Speaker 1: 0:08

Do you know that guests that come back to your restaurant a second time spend 20% more than their first visit and they bring in 10 to 15% more guests? Today I'm talking to Ewan Thompson, the Chief Performance Optimizer for Hospitality Benchmark Services. Ewan helps restaurants smash return guest frequency without discounts or paid marketing. He believes that nearly every restaurant is sitting on a six-figure growth opportunity. They just don't realize it's buried in poor guest retention. Today Ewan is unveiling his guest retention playbook the exact framework he uses with operators to drive six-figure growth through guest retention. We're also talking about the emotional advantage, the four touch points to elevate your order of service with emotional intelligence, your order of service with emotional intelligence, and we're going to deep dive into how to train your staff to lead with a retention mindset with every single guest, you and I. Has offered two incredible resources that can be downloaded in the show notes of this episode, so make sure you don't miss out. Let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Welcome to the Restaurant Leadership Podcast, the show where restaurant leaders learn tools, tactics and habits from the world's greatest operators. I'm your host, Kristen Marvin, with Solutions by Kristen. I've spent the last two decades in the restaurant industry and now partner with restaurant owners to develop their leaders and scale their businesses through powerful one-on-one coaching, group coaching and leadership workshops. This show is complete with episodes around coaching, leadership development and interviews with powerful industry leaders. You can now engage with me on the show and share topics you'd like to hear about leadership, lessons you want to learn and any feedback you have. Simply click the link at the top of the show notes and I will give you a shout out on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to connecting. And I look forward to connecting. Ewan, you talk a lot about guest retention. That's what you focus on with your clients and that's what your zone of genius and skillset is in. Can we start, though, by just really basically defining what does retention mean to you when you talk about that?

Speaker 2: 2:41

Okay, so I talk a lot about it because it's the best bit, really christian, um, uh, and what retention is? So, um, what's the kind of the technical term is is how many guests are coming back. Let's, let's, let's break it down to that over a period of time, so you might take one year compared to one year, or six months compared to six months, and in that time, how many of your guests actually came back? And that, in a nutshell, is retention. And then, when we talk about frequency guest frequency it's like how many times they're coming back, you know, um, in that particular cycle. So one, two, three, five plus times.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Okay, so you have the opinion that, or come from the perspective that it makes more sense for restaurant owners to focus on retention versus building first-time guests and driving traffic. Would you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 3:39

No, oh well, yes, I will talk about that, but they need to do both. What I'm not saying is what's happening at the moment is we are requiring and every restaurant's doing this and I look at a lot of numbers and a lot of reservation platforms and we are acquiring guests. That's what we do and that is the primary focus of everybody running a restaurant. What I'm saying is we need to just look at how we're retaining these guys, because when you look at the numbers I rarely see when I first look at uh platform data 90 to 95 percent of guests do not come back, and what I'm saying is we need to shift the dial and have a look at why these guys aren't coming back into our restaurants and what we can do to influence that performance, because it's huge 90 to 95.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Don't come back don't come back within within the time period, so that's generally a year, so year on year, and you're not seeing 90 to 95 percent of that, so put that into perspective I looked at a reservation data last week um there are two, two and a half million turnover site um, so that equates to about 10 000 bookings a year. Out of those 10 000 bookings, 500 came back um, so it's a big, big, big opportunity wow, and it's it's more cost effective to focus on retention versus going after.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Yeah, correct, yeah there's so much that it brings in terms of, you know, all these KPIs that we go after as restaurant managers and restaurant operators, and guest acquisition is expensive in itself. Advertising, perhaps. I mean five, perhaps even five to seven times cheaper to retain a guest than is to acquire a new one. But also, new guests spend less. So a retained guest and I pick this up in, you know the United States all the time they're spending 15 to 25 percent more organically. So they're more comfortable with your restaurant they're, you know they've been perhaps once or twice and um, they, you know they're, they become a little bit more relaxed to order rather than going to their go-to, perhaps their go-to dishes.

Speaker 2: 6:13

So yeah, it's. And what else do they bring back? More covers. So retain guests organically brings back more people as well. So so we're always focused on these kpis and they spend per head and our margins and our labor percentages, and you know, rightly so we are. But but when we ignore guest retention, which is something that that covers all these other kpis, you know, at your peril do that. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 6:44

Yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, that a guest that comes back a second time or third time or fourth time is going to spend more money, right? They're more comfortable in your environment. Like you said, they know the menu, they know the qualities there. They're probably going to be there. You've earned their trust, right. Maybe they've had a great experience with the team, they love the menu items and so they are willing to lean in and get a little bit more adventurous and try some other things that they wouldn't necessarily try, or lean on the staff a little bit more to make some recommendations, right, with some food and wine pairings or something like that. Have you noticed that in the data that you're pulling, are the guests that are coming back a third time and a fourth time? Are they spending more each time they come, or is it pretty consistent across the board?

Speaker 2: 7:34

um, so it depends on the restaurant. Yeah, I was literally looking at the data this morning for somebody and every level had a spend increase. So second and third and fourth time had a spend increase, but I don't always see that. I certainly do see a good increase compared to a first time and one time, you know one time diner. So, and it's significant, and it's significant, you know it's more than you could do if you were just focusing this from a spend-per-head perspective and trying to get your team to upsell and sell more. You know it outweighs that generally most of the time.

Speaker 2: 8:16

So, yeah, they are spending more, but you know, one of the things about guest retention is it doesn't happen by accident and what we believe you know five star reviews um, you know that kind of good well, good service, good food. We believe that is enough and it's the wrong thing to think about because it isn't. And I see and speak to restaurant owners all the time. We look at reviews and they go look, you know, and rightly so they're proud of their performances and their guest retention numbers could be, you know, pretty low 5%, 5%, 10%. So it's not enough anymore just to have good food and good service. We've got to be emotionally connecting with've got to. We've got to be emotionally connecting with our audience and we've got to be doing it consistently. Um, and we've got to give them a reason to remember, um, and what so many aren't doing is giving them that reason to remember yeah, how do you, you and how do you help them close that gap?

Speaker 2: 9:22

um, so well it's. It's. It's really starts with like a real inward look at yourself and your business and what's going on on the guest journey. I frame it into a um, what I call no grow echo, so three kind of stage process. Um, but I encourage restaurants, you know, and restaurants seem to do this themselves. It's the same kind of platform that I do with our clients as well. So, but that first bit is no, it's really understand you and your business and where things are. You know, perhaps dropping off, perhaps that's your team. It's getting into the numbers, it's looking at your onboarding, your training, you know anything, get people excited around guest retention and what it means and how it can impact your managers and what their roles are going to be to play in it. But then into the guest numbers themselves. The guest journey. You know where does that guest journey start? And it certainly isn't coming through your front door and leaving. It's well before that. It's when they looked at your website. It's how they found you, it's everything they went through to make that booking.

Speaker 2: 10:35

Um, and you've only got to, like, walk in their shoes a little bit, you know, with a bit of fresh eyes, and realize sometimes we put some amazing hurdles up for people trying to book our, trying to do us a favor and booking our restaurants. Yeah, and some of the, some of the things you've got to do sometimes to to leave your card details, or to you know to change your booking, or to you know to request something, or you know, or just anything you know. Sometimes it's just you know the list of terms and conditions that you need. You know to request something, or you know, or just anything you know. Sometimes it's just you know the list of terms and conditions that you need you know half a day to read, and it's you know. So it's just you know. That's. That's what I mean.

Speaker 2: 11:14

It's just we've got to make this almost, almost look at it like amazon how easy it is to order on amazon and you know sometimes how you know you can. Almost. Also, you've already ordered it by mistake and it's coming, and you don't how you know you can. Almost. Also, you've already ordered it by mistake and it's coming and you don't realize you've done it. And that's how we've got to think about our restaurants in terms of how do we make it this, this journey? You know it's easy and seamless and, as you know, as good as possible. So, and then, right the way through to after people have left, how is that connection? How have we built up some emotional equity? How have we, um, how are we able to personalize perhaps a response or, you know, really kind of, you know, connect with our audience after they've gone as well?

Speaker 2: 11:55

so, it's yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot to think about, but, um, but yeah, and it really would look at what you do all.

Speaker 1: 12:02

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Speaker 1: 13:00

From the conversation that you and I had last week in preparation for this episode, I took one of those nuggets that we talked about and I want to hear your perspective on loyalty programs. But I was talking to a restaurant operator here in town who's been they've been open since 1965. And he said and I've got another client that's asking me too, like I want to start a loyalty program, what do I do? And we were talking and he said you know, since we've been open since 1965 and our clientele are very tech adverse. He's like we're trying to figure out ways that we can do things on pen and paper or work with our staffs to take notes so that when people come back we remember their drink order. You know, and I'm thinking back in the old days where we used to have log books behind the bar and the bartenders would write down notes about guests.

Speaker 2: 13:47

And I told him the little nugget that you had mentioned about setting up a separate phone line so that if guests want to book a reservation a VIP guest or repeat guest wants to book a reservation rather than calling the restaurant or trying to book something online this line right, which is the owner's separate phone number and just hey, call me and I'll make the reservation for you, yeah, so so this is, this is, you know, when we talk about, um, kind of this, uh, hook, you know the end of, perhaps the end of a meal, you know this, but what toolkit do we have to get people to come back in? And then, pretty much in most other businesses it's like do you want to rebook? You know, get going your haircut, when do you want to book it in again? When do you want to come? When do you want to? You know, when do you want to come back in it?

Speaker 2: 14:34

And in restaurants we don't look at it like that too much, because we think it's like it's awkward and it's an awkward thing to say and the guest is going to go, I don't know when they want to come back, yeah, and you know, and that's that's, you know, that's that's the right way to look at it, because you don't want to be, you know it's such a ridiculous. You don't want to leave that taste in their mouth if you got it wrong, as the last thing they remember is like someone trying to force them to book again. But you can do things, you know. You know, and this, this toolkit, that, that, that perhaps you, that, that we about, or I talk about in terms of giving our teams, you know, the ability to be able to kind of like say, oh okay, we've got an event coming up or the menu change, or there's, you know, book, book.

Speaker 2: 15:13

You know this is my number, book with me. You know, send me a message and you know I'll take care of it all and it's, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, you think that doesn't even have to be your own number, that could just be your restaurant's a restaurant, perhaps cell phone, that's separate. I mean, some of the platforms these days actually do have a number and it converts to a message and you're able to do that if you do have that sort of technology. But there's, I think, the blocker. What happens in everything that we do in a restaurant environment is somebody blocks it out in their head and it just doesn't get past the next stage and it's good. Oh, we can't say that to a guest. Well, actually there's 20, 30 things you could do and it all comes out with sitting down and kind of looking at what you're doing and looking at the guest journey and realizing the value in slight, perhaps even small little changes.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Um, you know, we'll have on guest retention yeah, and I think you know understanding the cues, uh, are really really important the verbal cues and non-verbal cues. I was actually I was in chicago, um, for the national restaurant association show and I had a, took myself out to dinner, had an extraordinary time and I was just so overwhelmed with just the hospitality and the touch points and how engaging the staff was that I made it a point on the way out the door to say to the team working the door thank you so much. This was so lovely, I said. I looked while I was dining. I noticed you guys have different restaurants in your group. Next time I come to the city, you know, I'd love to check out. I look forward to checking out more and more of the restaurants in your group and the I don't know if she was a host or manager, it didn't matter.

Speaker 1: 16:57

She said thank you so much for saying that I would love to send you my phone number and have you book with us next time you come into town. And so that was lovely. It didn't feel forced, it didn't feel salesy and I did not get an automated text message response right after I gave her my number, which felt really good, because I think that piece of tech of thanks for dining with us next time. You know that feels sales. Yeah, yeah, gross and I I loved that she didn't. She didn't send me a text at all, it was just this like really nice exchange. Uh, that felt very, very genuine.

Speaker 2: 17:35

So yeah, what, what was um? So what was the kind of the thing that stuck out to you there? Then it was the emotional connection that this team kind of put onto you.

Speaker 1: 17:48

Yeah it just. The overall experience was lovely. It was a french restaurant. The vibe was just gorgeous and dark. They had a ton of fake flowers covering the entire ceiling, like hanging from the ceiling. It was just this very like warm, inviting experience and the staff embodied that too. It really was just I mean, you talk about the little lamps lighting your menus at the bar just very intimate and cozy and they were gracious. It just all matched. It was just very much on brand and the experience just flowed all the way through, which was great. And this restaurant you had to enter in and then go up two flights of stairs to actually get to the front door of the restaurant, so you kind of had to go on a journey before you even got to step foot in the front entryway. But it was just uh, it was memorable. I've never had somebody say let me give you my personal phone number. Um, we would love to.

Speaker 2: 18:44

I've never had anybody do that before. Yeah, we were. We were talking about that, you know, that's the thing. So, yeah, yeah, I mean, there's so much you can do and it's free and it's. You know, imagine, before you arrived, you got a message from her saying hi, kristen, I've got the most amazing table for you, looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. From, you know, from Ewan, and I'm there that day when you arrive, and you know, we've never met before your first time in the restaurant.

Speaker 2: 19:13

I mean imagine that compared to what I mean, you thought that was great at the end. Imagine, before you've even come in and you go oh my god, that you know that is free, you know there's, you know, know there's so much you can do when you, you know, when you kind of have a plan. And I think what stops us certainly perhaps the big oh, it's too big, oh, we can't contact everybody. We can't. You know we've got 100 bookings or 300 covers in tonight. We can't contact everybody. And the point of guest retention is you're not going after everybody. You don't need to like this.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Five percent, ten percent if you're at 95 percent return you know you're 95 percent, your guests aren't coming back if you get up to 90 or 85, a five or ten percent, that is huge to your, to your revenue, like huge. And that's a one revisit, never mind two, three, four and five. So so this misconception where we've got to boil the ocean and go for everybody and, um, you know, and you end up not doing anything, really uh is you know it's completely wrong. And so you can do these personal touches.

Speaker 2: 20:24

You can, you know, you can capture personal and personalization from your experience and use that in a message to you yeah and the more we use, you know, for the tech, the less tech minded which, by the way, I don't sit in that camp that massive like tech.

Speaker 2: 20:39

You know, I'm not that person, but I do work with it and I do utilize it and I, you know, look at it quite a bit. But I know, like, with AI coming, that anything that you now put into Capture's guest data that can be able to be scraped and pulled out and personalised into a message to you so we can make that perhaps more scalable to a lot of people. But we've got to get the information in there in the first place. But it's I don't know me the text. What the tech helps us yeah, it helps us is not the soul, it's not the emotional connection that has to be delivered by an ops team, you know, who actually give a shit, who actually care yeah, I agree with you and I think now that we're talking about this, I've got all these other examples coming up.

Speaker 1: 21:28

I think that one thing I learned in working in the brunch restaurant for seven years is that people were very much creatures of habit and we would see the same people come in every single day, monday through Friday, to get their same breakfast order. And tourists can be that way too right. If if we are going out to eat and we find like for me, I'm the same way with a breakfast restaurant. If if I find something I like, it's going to be my go-to place to get my meal started, fuel my day. But when I was in Denver at this amazing restaurant called Alma, alma Fonda Fina, they just got nominated for a James Beard award. Um, monday, the 16th of June, and you have you can't make a reservation. You can't get in, I think, any earlier than 60 days Like it's taken 60 days to get a reservation there.

Speaker 1: 22:14

I tried to walk in a couple of times as a as a party of one, totally packed, which is amazing, right, just keeps me wanting to come back and try to get in more and more. I went in for dinner, sat on the patio and talked to the manager and said hey, I've tried to come in a couple of times, so excited to be here. The weather was shit that night but they took amazing care of me. It was great. I was happy to be outside. And they happen to have a cancellation for the next night for the chef's counter.

Speaker 1: 22:39

And the manager came back out and said I don't know if you're here tomorrow, if you're in town. Came back out and said I don't know if you're here tomorrow, if you're in town, but I've got a reservation that opened up for one at four or for two at four 30 at the chef's counter. Do you want it four 30 in the evening for dinner? Right, he got past the assumption that I didn't want to come back two nights in a row and I said, hell, yeah, and yes, I brought a friend, right. So I think I think, if we could get over these assumptions that, like you're saying, when people are walking out the door, what if we say, hey, we've got a dinner available? What if we say, oh, we've got a cancellation tomorrow night? Do you guys want to come? I, it's a, it's an invitation to bring people back more than a sales tactic, right, I think it's all about the approach and the language we use.

Speaker 2: 23:22

Yeah, and it doesn't have to be on the night. Could be, and the language we use yeah, and it doesn't have to be on the night, could be the next day, it could be a week later. Could be a text from the manager who's met you, who knows you, now you have a relationship with. Could be a text from the host perceptionist, whatever you know, it doesn't you know whoever wants to get everybody involved. Could be could be the server who's amazing and gives other connections. It doesn't matter as long as it's genuine. And it isn't, and it doesn't come across to you like you mentioned, like taking my number, get a message, an instant message straight away and all that goes out the window. You know it's, it's false. But when it isn't false and it's backed up with, you know, I mean I talk about five star reviews aren't enough and food, good food and good service isn't enough, but it has to be there. You know the food and the service has to be there. The hospitality comes on top of that and that when I talk about hospitality, not necessarily in the building, it's you know, it's this relationship with this follow-up, it's. You know, if you've got the tech to, perhaps the epos integrations where you can see what people have ordered and what their, what their go-to dishes are and you can start running events inviting them to based on that. Right, you know, but that's still a space.

Speaker 2: 24:29

Pushy sale pushy doesn't have to be pushy, but it's very much of a sales approach. And when I talk about reactive service, which is what everybody does, it to intentional hospitality, which is what I'm talking about with guest retention, um, it's not about selling. We're not about selling, we're about guiding, we're about pointing things out, you know. You know that's. That's the experience. That's the experience in-house, you know. But it's also the experience when we're perhaps reaching out someone before they came in. If we've identified them, someone to reach out to, you know, not trying to do everybody, so that can be a very personalized thing and that can be built from guest notes.

Speaker 2: 25:07

So when you came in last time, you know you were here for something you know graduation, or your daughter or whatever, you know a birthday or something like that, and you know, and if you then be able to say, oh, it was great to see you last year on your daughter's birthday, you're coming back again, I can't wait to see, and something like that it's, you know, that just makes it just just a massive point of difference and um, but you've got to have the, you've got to have the offer right and the service right, and obviously, well, I say obviously but I think I need to say it, um, because it's important, but it's, but it's not enough, and this is why I say this is the fun bit, kristen.

Speaker 2: 25:45

This is, this is why, because it getting people to come back in is, isn't that? Isn't that why you run a restaurant? Isn't that why we open restaurants? Isn't it about getting people to come back in? And isn't that when you're, when you, you know, as an operator I was for for years and years and years that's the fun bit. That's the kind of like, like surpassing expectations, like really, you know, wooing guests and wowing somebody, and you know that this is all we're talking about. We're just talking about it on a, on a, perhaps a, perhaps perhaps a bit more of a kind of scalable thing, but that's all. Ultimately, that's all we're talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Yeah and you don't. We don't need a reservation platform. We don't need data in order to build great connections and relationships and make people feel good. Right, I think I've been taught. I've been thinking a lot about this since we talked last week Like, yes, there's been so much you know that I've experienced over the years of building culture and putting together teams that truly care about people and that really care about the experience, but I don't think I've ever said or led with a mindset, a retention mindset. When it comes to the team. I don't, like we've talked about, yes, we want repeat guests, but I am just I can't get over the comment that you made last week about like training your teams to have to lead with a retention mindset. How do you help people do that?

Speaker 2: 27:19

Yeah, okay. So now are you now thinking why haven't I been doing this? It's a simple reframe.

Speaker 1: 27:26

I think maybe have in so many in certain words, but I but. But I asked somebody the other day. I asked a restaurant owner. After we get off the phone, I said is every single person on your team understanding that retention is the goal of the guest experience? And they just looked at me like I had two heads yeah, yeah, yeah there's a disconnect here somewhere yeah, there is, there is, is, and why.

Speaker 2: 27:49

I don't know why that is, but it's everywhere and sometimes, you know, sometimes it's like the wood through the trees, isn't it? You just can't you. Just why are we here? What are we doing? Yeah, and when we when I, you know, work with you know a lot of restaurants, they'll have an order of service or service criteria or whatever.

Speaker 2: 28:11

That is a rightly so and they should do, and the goal has always been, you know, make sure it doesn't sound robotic. You know, starters in five minutes, drinks it in two minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Upsell this, do this, upsell dessert, mentioned teas, coffees, etc. Etc. And and that, in a, you know, flippant way I've just put it, is what your order of service is and and what. What it doesn't have is emotional, the emotional connection, which I call, like, the emotional advantage, and so a lot of the work that I will have somebody focused on. All I work with is transforming this order of service, and I don't mean transform it, and this is the beauty of it is, we were not about rewriting it. You know, do all the bits you want to do if you want to get them in. You know that is how you do it, but we're about adding in emotional connections to this. So this is, this is. This is the way that goes on in the building.

Speaker 2: 29:10

So this is, this is, this is the bit that goes on in the building. And you have, you know, you've got you've got a team of people in your restaurant who for, if it's like most restaurants, perhaps a wanting development, a need in development feel like they haven't been trained, feel like somebody else who's just coming to have more training than they've had. You know all these things that go off when people says that we probably don't get to the bottom of enough. You know, with. This is why I love guest retention as a piece of work, as a there's a not a piece of work as a complete strategy to run your entire restaurant group on, because it covers all these, these other things. It's like this, this onboarding piece. If we, if we onboarded everybody with this retention mindset and, you know, really come to buy into it. And this is why we're doing it and we're going to train you on this, to do this, and this is what good looks like, and you know you get off on that that great foot. And if you've got a manager there in the business going right, okay, we're going to incentivize you on guest retention and this is how we're going to get there.

Speaker 2: 30:06

You know this is. This is professional restaurant management development. You know it's like. This is proper, how to look after guests, how to you know everything else has to be in line. Everything else has to be good. So so if I'm, if I'm incentivizing you or bonusing you as a manager on on guest retention, on guest retention numbers I know those retention numbers are going up. Everything else in that business has to be pretty good because that guest is not coming, going to come back for for shit. You know it's got to be good, so I am.

Speaker 2: 30:38

So why don't we have that in? Why don't we have that as a huge kpi, um and and I know we don't because I look at a lot of restaurant apis and I work with a lot of management teams and you know it's it's margins, it's it's spent per heads, it's labor percentages, it's never guest retention, um and uh and it. It's such a beautiful thing because it's, as I say, it's a, it's a development piece for the entire business. So, yeah, um, but I was just going to say actually before, just one of the things that you know. It was about this emotional connection in service I was talking. I was talking about not rewriting your um order service, but adding this emotional connection. Um, and there's four stages that I call that. I won't go into them. I might send you a copy of this, actually, that people could perhaps link to because it's called the.

Speaker 2: 31:34

Emotional Advantage. It's just about transforming your order service with welcome, guide, personalize and appreciate. So it's these four, so this big welcome from everybody. It's guiding people through the menu, depending on whether their first, second, third or fourth time dimes or what have you. It's really appreciating, uh, it's really personalizing sorry, what's you know. So capture, capturing, personalization, so you can use it again or recommend, but, um, you know, but certainly be able to have something in in that guest profiling and then this really appreciate and engineer this emotional landing for when guests leave. And it's about building these emotional connections. But that's it. In two seconds I'll send you a copy, kristen, and people can perhaps download it.

Speaker 1: 32:24

And then that four-step retention strategy is gold, it, and then that four-step retention strategy is gold. I am seeing so many restaurants missing all four of those points, and so much so that when I do go out and I see the ones that are nailing it, it like literally brings a tear to my eye, because it is the foundation of hospitality, right, and it is something that we have lost, uh, in the last couple of years, I think, post pandemic especially and I I know a lot of operators get frustrated and they say you know, these people don't want to work. Um, they just don't get it. They're so much harder to train, but I think we've. We've been so. Some of us have been so used to working with people for so long that have experience in the business that we're forgetting to train and teach these fundamentals that are again at the core of everything a restaurant needs to survive. Like you said, focusing on guest retention alone increases everything else in your business, enhances and improves everything else in your business.

Speaker 1: 33:24

It's, it's not rocket science, but I appreciate you bringing that top of mind.

Speaker 2: 33:28

Yeah, yeah, it's rocket science, but but? But there is a science behind it in some respects, because we're not looking at it. And the numbers, you know, if you can track the numbers I'm not saying everybody can, but if you can track the numbers, then that's going to put you at an advantage because you know you're making progress or not, and you can also incentivize that with your team. So, um, but it. It isn't necessarily rocket science, but you know what? Training people, christian, isn't rocket science. But we've cut a lot of. You know bigger, bigger companies have cut a lot of training budgets. You know we don't. We used to.

Speaker 2: 34:02

I mean, I used to have a company and our onboarding process was four weeks you know, for a front of house member of staff, four weeks wow, uh, manager, managers was a lot longer. I mean we're going about 20 years. That is unheard of. Now you're lucky if you get two or three days following somebody and it's you know. And and and and it's it is. If I hear what you just said, again you know, and I hear it from operators all the time in terms of you can't get, you know you can't get the teams, you can't get. Again you know, and I hear it from operators all the time in terms of you can't get, you know, you can't get the teams, you can't get the teams. You know they don't listen. Blah, blah, blah. You know 20 other excuses about what you know, perhaps what Gen Z and you know the current workforce is like Arm in arm with possibly the worst.

Speaker 2: 34:42

You know training and you know budgeted or budgeted, you're allowed to spend for training. At the same time, I think, what do you expect? We're getting what we deserve here. And this fight for labour, cutting labour, this strive for better margins, this better spend per head, that is the constant kind of battle To maintain that position. If you think about it, with rising costs and rising um, you know inflation and everything else, and you know labor costs going up because of minimum wages, etc.

Speaker 2: 35:23

To maintain that position, you've got to either put your prices up or get more guests in. Not the same amount of guests you've got to get more guests in. So when we're acquiring new guests, we're not, we're not now at, you know, level playing field. We've got to go beyond that. So where are all these new guests going to come from? And this is why we're all in decline. Just, it's just the maths of it's. Just that's what it is. So when we ignore the fact that we've got this low guest retention but we're you know we're just missing out on just a huge proportion of the business that's.

Speaker 2: 35:57

You know that that could actually take away all this pain that we're having. Um and uh, yeah, so it. You know. When you just talk it through, just you can't argue with it.

Speaker 1: 36:09

It's such an important mindset shift. I have a client that's so desperate it was We've done a lot of work, but desperate and just stressed about I've got to get more people in the door. I've got to get more people in the door. I've got to get more people in the door and we've talked and spent a lot of time focusing on what is happening within the four walls. Because, like you said, if they could focus on taking care of the people, creating more guests based on the clients or the current guests that are already sitting in their restaurant, that's where guest creation comes from.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Right, word of mouth has always been so important to restaurants and it still is, more than ever. Social media is just word of mouth, right, but the operators that operate from that scarcity mindset, that are squeezing their costs and squeezing their stuff, it's just. It's not a sustainable business model. We need to think from a place of abundance, in the way that we think about how money comes in, the way that we think about how money comes in, the way that we think about how we take care of our staff and the people that we bring on, our culture, our guests, our food waste I mean. There's so many things that we can look at internally before trying to just, you know, go to this big wide world of social media and, you know, loyalty programs and tech and all this stuff it's just yeah, discounted menus big one you know how do we?

Speaker 2: 37:32

get people in, okay, we put this three course menu on for half the price that they pay for this, and you know we'll do a fizz free fizz, 10 pound bottle of fizz friday or whatever, whatever that, whatever that looks like, on repeat.

Speaker 2: 37:43

And I, you know that is a big myth that that's running a business.

Speaker 2: 37:50

And you know I get involved with certain stages with clients when they're in this process, and one thing's very clear that they often don't go back and look at the impact of what they're doing in terms of discounting, and I don't just mean the financial impact which is, you know, eroding margins and creating bad loyalty, because loyal guests, you know you're only loyal to that, to that offer, you know, to get somebody to come back. I'm not talking about discounting and advertising and stuff to, for I guess for essentially I'm talking about emotional connections a disloyal, I guess loyal to a discount, is not a loyal guest to your business. Really, um, and yeah, it's, it's, yes, it's a bit, you know to, to, to not understand your, what the discounting is doing to your business in terms of you know your team and your kitchen and you know that burnout that happens when you're, when you're constantly discounting, know and not realizing that actually it's not adding anything more to your bottom line in the long run, which often happens.

Speaker 1: 38:56

Yeah, it reminds me of the old days of restaurant week, right, where the fine dining restaurants a lot of them would choose not to do restaurant week because they would say, look, we don't want to put chicken on the menu, but we want to be able to offer something that is going to be at the quality that we want it to be, so it doesn't dilute the brand. But I've worked for fine dining restaurants before that are like, look, we've tried this and those people only come in once a year. It doesn't make any sense for us.

Speaker 1: 39:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah and then they're packing people in like sardines in order to get the same margins, and then the entire experience changes for everybody in the room. And the staff works twice as hard and they hate it every time, every year, when it comes around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Well yeah, it's so much value in this. Thank you for sharing your three-step process here the no, grow and echo. And yes, please share the. The I'll share you that?

Speaker 2: 39:51

yeah, I'll show you that because it's that's my guest retention playbook. I'll share the transfer, the emotional advantage about transforming the order of service as well. So there'll be a couple of links if people want to down um to get hold of that, or they can just come to me and reach out to me.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Yeah, how do people get a hold of you?

Speaker 2: 40:11

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn, probably the easiest way, or ewan at hospitality-benchmarkcouk, but I'll send that over to you as well. Kristen, one of the other things I was going to say actually, have we got still a bit of time about two seconds? Yes, please say actually we've got still a bit of time for two seconds, please. Um, is is when we're talking about return visit engineering, and you know that I I talk about the retention, you know, first time diners at level, at this level. Let's call this the funnel or the pipeline. You know we don't have a pipeline in hospitality for some reason we've got in every other business you can imagine this sales pipeline but we don't have any hospitality.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Yeah, but we do, you know, and it's't have a pipeline in hospitality for some reason. We've got it in every other business. You can imagine it's a sales pipeline but we don't have it in hospitality. Yeah, but we do, you know, and it's in your reservation system. So this first-time diner I'm saying 95%, 90% to 95% generally don't come back and you will see that all the time. But once they've come back a second time, they then 20, 25 percent more likely to come back again.

Speaker 2: 41:13

And then once they come back another time, they're then 70 percent more likely to come back again so the more you bring people through this funnel, the exponentially increases the frequency that they're going to come back or the likelihood that they're going to come back.

Speaker 2: 41:27

So when we talk about kind of I think I was talking to you last time about um uh, about the white, red and black napkin, yes, thing. So this is a version of um uh. So take the digital version out of kind of profiling first, second, or, you know, bronze, silver, whatever you want to call them guest segmentation, and I think it was john taffa, bar rescue, I think this is from um and it's putting down a white napkin for a first-time guest, or red napkin for a second-time guest, or I think it's a black napkin for a third-time guest, and each one gets a different experience and a different invite to come back and the staff treat them a bit differently or offer something at the end of it, because what he's trying to do is drive people to that third visit where it's now 70 percent more likely to come back. And yeah, so anybody, yeah. So don't let the technology be the blocker to doing something like this, because there's loads of things that you can do. Doesn't matter who you are in terms of guest retention, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:29

Love it. That's great. So many pro tips, so much value in this conversation Really really appreciate you coming on and joining me for this conversation. I've learned a ton. It gives me some really good talking points with with my clients to to work with and focus on. So thank you so much for keeping the guests first and foremost. That's what it's all about, right.

Speaker 2: 42:50

Exactly Brilliant. Well, thanks very much for having me, kristen. It's been great and yeah, hopefully there's there's some takeaways for somebody out there and what we've talked about. But but, yeah, reach out if you need anything. That's all you know. Love to talk, talk to people about it, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter where you are in the journey of it, but awesome.

Speaker 1: 43:10

Thank you so much. Um, everybody that's going to do it for us this week. Please share this episode with anybody that you know that could benefit, and we'll talk to you next week thanks, folks.