Savory’s Growth Formula Starts with Data Ownership (and it works!) - Josh Boshard COO

Josh Boshard, the COO of Savory, leads the Operations & Technology teams for their 10-brand portfolio. Since their first location in 2008, Josh + Savory have amassed a wealth of best practices that he shares openly in this episode. 

Key Moments to Listen for: 

• A solid foundation of data ownership & APIs 
• Integrating systems to drive local store performance 
• Partners must share the data 
• A/B testing best-of-breed systems 
• Growth playbooks, benchmarks, and KPIs 
• Restaurants must continually innovate and right now it’s all about AI
• State-of-the-art technology has no value without the right people
• Stick-to-it-iveness makes things happen
• Putting owners’ goals & values first

Related Episode: 

• The Future of Data Starts Here – Darien Bates
• Burn it Down & Fail Forward Fast – Justin Keenen 
• What Does it Mean to Go “Beyond POS” – Amir Hudda

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn

Learn more about Savory 

Check out Qu's Annual State of Digital for Enterprise QSR & Fast Casual Brands

Transcript

Restaurants Reinvented - Josh Boshard

[00:00:00] Josh Boshard: If you don't have the base systems in that place and you don't have the technology that's gonna allow you to grow and scale, even if you have the best-of-class, the little things are what are going to make it work.

[00:00:12] Intro: Welcome to Restaurants Reinvented, the podcast for restaurant executives where we go beyond the four walls of the store and talk about industry, trends, strategies, and challenges that the C-Suite tackles every day. Your host is Jen Kern, a career marketer across multiple industries and the CMO of Qu Beyond. Now, let's get started.

[00:00:43] Jen Kern: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Restaurants Reinvented. This is Jen Kern, and I am your hostess of the show, and today I'm very excited to have with me Josh Boshard. He is the COO at Savory Fund, and over at Savory, Josh is not just managing operations, he's also managing technology, including HR tech, which I'm really excited to, to dig into. So, welcome to the show, Josh.

[00:01:08] Josh Boshard: Jen, I've been looking forward to this day, thanks for having me on the show.

[00:01:12] Jen Kern: How exciting. Is this your first podcast?

[00:01:15] Josh Boshard: No, I've done some podcasts in the past, so, but never any this big.

[00:01:20] Jen Kern: Oh, really? You flatter me, you start out flattering me like that. Well, welcome to the show, I'm, I'm excited to have you, there's so many interesting things going on at Savory, I mean, every time I open my LinkedIn, I see some new update, a new restaurant that you guys are investing in or growing. So, I'm really excited to hear all about it.

[00:01:40] Why don't we kick off and if you can go ahead and explain to folks, uh, we talked a little bit about, like, what is Savory Fund? Is it actually a restaurant, is it a portfolio companies? Just what is Savory Fund, and then a little bit about your role there?

[00:01:53] Josh Boshard: Yeah, I think, um, to understand what it is today, we have to take a step back and understand our, our history. So, yeah, I, I actually, I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I, I grew up in Utah, I'm a sixth-generation Utahn, and right now the, the snow is fantastic here, and I haven't even gone up to go skiing yet, and I'm a huge skier, so.

[00:02:15] Yeah, but I, I, I feel like I kind of grew up with a little bit of an advantage. My dad was a serial entrepreneur, he was a daredevil, he, he was into businesses doing cinnamon rolls and snowmobiles and cell phones and real estate. And so, I grew up thinking that everyone would, should be doing back flips on skis and starting businesses.

[00:02:37] That was just a normal measure in my, my household. So, I, I feel like I had a little bit of an advantage that way. So, I, I went into insurance after college, and I was a producer here in the State of Utah. Absolutely loved it, but the thing I didn't like was I could never make anyone happy, no matter if I saved them a million dollars, they're still, you know, upset to be paying insurance at the end.

[00:02:58] So, I took a position with this company called AxisPointe, and I brought my insurance knowledge, and we built this incredible technology, certifying subcontractors. And I, I worked for this guy who, he was pretty incredible, and he told me something that I'd actually never heard before,

[00:03:16] he said, "Josh, you're a leader." When I heard that, I had been in, you know, scouts, I had been in, like, church stuff, I'd gone on a mission, I, I had done all these things, and no one had ever told me that I was a leader, I was very different than most people. And when I heard that, like, something changed in me where I was like, okay, I will follow this guy anywhere.

[00:03:37] His name was Andrew Smith, and I worked for him for a couple of years, and then he sold that company and said, "Hey, let's go do some restaurants and let's take technology and everything we know on that side of things, and let's throw it into a restaurant company and try to make things better on the restaurant side."

[00:03:55] Josh Boshard: And I said, "I'll do anything. I'd never done restaurant before, but yeah, I'll, I'll jump in with you." So, the background there is, we started with one store and it was during the recession, so it was 2008 and building one store, and then we did two and three. I remember at seven stores, I was in a walk-in box and we all know what that is.

[00:04:17] I'm in a walk-in box, we're getting ready to open the store, I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing, scrubbing it down to make sure it is clean, and I remember in that recession period, being so thankful for a job, just praying, like, "This is amazing, I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to grow with a brand."

[00:04:35] Josh Boshard: And so, you, you take that and where we are today and, and it's, you know, a little chaotic in the economy right now. Where we were with, with that company and what it built in today at Savory is, is kind of feeling like the same thing, we still work in the stores, we still go

[00:04:52] and we're very operational and, and I think a lot of our success is attributed to starting the same way that everyone else started in restaurant, and that's with the first store and having to do the training and training cashiers and doing drive-through at the same time. So, pretty fun to be at this point. 

[00:05:09] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:09] Josh Boshard: So, to your, your question, I mean, that was the long way of explaining it. 

[00:05:13] Jen Kern: Yeah. 

[00:05:14] Josh Boshard: I'm Chief Operating Officer here at Savory. I've been titled as the curator of best practices, and I handle a lot of things, but we just have really good people.

[00:05:23] And so, Savory is a restaurant fund, so we have two funds, each $100 million, and we raised that capital to go out and do something that we feel like no one else in the industry is doing. So, we take that money, we find amazing brands that are currently growing, their sales are through the roof, and they have lines out the door.

[00:05:43] And we partner with the founders of those brands, and then we, we scale and grow it. So, if you, if you, you know, imagine being able to see 10 different restaurant brands, these are 10 brands that we currently own, and working with founders who have a passion for restaurant, they love what they're doing, and maybe they're not good at e-mods or doing financials and maybe they're not good at, at certain aspects like facility management.

[00:06:13] But our platform team of 80 people who are efficient autos in the industry, they've, they've grown up doing something specific, we layer them on top, and then we scale and grow those brands. So, you take three to five stores, that's kind of what we're looking for, sells, like I said, sells to the roof, and then we apply all the best practices that a 50-unit or a 100-unit brand would have.

[00:06:38] Technology stack, recruiting, HR systems, finance, whatever it is, we, we put that in at three stores. And so, we're ready to grow. And so, we stabilize the stores, we do that first, and then we grow up from there. That's Savory.

[00:06:55] Jen Kern: Wow. That's cool, that is very cool. So, I'm still smiling from when you said, you know, this guy, the first person I met who said I'm a leader, and I'm thinking, I wonder how old he was when he said that, but it clearly stuck with you, right, because you followed him and, I mean, I just love the concept, you know, rising tides raise all waters, right,

[00:07:19] or something, like, go, something like that. And he just really, he lifted you up and gave you that confidence that it sounds like maybe you need it at the time, maybe as a young, young gentleman, and, and then

[00:07:30] Josh Boshard: I think I was 26, 27, somewhere around there.

[00:07:33] Jen Kern: Yeah, yeah. It's very impactful. And you're still with him today. Your first restaurant, and you said was, was in '08, is that right?

[00:07:41] Josh Boshard: Yeah. So, 2008, in Little Lehi, Utah. One store. What was the name of it?

[00:07:46] It was a Kneaders Bakery & Cafe in it. It was the worst restaurant you could ever start with because it had catering, it had a retail aspect to it, it had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was scratch baked, and it had a drive-through.

[00:08:01] Josh Boshard: So, we, we started with the hardest thing that you could do, which probably made it a little easier as we continued down our journey, getting to 50 stores with that brand, moving on, having 72 Little Caesars stores. We understood being a franchisee and what that took to be that, but we always had our complaints of, oh, we wish the franchisor would do this, or they'd do this thing.

[00:08:23] And we finally got to the point we said, let's not be a franchisee, let's own the brands, let's create this structure within savory and private equity, and let's go out and, and build this so that we can control the narrative, we can, you know, make changes to our menu board if we need to make changes.

[00:08:40] And if we have a store three states over, we do things a little bit differently than the way that we do it on the West Coast, right? And so, at this point for us, it's, it's just so great to be able to be working with really beautiful leaders within the brands who, who see things for how they are. We take the feedback, and then we continue to grow the brands based on those really great people.

[00:09:01] Jen Kern: Yeah. So, that first brand you took from one to fifty locations, is that right?

[00:09:05] Josh Boshard: Yeah. Correct. Yep.

[00:09:07] Jen Kern: What was the number one thing you learned along the way there? Number one thing I learned, it was work ethic, you know, Andrew Smith, I keep talking about him, he's actually our managing partner now at the fund level, and he's still involved, really involved, and he, he's so great. But he always would talk about sticktoitiveness, and I think that really, it's a funny word,

[00:09:28] Josh Boshard: we actually have it plastered on one of our boardrooms, and he would talk about what it took to make things happen. And so, and I guess his, his dad would always say it, he was a dean and founding member of the UNLV Dental School, and he was brilliant, too. And so, he would talk about sticktoitiveness, and I think that really applied to every person that came in.

[00:09:48] But what I started to see is to be able to grow and scale, you had to have brilliant people around you, and, and what Andrew did best is he actually created a vision for what we were trying to accomplish, and at first it was 10 stores, and so we got to that 10th store, and he said, "Ah, thi, things are going really well,

[00:10:07] let's get to 25 stores, let's get to 50 stores." And then we got to that point and, and we started down the road of everything else. So, it was, it was having good people around you and then actually going and doing the work, and every single person was on the same page trying to achieve that vision that he had set to get to the next level.

[00:10:26] Well, gosh, I mean, you did the one thing that's hard to do, which is scaling restaurants, right? And it look, it looks like you got bit like I did, so many of us, you know, get bit by the restaurant bug, like, you were in this, you know, insurance tech I think you said you were doing before, and then you just had this idea, let's try restaurants.

[00:10:43] Jen Kern: And you get into it, and you fall in love, right? You fall in love, and it's a labor of love, it does require sticktoitiveness. So, going through that scale of one to fifty at your first place, I would love to know, like, what was the thing that struck you? This was like, "Wow, this is really hard, we gotta figure this out, we're not gonna be able to stay profitable and make a go of this."

[00:11:03] Josh Boshard: Yeah, I, I, it was, you know, it was dialing in the numbers without allowing the numbers to dictate our customer service. And I, I know that sounds crazy, but when you read a P&L, and you make decisions based on that P&L, you're going to make the wrong choices. So, the thing that we, we did best coming out of that to get to the next level was we made decisions

[00:11:29] based on the, the culture, the foundation of the brand, what it stood for and what we were trying to accomplish versus always sticking to the prime cost, having to be at a specific rate, right? And, and when we focused on that customer service, we focused on the team's range, having success in the team's range, understanding what should be working in restaurant,

[00:11:55] and taking their ideas and then implementing that into what we were doing. We started to see growth that, that we never saw before, and that was a, a key piece to understanding, okay, one to fifty, that was so tough, here's the lessons learned in that opportunity to do that. And then how we could take that and be different, be different as a franchisee or be different as an owner of, of these brands.

[00:12:18] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. So, if I were to summarize, it sounds like you were prioritizing the employee experience and the employees and the owners, goals, values, and desires, above the P&L.

[00:12:32] Josh Boshard: Yeah. That, that was, that was always, I, I mean, it's always been a difficult one 'cause you have to run the business. But without the heart and soul of, of what you're trying to create, you, you take a brand like Mo'Bettahs that we have today, and you have Kemo and Kalani, they're from Hawaii, they understood what a plate lunch was in Hawaii, and that's what Mo'Bettahs is.

[00:12:53] And so, you have rice, and you have your mac salad, and you have your katsu chicken or your teriyaki chicken. If, if we're trying to run it, we're going to, oh, you know, we need to compress food costs and let's get a different meat and let's, right, those are the kind of things that, that kind of take away that passion for the brand.

[00:13:14] And so, like, for Mo'Bettahs purchasing it and working with them at 6 units years ago to having 45 units today, and then being in the Midwest and people just absolutely loving the brand. It's because we still buy surfboards from Hawaii that have touched Hawaiian and waters, right, and we still have that aloha spirit, and the founders are still every day involved in telling the story of

[00:13:42] why we do what we do to create this experience for these customers who may or may never have had Mo'Bettahs before, but they're going to have an experience of Hawaii. And if you keep that within 10 brands, it makes it so much easier to keep going and keep doing what you need to be doing, you just layer in the levers, and you layer in the technology stack, and you layer in the process to allow them to succeed.

[00:14:08] Wow. Well, first of all, it sounds delicious. I've, I've never eaten there, and I've never been to Hawaii, and so, I'm like, thinking, can you come a little bit further past the Midwest and get to the East Coast?

[00:14:17] Josh Boshard: Jen, I think we're gonna be there soon.

[00:14:20] Jen Kern: Oh, good. Oh, good. Mo'Bettahs, I got it on my list now. I've eaten at one Hawaiian restaurant that was in California, and I can't remember the name of it, but they also had surfboards.

[00:14:29] It was a very authentic sort of experience, but I think the diversity of food is fun. And, and when I look at your portfolio, I see a, I see a big diversity of brands, but you brought up technology, and I, I kind of want, I, I really am excited to talk to you about this because technology, there's so many, like, opportunities and challenges that reside within technology.

[00:14:49] And when I hear your story and, and I know a little bit about you guys, I wonder back to '08, what you were doing with technology then and what you're doing with technology now, how different is that, and how did you curate all those best practices, and can you, well, I'm asking you too many questions at once, so I'll let you answer the first one, but, you know.

[00:15:09] Josh Boshard: No, I, I really like that. You know, '08 was very different, it was a, it was a different world that we lived in, in restaurant. It was, okay, you have a POS, good, we're good, okay. If you have a solid POS and it's not going down, then things are happening, and sells are coming in the door, and you're just happy as can be.

[00:15:27] I think the restaurant ecosystem is more complicated than it's ever been. And today, what worked in 2008, would, would never work in 2023. And so, you take this, this tech stack that is pivotal to the success of a brand, and you have brands talking about data scientists, and you have brands talking about data lakes that are pulling from APIs into all of these systems to be able to do what you need to do.

[00:15:57] Josh Boshard: And it's just not the same as it, what it was before. I'll, I'll give you, what I would say is a, a secret to our success in technology is we utilize partners that would provide data back to us, and we would ask for data in ways that they had never heard of before, and we'd take that data, and we'd use our FP&A team, we'd use our investment team, and we would dissect that data in a way that I don't think people were really trying to do before, in 2008.

[00:16:28] And then we'd apply that data to, to our restaurants in ways that would allow our general managers to use that data and then make a difference. And so, you know, you, you have your, your regular tech stack, and we all know that network infrastructure is so important to, for uptime and continuation of service and making sure that the doors are open and that transactions are happening, and then you start layering on all the levers.

[00:16:53] So, you know, you third-party it, you're layering on your apps and your drive-through, and you're layering on your digital menu boards and everything else that, that coincides with that foundation of, of POS to be successful in what you're trying to accomplish. So, I know that's, that's kind of a long answer, but that's, that's some of the pieces that we think about every day.

[00:17:16] Jen Kern: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a really good one 'cause it sounds like you were thinking about data ownership way before the rest of the industry was thinking about. I mean, if you were thinking about it in '08 and already putting the parts and the pieces in place to be able to own that data,

[00:17:33] I mean, that's what most chains are really struggling with a lot today is, is not owning the data and then having gotten into digital a little bit late or because of the pandemic, they've got all this third-party ordering as well, and so they're not owning that data. So, were you actually creating, like, data lakes back in '08?

[00:17:54] Josh Boshard: So, not in '08, but it's definitely today'snorm, right? Back in '08, we were really testing and learning, and we were trying to figure out between three separate brands we had at that time that we, what was working, and I think the biggest opportunity that we have right now is you look at 10 different brands and across different segments of our industry, from quick-serve to fast-casual to drive-through to, you know, luxe-casual to fine dining.

[00:18:24] Now, as we've acquired these brands, we've taken on some of their process and we've taken on some of their systems. And so, you start looking at, okay, you know, for customer feedback, do we use tattle or do we use ovation, and what does that look like? And so, you can, you can really A/B test against each other to understand what's working and what's not working.

[00:18:45] And by being able to do that, that's really, really, catapult us to the next level of understanding data, being able to take what works and then apply it throughout all of our brands. And so, you'll, you'll see some technology partners that we have that we're using within eight, nine brands today where before they were all disparate systems,

[00:19:07] it was all over the place. And so, it's really taken us quite a bit of time to get to that point of understanding what's going to be working, but we still love being leading edge, we still love taking what's new and, and untested and putting it in place and trying it out and seeing if it works and if it does, applying those learnings to all of our brands. So, that's, that's kind of the fun part.

[00:19:30] Jen Kern: Can I ask how many different tech systems you use? There's so many, um, right now we are consolidating POS, right now we have four disparate systems, there's a lot of brands that we have purchased that were on Legacy POS software, and so we're, we're making transitions off of that. But then, you're, you're down to the newest tech.

[00:19:50] Josh Boshard: I mean, you know, something, like, if you've heard of YepChat or Lovage, you're, there's technology of, of phone systems taking phone orders, converting them into a digital order that then transitions that customer into a consistent order in your online ordering instead of going third party and losing all of your, your margin.

[00:20:12] And so, you know, from just those two, that's one tiny piece of 50, a 100 different technologies that we're using within Savory to make this all work.

[00:20:24] Jen Kern: Wow. And I think you had explained to me before that you have the integration infrastructure yourselves and that you do a lot of tech in-house, as well. What, explain that to me. What does that look like?

[00:20:35] Josh Boshard: In '08 we, we saw a need for a better employee experience and a better GM, GM experience. And so, what we were trying to pull together was a communications platform, and we saw LMS in a way that most people didn't see LMS. And so, we built a technology infrastructure on SharePoint and did an internal piece where we had our DevOps guys working again and building that.

[00:21:01] And we built it a very specific way for the three brands that we owned at the time. And we layered that on and we saw so much improvement in our brands, it was, it was incredible how it worked. And then we started buying brands that were outside the norm, are different than what they had looked before.

[00:21:18] And, you know, the small parts would break, and then it wouldn't work on certain things. And so, we started taking this vision of let's be hub and spoke and let's, let's apply the best technology within the industry to be able to accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. And at first, we went, "Okay, let's go ERP, let's find the biggest, best."

[00:21:38] And what we found out is that doesn't work. The enterprise technology out there doesn't work for 10 despair brands, right? 10 different brands who are all in different phases from 1, 2, 3 stores to 50 stores. It just doesn't work that way. And so, we started applying best-of-breed technology within the restaurant space and making sure that the APIs worked and that they all communicated with each other.

[00:22:04] And when we started doing that, we started seeing so much improvement at the store level, which is the most important level. We can do all of our stuff here at, at, at our platform team, but what it comes down to is how does the technology work for the, the GM who's in front of 50 employees, having to tell them about something or train them on something or get them to do something that we would like them to do.

[00:22:30] And so, we started looking at things very differently. And, and I think it's a place that most brands are at, but it, it could be improved. And what I say is, go hire yourself and your brand. If you want to see improvement in the process, get out there, hire yourself, see what that looks like and improve on that.

[00:22:50] And if you're not having a seamless experience for being able to go source new employees, go through a, an onboarding system that's compliant with state and government, and then be able to transition that to the same type of solution that then you can see all of your schedule and request time off.

[00:23:08] If you make that system just seamless for your employee, they're not going to, you're not gonna have turnover rates like you would've had where you have 10 different systems, and they don't know what to do, and they don't know how to log in and, and it's just all over the place, right? So, that's what I say,

[00:23:25] go hire yourself in your system, if it's not a, a beautiful, luxurious feel to your employees coming into your brand, you're, you're losing them there, and if your turnover rates are sky-high, your EBITDA's not gonna be where it needs to be. And it's as simple as that.

[00:23:42] Jen Kern: Wow. I love it. I love it. Well, turnover rates are very high, you know, most restaurants are really struggling with labor. I mean, it's been an issue since the pandemic, and it does, it doesn't seem to be getting much better. And so, I think this infrastructure that you have built with a focus on this employee retention and focus on the employee experience is, I gotta, I gotta think it's serving you well.

[00:24:05] I wanna go back to, to the, the systems talk, what we were just having and, and you kind of roughly said, like, 50 to a 100 systems, which, I mean, it sounds like a lot, right? I mean, it's, it's a, it's a rough number and, and like you said, this is a very complex, you're a multi-brand across, you know, multiple segments.

[00:24:24] Jen Kern: So, I'm not, I'm not throwing shade, I mean, obviously, you need a lot, you know, you've got a lot of systems with all those different brands. How important is it for you to consolidate and streamline? So, you, you gave the example of TAT innovation, for example, and, and, and you have this best-in-case scenario where you get to pit, like, two leading-edge, you know, technologies, look at the data and then make an informed decision.

[00:24:47] That's almost, like, you know, a lot of companies we work with, they put us through these long, you know, bake-offs, if you will, to see, because they wanna see, like, what's actually better and they wanna use it, right. And so, so, you've got sort of, like, a, a nice scenario there where you get to use them for a while and then decide, and so I'm just curious how, how important that consolidation is to you?

[00:25:08] Josh Boshard: I, I'll relate it to a story. I was sitting in a Chick-fil-A, and I heard this little pre-shift meeting happening, and I, I don't remember what time it was, it was, it was earlier in the morning. The general manager's talking to some of his employees, and he was telling him about the things that they should be doing that day and what they're gonna focus on, and how they're gonna get through it.

[00:25:28] And, and I, you know, being in the restaurant industry, I'm like, oh, this is, this is interesting, and I could overhear it, and he ended by saying, "And when someone says, 'Thank you,' what do we say?" And, you know, all the employees responded, "My pleasure." And I, I remember hearing that and going, wow, okay, so we always have this amazing experience going through Chick-fil-A,

[00:25:50] they're so fast, the speed of service is incredible, their stores are doing $10 million a year, I mean, like, just crazy numbers. Well, why is that? And so, you look at getting down to the basics of a system, which is communication of that general manager to the employees saying, "My pleasure." That's winning.

[00:26:12] Josh Boshard: And so, I started looking at that, going, okay, how can that apply to technology? And like you were saying, we, we do have 10 brands, we're buying brands with their own systems, they've been successful, we're buying them because they're successful. What is it that's making them so successful? Is it, you know, a certain GL program that they have,

[00:26:31] is it, you know, a flow-through process for invoices? Is it their, their marketing? Is it, whatever it is, right, we're trying to dial down to that core structure of what makes them successful. And then, also, we're trying to see if it would work within 10 different brands that we're running. And so, it, it is a difficult process, and it's not always going to be

[00:26:54] perfect for a concept that has a drive-through and doesn't have, sometimes doesn't have lobbies versus a sit-down restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, with fine dining Italian, right? So I, I have to look at what pieces allow us to scale and grow and, and most of those places of consolidation come at our corporate level.

[00:27:17] So, here in our teams, when we're dealing with a single provider for payroll, a single source for HRIS, most of the time, single source for our marketing pieces. But in all of that, with that said, get back to the basics, we always are trying to fix operations first, that customer experience in-store, what it looks like before we ever turn on the levers of marketing and adding third party and adding all these other revenue channels. You have to nail it, or you won't be able to keep that customer. And so, it's the exact same in IT, nail the basics, or you won't be able to, you know, keep going with what you're doing.

[00:27:58] Jen Kern: Right, right. Well, so smart. We, we do a, a state of digital, my team, every year we go out to enterprise brands, 20 locations or more, and we ask them what their biggest challenges are, you know, how, how they're performing, um, what strategies they're employing. And every year, guest experience, right, is the number one thing.

[00:28:19] You know, you can ladder everything underneath that, right, the, the, the consolidation, the menu, everything has to make a good guest experience. So, the communication piece that you're emphasizing, I think, is just so important. I think it gets overlooked a lot, you know, and it's like the forest for the trees, you know, having the next best, like, tech gadget, right?

[00:28:41] And, and being innovative like, like you're describing. So, having that guest experience, I mean, it's hard, though, right? Unpacking that and figuring out across, I mean, I imagine your head's on a swivel, right? And across all these different concepts, like, what is making the best guest experience at, at these places?

[00:28:56] And you mentioned best-of-breed and, and building this platform that includes a lot of best-in-breed technologies, and I'd love for you to explain to the audience how do you know if it's best-in-breed. Do you have a little checklist for best-in-breed? Are there, like, three or five things you look for that tell you if it's best-in-breed?

[00:29:16] Josh Boshard: Yeah. I think that really goes back to our, our FP&A teams, our investment teams of really diving in the numbers and telling us, okay, here's the, the results that the numbers aren't lying, and how does this look versus this brand that we're using it in both brands, they have a different POS or they have a different marketing system, which one is coming out on top and what are the elements there?

[00:29:39] And so, we're, we're obviously looking at the front lines to understand what that looks like, but in the back office, it's also telling a, a story that helps us make those decisions. And with those, it's, it's an interesting place, best, best-of-class is, you know, it's a Ferrari, it's a Lamborghini, but, you know, what are the things that allow that Lamborghini to work?

[00:30:01] I'll, I'll, I have an interesting story, a couple years ago, had the opportunity to go drive a Lamborghini on a racetrack. We drove that Lamborghini up to outside the city, which is outside of the racetrack, and we went to fill it up with fuel. I went to turn it back on, and it didn't start, and I started going like, "Oh, my gosh, I, I need to get to the track,

[00:30:24] I have this certain time that I'm able to go," and kind of panicked, and I'm, like, looking through the, you know, like, like any Lamborghini person does, they read through their manual and try to figure out why the car's not starting. And then I had this idea, I'm like, "Oh, man, okay, it's not beeping."

[00:30:41] So, I went inside, I got a $1.25 battery, and I put it in the key fob, and the car started right up, and I, I went, 

[00:30:51] Jen Kern: Oh, my gosh. 

[00:30:51] Josh Boshard: "Okay, so I'm in a $300,000 Lamborghini and a $1.25 battery."

[00:30:58] Jen Kern: Yeah.

[00:30:59] Josh Boshard: Took it down, right? And I, it, it's just so clear that that's exactly how restaurant goes. If you don't have the base systems in that place and you don't have the technology that's gonna allow you to grow and scale, even if you have the best-of-class, the little things are what are going to make it work.

[00:31:19] And it, it's funny because, you know, some good advice that I would give to restaurateurs is when you're signing up for whatever it is, if it's technology, if it's a system, it's a process that you're going to do, make sure you've identified who on your team is going to run it, who's going to be in the weeds, and make sure that that, that you take full advantage of the functionality

[00:31:43] of that talk, technology system, and so you're signing up for it, you might as well use it. So, don't sign up for things that you're not going to use. If you're gonna say, "Well, the GM will probably figure it out." He's not, he's not, he's going to be in front of the customer, training employees, trying to help,

[00:32:02] he's not going to put a, a technology piece in place unless you have the team and the people capable of rolling that out in a great, but when you can roll that out in a great way, that's when you optimize your brands.

[00:32:15] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. Well, you've mentioned you have a platform team, I like this term, you've used a couple times, your platform team, and you said it's 80 people. What does that look like?

[00:32:26] Josh Boshard: So, yeah, it's, it's our, our headquarters are based here in Lehi, Utah. We have all different divisions that are working in a unified front. And so, we have our construction management division that's doing land acquisition and real estate, and they're, they're using technology plays to tell us the data on where we should be going,

[00:32:47] and they're building buildings, and they're, they're buying land, and, and that process is pivotal to your success as a, as a growing brand. We did 30 stores last year where we, on track to do 50 stores this year, and those are 50 stores that have addresses. So, not just, "Hey, we're gonna do 50." Like, we are going to put 50 stores in the ground and caps, whatever it is,

[00:33:11] Josh Boshard: we're going to be opening those this year. And we currently have 130 stores, so if you, you have 130 stores, you're adding 50, you do need this platform team to be able to, to take care of that, and every single person has their specialty in what they're doing, and we allow them to be specialty in what they're doing.

[00:33:29] We allow them to be the place that makes the decisions, that helps us to grow and get better. And then we come together and say, okay, what could have approved on this build? And we pull in teams like our IT team and our finance team and our marketing team, and we make decisions to then gen two, okay,

[00:33:47] these are what our sites look like for the next 10 sites, and these are what they should look like for the next 20 sites. And so, you're pulling together this, this amazing ability to, to bring people together, make decisions, and then go out and do. It's, it's a little unheard of, and I think it's a, it's the reason that our, our partners within the industry like working with us, you know, when we have national agreements with Ecolab and Cintas and Coca-Cola. , They're in our, our office quite a bit and they, you know, most of the people in those, those brands, like our Coca-Cola rep, knows probably 70 of the 80 people by name because he's working with them in every way so that we can utilize Coca-Cola's data to be able to make decisions on what we're trying to do.

[00:34:35] So, it's it's an interesting place to have this many people all trying to do the same thing, it's, it's not easy, but our, our CEO, Shauna Smith, she's phenomenal, she listens, she takes the ideas, pulls it all together, and then actually implements and runs with it. So, it's, it's a great way of, of doing business.

[00:34:56] Jen Kern: Mm. I've, I've heard a lot of great things about her. I've heard Andrew speak at a conference, I think last year, yeah, very impressive, very impressive team. And, you know, you keep going back to the people, and I did see on your website, I think it said, "We are people, investors, before brand or restaurant investors," something along those lines. So, you're really walking the walk.

[00:35:22] Josh Boshard: Uh, yeah, I think so. I mean, we've built proprietary technology to listen to the voice of our, of our employee, and if you can understand the voice of your employee, then you're going to understand what the customer needs as well. And so, we've taken that technology, and we're able to hear what they're saying in a different way than a regional manager maybe is saying it, they may be saying the store's perfect and sells are great, but the underlying issue is all this going on with an assistant general manager. And our technology tells us from that employee what's important to them, we gather all that data, we take that information, and then we set goals on how we're going to

[00:36:05] better that employee experience for them by listening to that employee. And then we roll out programs based on the feedback that they're giving, and it's, I would say, industry-leading, it, it's something that we took from another industry and said, "Why can't we be doing that here in restaurant?" It's a lot of work, and our HR team does so much to understand, but it's pretty interesting that, that the, the sentiment of the employee

[00:36:33] Josh Boshard: a lot of time relates to the profitability of that store, and seeing that across 130 stores and 10 brands, it's really easy to make decisions at that point on what we do to better that experience, better that customer experience, better that employee experience, and then go out and, and duplicate that 50 times over or a 100 times over and make it to the next level.

[00:36:58] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. Wow. And I know that you guys are big on playbooks, and you've mentioned, you know, the playbook to me, how secret is that sauce, and what can you share about your playbooks?

[00:37:09] Josh Boshard: Yeah. Our, our playbook, books are made up of benchmarks, I mean, if, if you start looking at the things that matter most, you know, you, you start dialing in on the playbook's risk mitigation and how you can improve your e-bond. You start dialing in your credit card processing, you start dialing in, you know, why sales increased and how we're going to do that within the other brands, or how we could increase that in other markets and territories.

[00:37:37] And then, you know, our, a lot of those benchmarks are built on culture improvement, and if we can find ways to build our employees by, um, you know, bringing 'em through our Savory Institute and bringing 'em to our office to talk to some of the leaders about how we want them to grow as leaders and grow as people first before we teach them how to do, you know, an order of the food order, right?

[00:38:04] Josh Boshard: If you can teach them how to communicate with our customers and communicate to our employees, you've absolutely won, and we know that, we know that employees aren't gonna be with us forever, that, you know, this may just be a stepping stone for them to become a doctor or to become a lawyer. That's okay.

[00:38:20] While they're with us, we're going to train them the best that we can using our LMS systems, using our internal Savory Institute or the brand institutes to be able to get them to the next place. And that then allows them to grow, and hopefully, they stick with us because they, they see the growth that's happening.

[00:38:38] And, and a lot of the times for us, it's just, we have so much going on that we're able to take people who have really weird talents and place them in a place that actually allows them to succeed within our growing brand. So, it's, it's a fun place to be when you can understand those skill sets, and maybe they're a maximizer, or maybe they're strategic, or maybe they, they have an ideology of this, and we place them in places that are gonna allow them to win.

[00:39:07] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. In your playbooks and, and as part of, like, metrics and KPI, KPIs that you're talking about, can you share with the audience what you have found to be your top metrics and KPIs that you track across your brands?

[00:39:23] Josh Boshard: It's really the same as anyone else in the industry, you're looking at prime costs, your operational excellence within what you can control, and then just optimizing on those. If you can get the, those are, those are last place to dial in, once you've put in the right systems to be able to do what you need to do.

[00:39:40] But you could really dial those in if you do have the systems because then you can go back and utilize those systems to tweak specific things that allow for your, your store level EBIDTA, we call it sleepIDTA, your store level EBITDA to be optimized. And if you have that ability to then understand, put it in process and then review it,

[00:40:03] you, you can make great opportunities. I think our, our playbooks are based on budgets, and so we, we build out a forecast of what that would look like for the next year, and we try to hit that budget, and we've got to the point that our investment team, coming from private equity, equity, is so good.

[00:40:20] I'm so impressed at the end of the year when they've said that we're gonna do this and we actually accomplish those goals, you know, that's, that's very different from, hopefully, this year is gonna go okay, we'll see where we end at the end.

[00:40:34] Jen Kern: Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, I mean, I've been talking to a few operators about, like, what are they anticipating this year in terms of growth, overall sales growth, and part of the digital survey that we ran was looking at off-premise and off-premise sales, off-premises sales growth, digital growth essentially, which appears to be slowing a little bit. Curious what trend you're seeing with your brands in terms of the digital sales growth and, and your off-premise channels.

[00:41:04] Josh Boshard: So, our investment team has looked at 250 restaurants over the past couple years, and they're doing this because they're looking to acquire and, and partner with brands. And so, we, we get a good view of what's happening across every segment, across flavor profile of brand. It's easy to see that digital transactions are, are coming down a little bit and, you know, the, the win really becomes the experience.

[00:41:31] So, I, I think, you know, for us to be able to see that, we see a little bit of a downtrend on, on what that looks like. But we've already gone through this before, you know, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012. We were in this downtrend, and we were building stores, and we were trying to capture market share. And then, during COVID, we saw the same thing when everyone else pulled back and said, "Let's stop,"

[00:41:56] we actually said, "Let's push harder." And we put more stores up, and we, we signed more leases, and we went forward. We're not stopping because we have the capital to be able to do it, that's one of the, the brilliant ways that this business is working for us is having that capital to be able to apply it when it's most usable.

[00:42:16] And so, for us right now, it is keep pushing forward, keep going, we have the right systems, we have the right brands, we know we can grow and, you know, if, if sales are coming down a little bit, hopefully, labor is also going to come down a little bit and we're gonna find more talent, you know, in 2008 we had 900 people signing up to have interviews for a new store.

[00:42:38] Now, that wasn't the case in '21, '22, even right now, but there's a little bit of a curve happening, and we're starting to see really good talent, say I want to be a part of something special, I'm willing to come work with you guys because I know that I'll be able to use my talents to be able to do that. And so, you know, on that, on that operational excellence, on that playbook that you're talking about, you know, do you lose a little bit in sales?

[00:43:03] Yeah. But can you gain on labor? Yeah. Your, your EBITDA looks better on that side, or can you apply a system in a different way? Can you roll people back into your stores and have an amazing experience so that they're wanting to come back in those stores? And that's, that's something that, Andrew, our, our managing partner, talks about.

[00:43:22] He is all in on that experience that people still want to go out, people have to eat, and we know that food is love. And that's, that's something that Shauna Smith always says, food is love. We believe that.

[00:43:36] Jen Kern: I do too, in all its forms, in all its forms, whether I'm making it or someone else is making it, it's, you know, a lot of love goes into the process, and that's, it, I mean, the whole thing is just so interesting, hearing about your brand and, and thanks for giving us this little sneak peek behind the curtain.

[00:43:52] I mean, I, I think it will be a challenging year for some folks, I mean, we've got the s, supply chain, you know, rising food costs and labor, like you're saying, I mean, if you build the brand and the culture, people will wanna work there. And so, I love that you, you keep coming back to that, I think that is just so important,

[00:44:14] and we've been talking about, did a labor series before doing this one, and it was all about, like, how do we change the way restaurants are structured, the way people view restaurants, I mean, I run into people all the time, I mean, I had someone say it to me just a few weeks ago, "Oh, I don't wanna work in restaurants.

[00:44:27] People hate working in restaurants." It's, like, there is a mindset, I mean, there, a lot of restaurants of the past ruined people, you know, and there is a bit of a reputation of if you work in a restaurant, it's gonna be a grind and long hours, you're gonna be treated like crap, whether it's by the owners or by the guests.

[00:44:44] So, focusing on that, that culture and that employee experience is, it's, it's gotta pay off at, at one point or the other. But back to the supply chain, how are you guys handling that, the rising food costs?

[00:44:55] Josh Boshard: Yeah. Supply chain is a division within Savory that's always been really solid. We have a director of, of, or VP of Food and Beverage who is phenomenal, has, has done what we've done with our other partners, and they've taken the relationship to the next level, to the point where now it's really easy to be working with manufacturers and distributors in getting to where we need to be.

[00:45:22] You know, even when it's, it's really tough on the supply chain, they're focusing on that, that give back, you know, if, if someone goes above and beyond it at Cisco or US Foods, how can you recognize them for what, what they've done to impact your business? Because they are, they are going out of their way right now to make things happen.

[00:45:42] Josh Boshard: And over the past year and a half, the, they've, I would call it heroics, the, the industry of, of what was happening in supply chain was all about heroics, how you could bring things in and do things differently and break the mold, and I think our, our partners did that for us. And when you, when you have partners that are able to do that for,

[00:46:02] it's easier to win in an environment like this where eggs cost $10 and, you know, for a dozen at the, at the grocery store. And it's, it's affecting restaurants, right? And every person is feeling, not being able to get cups a year ago and now this, and marketing issues and not having branding and it's just, it's really tough.

[00:46:22] Josh Boshard: But the right partners in place will allow you to win in that place. And there's also a lot of give that happens too. You understand that the partners need to make money as well. And if you're willing to win together, that's a different place, then I won, you lost in that scenario.

[00:46:41] Jen Kern: Mm-hmm. The structure of contracts, negotiating, yes, I mean, some of this is looking a lot different today than it did even just three, five years ago. Innovation, what does innovation mean to you?

[00:46:55] Josh Boshard: I don't know, I, I look at innovation, you know, what are the technologies that are being used outside the restaurant industry that you could pull into restaurant? And you look at the, the most wild thing right now is ChatGPT, and everyone's talking about this Open AI and how it works, and, and I just, I think it's so crazy that you could utilize something to help build, help code, help structure your business and

[00:47:24] I feel like if restaurants aren't using some sort of AI in that way, you may be missing the boat and, and at the same time, I don't love all the, the technology that's going to, you know, take over the world. And the funniest thing of all is I get on this morning, ChatGPT, and I go to use it, and it says, "Currently at capacity."

[00:47:46] And so, I can't even use the technology that I want to use to create efficiency and streamline for my business. That's innovation that it's breaking while it's being used by billions of people, all right, and, it's breaking. So, it, it, that is so leading edge that, I, I just love that side of the business.

[00:48:08] And so, okay, how do I now apply that to restaurant? What can I take there to then build my business, build marketing, build sales, build our facility management team so that they can do what they need to do? Are there opportunities like that across the board, and for me, that's what I'm always looking about. I, I love technology, and I like implementing things that actually work.

[00:48:33] Jen Kern: Very cool. Well, I was hoping you'd say ChatGPT, I didn't wanna, that was like gonna be, like, the second part of my question, and it came up in our pod, yeah, it came up in our podcast last week with, with Darien Bates, and he talked about it, too, like, the automation and the AI side of that ChatGPT.

[00:48:47] And by the way, I've not been able to get on there. The first time I went to get on there was about a month ago when I first heard about it, and it said, "At capacity, we'll let you know when spots open up." 

[00:48:58] And then I went back, like, two weeks ago, same message. Darien said that he could hook me up, so I'm gonna, like, try to, try to, but I get, like, so distracted and busy doing other things,

[00:49:09] I forget about it, but, I mean, yeah, it's, it's breaking, like you're saying, it's breaking and, and that's because the demand is there and people are using it, and it's doing some pretty cool stuff that we haven't seen before, it's taking Google to the next level, right?

[00:49:23] As we wrap here, I wanna, I wanna touch base with you on some of the softer side of the stuff that you're, you're doing.

[00:49:29] Jen Kern: And we talked about your Restaurantology Conference and some of your charitable. Can you talk, can you talk to us a little bit about the, that side of the brand? I mean, you've been talking about the people and the employees all along, but what, what's the magic that happens at the, the Restaurantology Conference?

[00:49:43] Josh Boshard: Man, we, we've, this is, we're going into our fifth year with restaurantology, we have seen, like, magic happen, and it's because we're, what we're trying to do is give back to those restaurateurs who don't have the support that they need. The, the 1, 2, 3, 10-unit brands are the ones who need the most support, and they're the ones who are being innovative, they're, they're putting out a product that no one else has. 

[00:50:12] And so, we, we thought through, okay, we could do a million things, what's the biggest impact that we could make? Well, we hold our Restaurantology Conference at, in the fall every year, and we invite, last year was, was a, a, 100 different brands, 500 people. They are restaurants who are trying to make it, trying to understand how to utilize technology or marketing or, you know, apply techniques of P&L structure. And what, what we brought in is growth leaders and speakers, and anyone who's, last year we had, we had Crumbl speak to us, you know, their journey from one store to, you know, they're at, like, 700 now, and what that looks like. And then, we have, you know, tech gurus coming in and speaking about, you know, Hart House and the brands and what it looks like to grow a brand like that and how to market that. And so, it's just, it's such a great experience. And we, we have our partners who, who make that all happen,

[00:51:12] Cintas, Ecolab, Coke, and Pepsi, and it's really fun because we don't, we don't allow any sales guys or marketers to come in, and so you're not getting bombarded. We have these kiosk desks where you can just go up and start talking about technology and, and meet with our divisions to ask 'em what's working in toes, what's working in this, what's working in all these other things, or what's not working?

[00:51:35] Josh Boshard: And it's pretty interesting to go through that and see, you know, all the, what you're dealing with at a smaller level. So, for us, giving back is, is huge. We, we did a huge Save the Cups this past year for Swig, and that was specific to cancer awareness. And so, it's become this, Swig is a drink, concept that we have,

[00:51:54] it's drive-through, it's incredible. The, the flavors are just amazing, and it's kind of taken over the world, we actually, we're franchising, we're starting the franchise process of Swig right now. And so, you know, a big piece of our success 

[00:52:06] Jen Kern: All right. Let's, let's make a PDA there for that, come on, public announcement. Franchises for Swig.

[00:52:12] We are going to be franchising Swig and, and, and the stores are, are fantastic.

[00:52:17] And so, it's, it's such a great place to be, but they focus on giving back to the local communities, and they focus on bigger initiatives, like cancer awareness, and it's just so great to see, you know, communities getting involved to a, a restaurant allowing communities to get involved to do something bigger. And for us, that's, that makes everything worth it, so.

[00:52:40] Jen Kern: Yeah. Yeah. Final question. I know we're coming up to time. Final question. What, what parting advice do you have for folks out there that are trying to make their restaurants run smoother, more profitably, better operations, improve that employee experience like you've been talking about. What's some advice that you have that we might not have touched on just yet?

[00:53:00] Josh Boshard: All right. It's a single word, who. So, you're looking for opportunities to recognize your team, who created it, who negotiated it, who implemented it, who kept it running, who optimized it, who passed it down so that your brand could become better. And if you'll focus on who in recognition, you'll find a lot of people want to continue doing what they're doing.

[00:53:26] Jen Kern: Who, reminds me of Dr. Seuss. Whoville, yes.

[00:53:32] Josh Boshard: Yeah, that's right. 

[00:53:32] Jen Kern: Oh, that's great, that's great. Well, Josh, really appreciate you joining and sharing a little bit of your secrets to success there at Savory Fund and, and some of the great brands you're working with. So, you mentioned Swig, you mentioned Mo'Bettahs, uh, what, what are some of the other ones?

[00:53:47] Josh Boshard: Yeah. Swig, Mo'Bettahs, R&R Barbeque, PINCHO show out of Florida, the Crack Shack out of California, amazing chicken concept. Sicilian Butcher, Via 313, Hash Kitchen and Saigon Hustle.

[00:54:02] Jen Kern: Great. Oh, Saigon Hustle is the one I heard Andrew talking about at the conference last year. It sounds so interesting. Well, thank you so much, really appreciate your time and getting to know your brand and getting to know you a little bit more, although I, I am a little bit remiss we didn't get to talk about your barefoot running, but just, we'll just 

[00:54:21] Josh Boshard: I know, I'm into it, with all this snow it's a little hard, but come out in the summer, we'll go barefoot running.

[00:54:27] Jen Kern: Yeah, and I hope you get out on the slopes, my goodness, I hear you're getting lot of snow out there, so, so, so go get it, go, go get after it, and thank you for being a great restaurant reinventor, and, and focusing on innovation and focusing on water, what matters most with is, which is who and the people. So, thank you, Josh, God bless, have a wonderful day, and we will talk to you soon.

[00:54:48] Josh Boshard: Thanks, Jen.

[00:54:49] Outro: Thank you for checking out this episode of Restaurants Reinvented. This show is brought to you by Qu, a restaurant tech company paving a brighter future for operators with the industry's first unified commerce platform. If you enjoyed what you learned in this episode, make sure to follow Restaurants Reinvented in your favorite podcast app or visit qubeyond.com, that's q-u-b-e-y-o-n-d.com/podcast, to find all of your latest episodes.