their forties or fifties, to make sure that you're hitting both demographics and that you're able to deliver what they need to be able to make them better so the guests can be

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, it's, it's a challenge. we find the hardest people to train are the people who have been doing it the longest, often. Now, the counterpoint to that is if they're a top performer, they're always looking to. Improve. it's fascinating. You can have someone who's been doing it for 30 years and they're a top performer and you say, have you ever thought about this? And they're all ears because they're already intrinsically motivated to, to perform. but the content, it, that's why we have this phrase, common sense to commonplace is we remind them that you probably already know a lot of this. Um, you've probably done it in the past, but we're putting it into a process framework so that you do it every time. So that it's top of mind every transaction. It's not just occasionally when you feel like doing it. Uh, and the, the training videos are sometimes fairly irreverent. They're a little cheeky, maybe a little cheesy. They make

Jeremy Julian:

Good. I think you

Geoffrey Toffetti:

not launching, you know, yeah. We're not launching rockets. We're, we're selling food and drinks. so yeah, it's enga, it's highly engaging and it's highly relevant. We're not asking'em to watch stuff that doesn't pertain to their performance. and chances are, I mean, we've. We've done focus groups with the early servers that we were working with. And when you shed light on something like, did you know that your average revenue per guest is 30% less than your peers? It gets their attention. They don't know that. It just hasn't been readily available to them to know that they're not. And then once they know that they're, even if they're seasoned, they tend to perk up a little and say, oh, I, I didn't realize that I was not helping. I was actually hurting the business. so it is a challenge, but we've, we've been doing this at front desk too. Like we go into environments where there's people who have been there for 40 years and, and we we're teaching them how to do their job better, and it's just a matter of what's in it for them and make, and, and treating them the way we want them to treat the guests. You know, a core philosophy of mine in our entire business is you can expect your guests to receive exactly the same treatment you give the people you lead. so we, it's always, from a loving place. It's always from the perspective of we want to help you make more money. We want to help you be more successful, and in turn the business succeeds,

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. And I think um, you know, once you get to that w'em where it's gonna ultimately make them make more money, they're all ears. If it's just because somebody's beaten me down to, to say it the way that they want me to say it, and they don't think it's gonna actually, net them anything. But what kind of results can you see? I guess talk me through the success stories, in food and beverage, what does it look like once they've implemented the solution net result? What are the benefits to the end? Consumer as well as to the business and to, the people that are impacted by

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, so we're, we're, we're only in our first few hundred outlets, in, in this. So the story is going to evolve, but what we're seeing is north of 8% revenue per guest improvement across all of the outlets, that 8%, and it can double. We didn't realize this. We did an analysis of publicly traded, uh, full service restaurant companies. Uh, and, and 8% is like, it could be an 80% increase to ebitda. in front desk you increase 8%. On the bottom line, it's like 2% because the, the rest of the revenue in the hotel is so big. so yeah, we're, we're seeing that level of improvement because what we're seeing is the, and that's only a third of what the potential is in most restaurants because of that differential gap that I was describing to you. So north of 8%, we're hoping we can push it to 20%. Once, once we mature the model. Um, and the AI gets a little bit more intelligent, and we can better, even better pinpoint exactly what are the dynamics that are causing people to not be able to sell as much. but even just with the amount of knowledge we have now in the training we have now, we're seeing high single digit improvement revenue per guest, which we, we now realize is huge. Um, you know, 3% probably would've been impressive, um, but. But we're not happy. We want to see it in the double digits. Uh, and, and we think that it's definitely doable because the X factor is your top performers improving, which we talked about before. It's not only your bottom performer. I mean, everyone's getting trained, everyone's getting incentivized, everyone's getting recognized. And the people at the top of the leaderboard, they're intrinsically motivated already. So we're seeing them increase at the same pace. But when they increase. it drives a, you know, an an a disproportionate amount of improve.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. And that's that whole Paretos principle of 80 20. there's so many of the people that are at the top that if you can just give them a little bit more, they're gonna excel. Jeffrey, how would people engage? What does it look like? What would, I'm a restaurant brand. I've, I'm running 50 units. I'm now at a place where I'm like, you know what? I gotta figure this thing out. How do I get in touch with your team? What does the experience look like? Hopefully you guys aren't like, go watch these two minute videos and then call me if you're still interested. Obviously I'm teasing. But, I'm sure you guys have a proven process where you guys go through and walk them through. How can you help them? talk our listeners through what they can expect if they do reach out, and how can they get in

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, so we are, we put a lot of energy into the activation of a new client. the first 60 days is critical to everything that's gonna happen after that. So no, we're not, we're not giving you a login and waving goodbye. Um, and then you can't get anyone on the phone. We actually have a very robust support system, you know, technical support, and not just tactical, but tactical support, uh, as well. Like the first bit of stuff that has to get done. we're there to help, uh, we're there to support. Um, right now we are in the beginning, so we have a, um, a activation process that we're setting up on our website for restaurant companies that are interested. Um, they would be considered early adopters until the end of first quarter 2026. so special considerations both ways. You know, it's, we're bringing this out for the first time. but you can go to our website. They could reach out to me on LinkedIn if they want to just talk more about it. Um, I'm on LinkedIn, Joffrey Toti, uh, CEO, frontline Performance Group. But, you know, we, we expect to first fully commercialize and ramp up, um, in the first quarter of next year. we're already beginning the process of engaging our existing customers and educating them on what we're bringing out. And as I said, we're in a couple hundred outlets now, um, through our, call it our friendliest relationships, you know, who you go to with a new product. but the enthusiasm we're seeing is extra. I've never in my entire career have I had this much excitement about something that we're gonna try and sell. you know, so it's, it's, there's a lot of energy around it because it is, it's just the thing no one talks about. So if there's a, if there's a simple, relatively low cost way to address it, that can get a measurable result, that can actually impact profit. Everyone seems to be pretty interested. but our website has information about it. There'll be a page up there in, in like a week where people can actually sign up to be an early adopter if they want. Um, and then get in, get in the queue basically, to get launched. But, uh. But I would love to hear from them directly too. I would love to just have a conversation with them.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, no. And I know you're, you and I just connected on LinkedIn. You're pretty active there and have got, a pretty robust network that way. and again, I'm, I was about to tease that says it's gotta all be about it. The ai,'cause you know, that must be why everybody's so excited about it.'cause everybody's so excited they think AI is gonna solve it. But I really think that you're, you guys are onto something because. Again, they're paying rent regardless. They're paying, they're paying the people to be in the store. How do we get, because ultimately they'll be better off, they'll have a better quality of life. The store will be in a better spot, and ultimately the guests should leave more satisfied with the product that you have. And so I love that you guys are coming into the market and are really gonna be able to make a difference in the lives of restaurateurs. Uh, it's funny that you talk about kind of. Eight, an 8% lift in sales is huge because again, there's certain costs that you've got that don't go away, regardless of whether you get that extra 8%, and I'm sure that that qualifies if we were to look straight down to the tips that the, uh, that the servers are getting as

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Yeah, and you know the, I didn't realize that generally speaking, the restaurants operate on a. A low two digit high, one digit net margin. I didn't realize that. what a tough business, I'll tell you. so if we can, every dollar that you sell in addition from the same guest is 70% flow through. You take out your food cost that, your labor's already there. So it is this crazy impact that it could have. and it's right there for the taking. No, you don't have to do any more advertising. You don't have to have any CapEx involved. Just a small subscription to us, and, and we'll give you the entire toolkit you need, to do that. And, and I think, if we look at a front desk, we have front desks that make, that do a hundred to one ROI on our subscription. We have others that do it eight to one. Eight to one is still a healthy ROI if you're, if it's clean and you can measure it, a hundred to one is ridiculous.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. It's like, why I need to sign up for a thousand of

Geoffrey Toffetti:

right? and those are, luxury resorts, they just do extraordinarily well.'cause they're, it, they're just built for it. But, but we think the same thing's gonna happen. the restaurant companies that fully buy into the idea that they can raise their revenue eight to 15, 20% through their existing people, they'll get that result. It's like manifest destiny. The people that are like, eh, they'll, they'll still get 3% or 4% improvement, which is still impactful, but. Um, it's gonna come down to the leadership buy-in to say we are gonna take as seriously our server performance as we do our menu design. And when we do that, we're gonna be able to get a, a significantly more profitable, as a result

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah. No, and I love that. I don't think you mentioned the website directly, while it'll be linked in the show notes for those that are audio only. and obviously they can go find you, find you on LinkedIn, but could you, share the website real quick just so that, for those that, that maybe want to go check it out and by the time this comes out, they'll, the, the extra link will be up

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Sure it's uh, www.frontlinepglikepaulgeorge.com. and there's a, you know, everything is, the food and beverage section is on there. Um, we call the product Check Max. That's the product that we're subscribing to for restaurant support. Um, you know, and one last thought on the AI that I think is critical'cause they're. There is a lot of hype out there. Um, but the best use of AI that we have found is to take a complex problem and simplify it. That's the first way to apply it in a tangible way in a business. and we're also using it to enhance human performance, not replace humans. We are all about human beings being in the equation. We're just using the AI to get better insight into what's actually happening in these, in very noisy sets of data.

Jeremy Julian:

Yeah, and I think, like you said, it's anything that you can do to make the life of the staff member and the guests better is, ai and I say it all the time on the show, technology for technology's sake is worthless. But stuff that ultimately makes the business better, using AI in a smart way that can make the business better and make the those people even better at what they already are doing an amazing job at. Is, uh, is really the, the key to success. So I thank you guys for coming into the industry. I thank you for coming on the show to educate our listeners. please go check out their new product. let me know, in the comments how you guys see it. I'm excited to see you guys continue to make your mark in the space. You and I'll stay connected and hopefully we'll run into each other at a trade show. For those, listeners that haven't already subscribed, please do so and make it a great day.

Geoffrey Toffetti:

Thank you.

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Jeremy Julian

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