The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions

Harnessing Technology and Marketing for Explosive Growth: The Hothead Burritos Story

• Erika Rivas

Share episode

In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, host Jeremy Julian interviews Peter Wiley, co-founder and marketing IT mastermind behind Hothead Burritos. They discuss the company's innovative use of technology and marketing strategies which have fueled their rapid growth. Peter shares insights on the importance of integrating marketing with IT, streamlining operations through digital ordering, and leveraging loyalty programs. The conversation also covers Hothead Burritos' unique offerings, including their variety of sauces, and their approach to catering and delivery. Listeners get a deep dive into how tech-savvy practices can lead to a more efficient and customer-focused restaurant experience.

00:00 Hot Head Burritos

01:13 Introduction and Guest Introduction

02:41 Hothead Burritos: Brand Overview

04:18 Expansion and Locations

05:18 Customer Experience and Menu Customization

09:32 Digital Integration and Online Ordering

13:23 Third-Party Delivery and Integration

17:36 Catering and Large Orders

18:46 Creating an Online Ordering Menu for Catering

20:03 Evaluating Menu Offerings for Online and Catering

21:26 The Importance of Loyalty Programs

22:24 Incentivizing Catering Orders

27:19 Converting Customers Across Channels

30:35 Leveraging AI and Data Analytics

32:33 Popular Menu Items and Personal Favorites

34:39 Staying Engaged with Hothead Burritos



Speaker 2:

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

Jeremy Julian:

What happens when a Midwest burrito chain cracks a code of blending marketing technology and 16 different sauces? On today's show, we dive into the story of hothead burritos and one of its founders, Peter Wiley, the marketing IT Mastermind behind their explosive growth. He and I have a really unique conversation that I don't see in many people where he is not only a founder, but understands. The role of technology as well as marketing and how it's going to help grow their brand. He shares some really expert insights on how he took away tablets and changed the ordering experience for their guests to continue to see their growth that, uh, nations Restaurant News, and many other publications continue to talk about. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of CBS North Star. We sell the North Star point of sale solution for multi-units. Please check us out. At CBS northstar.com and now onto the episode. Okay. Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. Uh, today I am joined by a brand that selfishly I was able to experience, and I know Peter will talk a little bit about who they are, where it came from and, and whatnot, but, um, really, really good product, fun brand growing, really making a huge difference in kind of their markets. But Peter, why don't you introduce yourself real quick. a man of many trades, lots of different things that you get to do for the brand, and then we'll talk a little bit about. Who you get to work with?

Peter Wiley:

Sure. Well, my name's Peter Wiley. I'm with a brand called Hothead Burritos outta the Midwest. Uh, my brother started it in 2007, so we've been around for quite a few years. Uh, I've been doing, marketing from the very beginning, logo design, radio commercials, you name it, I've done it in one shape form. And as we've, grown, taken on more of an IT role. you know, it was a big bridge between marketing and it. Now it's hard to do one without the other. So I kind of oversee the point of sale, credit card processing, gift cards, point of just really all those parts that have to play together to make a campaign work. so that's my main role right now. So

Speaker:

I'm saying, did you jump into it willingly or are you one of those people that reluctantly said. Hey, if this crap doesn't work, I'm not gonna be able to get my marketing stuff off the ground. Or, or were you kind of a nerd that you enjoyed that side? I'm kind of a nerd.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. I mean, I, I've always been, uh, anything from graphic design, audio engineering, been audio engineer for 30 years, still mixed for a country band for fun. Um, so I like, I like how all the little things work together, and I think it's funded fun to fit that puzzle piece.

Speaker:

That's awesome. So for those that have not gotten to experience, and again, I'm selfish enough that I have been able to, to experience it. What is Hothead Burritos tell, tell us a little bit about the brand. Sure. You know, where did it come from? You know, you say it's been around, close to, close to 20 years, I think, you know. Oh seven, yeah. Yeah. 18 years. Yeah, 18 years. Yeah. but what is the brand? Is it, you know, talk us through what is the brand, what makes it special?

Peter Wiley:

Sure, yeah. It's a fast casual Mexican place, so, or, or burritos, hothead. Burritos as you come. My figured, uh, we actually sell probably 60 to 70% bowls. Uh, we also offer quesadillas, tacos and nachos. But burritos and bowls are certainly the core, thing. And really what separates us from, uh, any of the number of other competitors out there, uh, is we offer a large, wide variety of flavors. And specifically we offer 16 different sauces. lots of places to go and you can get sour cream, you can get, you know, hot salsa or mild salsa. That's cool. We got all that. but really it comes down to sauces, right? We have our signature hothead sauce, which is a zesty garlic sauce. it's super popular. We have a sweet habanero sauce that's, uh, all sweet and no heat, as we like to say. Literally not hot at all, and some people like to mix the two. so as we've grown evolved, we've tried different sauces. We've recently rolled out like an avocado lime and a jalapeno ranch. And, so that just really lets you get what you want the way you want it, and have some fun with it. That's the big difference. We also do toast our burritos and bowls. um, familiar with the speed ovens. Our next campaign coming up, uh, in the fall or in the winter is everything's better toasted, right? So it gives us some fun play on words and differentiating factor for

Speaker:

I love that. And so talk me through where, what is your guys', I guess penetration, you said you're up upper Midwest. I I, I think you said you're based in Ohio. How many stores are there? Kind of, how, how big of a, a swath are you, have you guys had at this point? Sure,

Peter Wiley:

yeah. We're at, uh, 87 locations currently. Um, a majority are in the Midwest. We're based outta Dayton, Ohio. and we go up into, Cleveland, Youngstown. Toledo a little bit. Everything in between Columbus, heavily in Cincinnati. I would say probably between Dayton, Cincinnati, there's probably 40 ish within, you know, a short drive. and then you get, we have a couple in New England, uh, operated by a franchisee out there. Got one, uh, out in Texas. And then we got, five in the panhandle of Florida. so that's kind of fun. Had a franchisee that was down there, um, and migrating, working our way into Indiana. I think we're up to seven locations in Indiana. I currently got one in Kentucky working on a couple more. We do have, new Jersey's probably next on the. They're looking for a location right now. goal is to grow and keep growing. So,

Speaker:

uh, that's awesome. so Peter, talk me through a little bit of kind of the experience, because again, I got to go to, I think everybody has been to some of the stalwarts that have been in the space, the Qdoba, the Chipotles of the world, and they go in and to your point, the menu selection is pretty slimmed down. You kind of know what you're gonna get. And then you go in and again, I went to a competitor on the East coast, that is based in New Jersey or started in New Jersey. You probably know exactly who I'm talking about, just recently. And I brought a new guest there who had never been.

Speaker 3:

Yeah,

Speaker:

and there's so much more. There's sauces, there's different ways you can experience the brand. And so I'd love for you. As we talk about in person, and then we'll get to kind of the technology and how you guys do this, but how do you guys introduce these type of experiences to your first time guests? Because it is a elevated experience from some of those stalwarts that have been in the space.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah, and that's a great question, and one we continue to work on every single day. Uh, our several years ago, to try to address that to the best of our ability is we came out with craft recipes. So yeah, a lot of places you walk in again. name Chipotle, right? Huge sales. Super simple menu. You had three or four things to pick over the last couple years. They rolled out a few more things. They actually rolled out a sauce recently if you didn't notice.

Speaker:

Oh, they didn't. I'm not a huge, my, my teenage kids are big Chipotle people. Yeah. I, I see the bags in the trash, but I don't go there that often myself. But, uh,

Peter Wiley:

fair enough. Yeah. You know, they're great brands. They do very well. So nothing bad to say about them. but again, super simple menu. I'll take that. Right. Versus you walk into us, you're like, wow, that's a lot of like, I got a burrito or a bowl. Now you have all these other toppings I gotta choose and, and 16 sauces to choose from, and which one do I get? so what we did is simply built craft recipe, what we call craft recipes. So we said, here's some, here's some of our most popular combinations, different flavor profiles. Some are sweet, some are hot, some are super hot. right now we have a, its fall, 2025. We've got a ghost pepper and a reaper burrito, right? It's got Carolina Reaper cheese, ghost pepper sauce, spicy steak, spicy chicken. So we try to go. Back and forth in both ways. So when you walk in, you can be overwhelmed. In my mind, I kinda liken it to a smoothie place. Mm-hmm. It's like you walk in, you pick, man, I'm gonna take, you know that smoothie?'cause it sounds good. So that, that, that is our approach to try to really simplify the experience and also give you something that you really like. Because if you go to some of the other brands and come into hothead and get the identical thing. It's not gonna have the same flavor profile, so you might be disappointed. So we're like, no, we really want you to try one of the sauces. Pick one of them, put it on there, we'll give it to you on the side. Uh. And push people into those different flavor profiles that they've never tried before.

Speaker:

Yeah. And I, and I, and I think as consumers and as you look at the studies, especially the younger we get, you know, the younger demographic is spending money, they oftentimes want those abilities. That was just with a brand, um, with people that are now running, uh, KFC's, new saucy brand.

Speaker 3:

Exactly. And it's all

Speaker:

about. You know those 11 new, new spices? I, we were talking before we get recorded. I was with, you know, some of the new operators over there and they're like, yeah, it's all about those 11 sauces and people being able to to do that. And so I love that. How do you guys balance that with efficiency to ensure that you guys don't have a queue that goes out the. Out the door and you guys start, are treating people because they can't come in and get the experience that they might want because they've only got 30 minutes for lunch or whatever else.

Peter Wiley:

Yep. So craft recipes help address that.'cause you come in and say like, I'll walk in, take the jalapeno ranch, but I don't say anything else. So they build, they know the recipe, they go down, build it. Done super fast. if from a training standpoint, if you're kind of new, you haven't been there before, not necessarily wanna try the craft, or if you do wanna try the craft, you know, we have line speeds, we call it, right? Ask the, ask three questions, right? Would you like, white rice or black or, um, we got Mexican rice now too, so we got, uh, white rice, brown rice, or Mexican rice. Great. Would you like black beans or pinto? Would you like chicken soy? You're not asking them 50 million questions on everything. You're leading them through the most popular items to help'em, have a great experience. Simplify it for the crew, simplify it for the customer so when they get done, they're like. That was pretty easy. Mm-hmm. Now I, I like it and I can get it again.

Speaker:

Well, and, and again, we talk about the importance of having the choice and having this brand that's not irreverent, but it's, it's fun and kind of spunky. Yeah. Even your guys' little logo is kind of that way. Yep. So, now how does that translate, um, Peter to kind of the digital aspect? I know part of what we wanted to talk about on today's episode is kind of how do you guys get digital and again, in your guys' concept. Outside of catering, but even just for whether it's third party or it's first party, getting to digital in fast casual is imperative in 2025 and beyond. A hundred percent. So talk me through kind of why that's such a critical piece to be able to have that same experience digitally for these people that want to engage with the brand.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. It, it is critical nowadays. I've been in, uh, some conferences recently and you kind of do a survey like how many people you know, had online ordering five years ago, and

Speaker 3:

there.

Peter Wiley:

few go up. How many people had online ordering two years ago? You know, it just goes up and up, right? Mm-hmm. we had basic online ordering, before COVID, and we had thankfully migrated to, our new point of sale, which is Q and we used their online ordering. and it just made it super easy to manage, super easy for customers to get on and place the order. So you gotta have it. We're 90% carry out and we're. 30% off-prem. If I get my, if I remember correctly, that's a combination of third party delivery and, online ordering. And we're just seeing that continue to go up, uh, month after month, year after year. And so we have to embrace it and get good at it operationally and technologically.

Speaker:

yeah. And, and so talk me through,'cause again, you guys have got lots of choices. Mm-hmm. So now we put those, it's easy when I'm standing in front of a staff member and it, you go through this experience. Yeah. Yes. You can have the brown rice, the Mexican rice, or the white rice, but being able to manage even what burrito got into what bag and, and you know, ensuring that all of that happens. Yeah.'cause you don't have a easy way to guest recover. If it's off-prem. So I'd love for you to talk through some of the things that you guys think about because you guys have got probably, I mean, if you were to extrapolate it out, tens of thousands of choices between proteins and sauces and, and starches and, and beans that just turn into something that's challenging to execute on every time and get the guests what they're looking for so that they do come back and, and we all know that repeat guests are, are a huge part of our business and we have to have it.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. Yeah, that, that is definitely a challenge. And again, it's something I think all of us wrestle with in the restaurant industry at whatever level you're at.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiley:

Um, we worked really hard to, we use a kitchen chi system, so we don't have a KDS again, most of our stuff is made on a make line, so we don't have a separate make line in most of our tables or most of our restaurants. so the kitchen chip just seemed to be the best solution because you can. Essentially attach it to the burrito or bowl you're working on and it tells you exactly what to do. It just read the, read it, what's on it, chicken? Mm-hmm. White rice, et cetera. Makes it super easy to go down the line, put it in the bag. We have the ability to print out a whole summary kitchen chip, so you can say, well, this order, you know, has four items. It's got two, two burritos, a bowl and a bag of chips. Cool. I got my master ticket that has all of that on that I got my individual tickets for each of the items. I can double check that I got'em all, put'em all in the same bag, put that the customer receipt on the bag that has everything listed on it. Uh. You should be good to go. I wish I could say we were perfect. we are not, occasionally they grab the wrong thing, wrong order, but, uh, that's, that is a, a primary focus to get better and better at that.

Speaker:

Yeah, and I think in general, I, I, you know, thinking about that first is definitely something that, that I think brands don't evaluate so that they can get that training. Because again, oftentimes when that guest has gotten the bad experience. They don't come back. And so ensuring that you guys can, can, get the right things in the bag is a big piece of what I spend time. With operators, they're all working on it. Yeah, they're all working on, you know, there's gotta be some magic bullet and eventually we'll get there. But where there's some computer that's gonna be sitting and looking at the make line and saying, Peter, did you ensure that you put the right thing in here, but we're not there today. so talk me through'cause again, I dine out, I go to places that don't have point of sale, integrated with third party, integrated with online ordering. They've got tablet. What I call tablet hell, where they got a half a dozen tablets sitting there on the, on, you know, on the line. And somebody's sitting there making, all of these different, different, processes. They run out of something, now they gotta go to each of the tablets and go turn off. Mm-hmm. You know, the, the protein that they ran out of, or the sauce that they ran out of, talk me through why you guys felt it was so critical to have these pieces integrated and what does it do ultimately for your guests and really the operators at the end of the day? I can

Peter Wiley:

totally relate to that because that's where we were before. Yeah. You got a GrubHub tablet sitting there. You ding in, you got a DoorDash tablet, you got Uber eat. Yep. Generally, in all of our markets, we have all three. I realize other markets may have even more, but it was like, good gosh, this is, you know. A nightmare, right? I'm sitting in an office, let's be honest, I'm not rolling out, I'm not sitting there rolling burritos every day. and so part of the key was getting, you know, seeing that right? And seeing what a nightmare it was to deal with. Um, we tried a couple other solutions in between that, tried some menu mapping to get'em to try to come into the point of sale. They kind of did it, but ultimately, lots of times you're still relying on that tablet. and, I'm gonna, I can't help but plug Q on this one because they really. Simplified that one of the key things we looked in, the point of sale, again, having coming from that problem was as we started shopping around, what kind of integrations do you have? Is a third party required? Do you have direct integrations? And that was honestly a really big hook for me because we was becoming such a big part of our business.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiley:

And I think more importantly, it was becoming such a pain point. you can't do it right. If you can't make the order right, let alone get it in the bag. And so by having the direct integration, my crew is obl, not oblivious. I mean, they have it, it says on the kitchen chip, but whether it's an online order, a DoorDash order, a GrubHub order, or Uber Eats order, it just comes through the point of sale. Prints out the kitchen chip. They don't, they don't have to think about it. They don't have to look at a tablet. It just says, you know, GrubHub or DoorDash. we also do, uh, delivery through DoorDash Drive. Yeah, that's where I was gonna

Speaker:

go next was just help, help our listeners that are less familiar with DoorDash Drive. Yeah. I think everybody's familiar with DoorDash having, having an order get inserted into the restaurant and they're the, the arbiter of the record, but DoorDash Drive is kind of a little bit in between. I'd love for you to educate some of our listeners that might not be familiar with that.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah, it's, we've been using it for a number of years. So you have DoorDash, uh, marketplaces. They'll generally call it if you talk to'em. and then you have DoorDash Drive, and they actually have another one called DoorDash Storefront. So, um, they, they're kind of playing in the. A few of us feel a little bit if you want to on the outline.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiley:

But DoorDash Drive specifically what it does is it allows us to take orders through our website or through our platform native, if you wanna call it. just like they're placed in a pickup order and they simply can pick delivery. And on the backend, when they choose delivery, you know, it runs all the address check and all of that. It sends a call out to DoorDash Drive, which, or DoorDash, essentially drivers and says, Hey, we got an order to be picked up. Without the integration, you could still do this manually, but you have to do it through the website and select a driver. So, with the integration, it just, it's, again, it's transparent for my crew, it's, I won't say it's completely transparent to the customer,'cause customer gets it. Guess what? There's a DoorDash person there delivering their food and they're like. But I think they've come around to, that's just how it is. It's really, really hard to compete, uh, at least to our volume of delivery, to self deliver. DoorDash Drive makes it very effective, very affordable. It's a flat rate instead of a commission, right? Mm-hmm. So if I'm on, somebody comes through DoorDash marketplace, you pay 10 or probably 20 to 30% on a commission. Yep. Versus DoorDash Drive, you have just a flat fee. So the bigger the order, the more money I make as a restaurant, the more profitable I am. Versus on marketplace, you just keep getting chunked at the percentage. So,

Speaker:

Yeah. No, and it's, it's amazing how few people I think, exercise that, and I know Uber's got a competitive product as well coming out you know, the Uber Eats group is doing something similar mm-hmm. And are looking to do exactly the same thing. We've had them on the show before. you talked about large orders. I know that one of the growth areas for your business is trying to figure out how to get those larger orders. I'd love for you to talk through what does that look like? And, and you know, again, I just got back. Tech would, the time we're recording this, they would have talk about catering. A lot of people are returning back to office and catering orders come back and no different than you guys were able to expand your offerings. Um, having online ordering and, and third party during COVID. Now with people coming back in, how are you guys thinking about catering and what does catering, have the ability to impact the business, I guess, in general for you guys?

Peter Wiley:

Catering is huge for us. and we want it to be bigger. So for the last probably two years, it's been a primary focus. I wish we could say we excelled at it. we, you have not. Over the years, we've, so we just thought it was challenging, it's not an easy thing to do. Um, you got customers that wanna negotiate with you and, businesses that wanted on short notice. So it was like, man, how do we manage this and make it really easy for the team, right?

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah, the customer might get it, but the team's gotta be able to execute it without stressing out about it and make it super easy. so what really what we did is we moved it all to online ordering.

Speaker 3:

So

Peter Wiley:

again, we were able to create a separate online ordering menu for catering, which was great. makes it super easy to order. You can add modifiers, you can add, you know, add-ons, you can pick your number of people, et cetera. And we built it into packages that we have. Easy, a deluxe and a VIP. So it kind of fixes your price point. You know, do you want the basic or do you want something that's got a few more options, or you just kind of want all of the options out there, and load it up. And by doing that, what we did is we took it out of the, the phone call, we took it out of our crew, having to understand and. Do math and have a spreadsheet. It just all that went away. Just, Hey, you wanna place catering order hit us up online. Cool. Guess what? You can sign up for a rewards account and get points on catering, which is awesome. Uh. So it just comes through as an order and the crew kicks it out. We have some parameters on, you know, how much lead time you need and et cetera, to certainly accommodate the larger orders. Uh, but that was our solution, was push it online, make it really easy to order, and, gives the customer some benefit to order. Again, if you're a rewards member, it's a huge. For you as a customer and our crew just, they don't think about it anymore. Once you understand how to do it, like, man, I'm just cooking a bunch of chicken and throw it in a pan, right? And I don't gotta roll burrito, I'm gonna do nothing. It's actually super easy. So your labor goes way down and your profitability goes up.

Speaker:

Well, and that was really where I was, I was gonna go with it, Peter, is, is did you guys for online? And a lot of people I think need to evaluate this for just pure online orders, whether it's through DoorDash Drive, or even for, pickup or, or any of those other areas as well as catering. It sounds like you guys have evaluated your menu offerings that they may or may not be the exact same as what I can get when I walk into the store. Talk me through kind of how you guys evaluate that.'cause catering, some places will cater fully made kind of, you know, pre-made burritos or, or bowls or whatever else. Other places, to your point, it's a, it's a alexan with, you know, with chicken and beef and whatever it is that you guys are serving. So I'd love for you to talk through how you guys as a brand even evaluated that as you guys are trying to grow it, to ensure that both the guests are satisfied and it doesn't kill the store and the in, in-store experience.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. For our online menu for, we'll call it regular items, right? Non catering items, it's identical to what you can get in the store. We just left it all the same. The only caveat to that is fountain drinks. Uh, we had a lot of challenges with fountain drinks getting forgotten, not picked up. We're like, and because we offered delivery too, it became a, a pain point for the driver. So, uh, I think that's the only variance we have between if you come in a restaurant and you order online and on the catering side, again, we tried to put together packages that may be easy. You can do a la carte and you can modify the packages a fair amount, uh, but one to keep it really simple, really streamlined, and easy to order, easy to make. Every time. Right.

Speaker:

yep. So you said something during your description of catering that I think is somewhat unique to what you guys do. Yeah. And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about this, which is you guys have got a loyalty program and, and I know that it across the board, the definitions of loyalty and what does loyalty even mean? Everybody wants to debate about it. But knowing who your guests are and understanding when they're coming in and giving them benefit for coming back. Oftentimes catering comes from your non-traditional customer, but you want them to come in for their individual items. And I've, I've talked with brands in the past where it's like I've got the executive assistant that's ordering from hotheads, you know, once a month or twice a month, they get all of those points and then can go take their family out. And so I'd love to have you talk about why did you guys make that decision?'cause some brands are like, you know what? You don't get loyalty points because, um, and then there's others like you guys that, that are doing that. I'd love for you to talk through. How does loyalty play such a huge part in your business? Number one. And number two, why did you guys choose to have catering participate in the loyalty reward?

Peter Wiley:

Yep. If I can go with two first, it was definitely debated. It was, I'm sure there's a, a, you're getting a lot of points. Average catering orders, 200 to 300 bucks. Uh, you know, sometimes you get$1,300 catering order. Do we really want to do this? And ultimately it came down to. Our goal is to grow catering and make catering a significant part of our business. Mm-hmm. Uh, we wanna aim for 20% at least, and we got a long ways to go to get there. So every incentive possible is. Worth it, right? It, the, your profit margin increases, your labor goes down. So why in the world do I not want to incentivize people every single way possible to order catering from us? you know, you hear the story of the drug reps, uh, who just, you know, they're ordering all the time. And, you know, we haven't really mentioned ezCater. Uh, ezCater is a real factor. so we gotta compete with them, right? Mm-hmm. People

Speaker 3:

are

Peter Wiley:

used to ordering from there. So we wanna give you an incentive. Don't eat, don't order from ezCater, order from us. You're gonna get points, you get free food from it. and we recently turned on delivery for catering, uh, again using DoorDash Drive. So that's been probably about two months. Again, competing with ezCater, competing with people. I don't wanna go pick it up, right, like you said. Somebody an assistance ordering for the office. Last thing we wanna do is get up and burn an hour and go and get food somewhere. So now we can have it delivered. Show up at your door. We're actually far less expensive, than easy Cater to have it delivered. And I'll be running a promo here, uh, with free delivery.'cause again, using DoorDash Drive, I'm not on a commission basis. I'm on a flat fee, and the flat fee is a heck of a lot less. Uh, then ECAs commission. So we're gonna be pushing that. And, that was a real, everything we can do to push cater is why we decided to go ahead and leave points on the board for catering.

Speaker:

Love that. flipping back to question one, I guess, talk to me a little bit philosophically, what, what is your view on, on loyalty? And again, there's the point system, there's the punch system, there's the. But again, I think philosophically, I, I've heard lots of different brands over the years go different routes and I know it's something you guys have had in the brand for quite some time. And so I'd love to have you help our listeners to get educated on what have you found to be effective for you guys?

Peter Wiley:

it goes way back. My brother who started it was a subway guy for 26 years. so you guys remember the subway stamp cards? I was a subway manager back when I was 20. I'm not 20 anymore. you know, so that, that came essentially with the brand, right? He is like, from the get go, we're gonna have rewards. Worked well at Subway, did really well for him. So here we go. So we had sticker cards forever. and people loved them. You know, they would collect them, they'd have a stack of'em, they'd have stickers. And we're like, okay, this is, we're getting bigger and bigger now. You know? Yeah. You're like, uh, we're not in

Speaker:

1987 anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Hey,

Peter Wiley:

where'd that role of stickers go? Uhhuh? I dunno. Oh geez. anyway, so then quickly it was like, we need to look at a digital system. And we looked really hard and contemplated it really hard.'cause it's one of those things people really liked about having a sticker card. It's tangible, it's in your hand. It's like a touchy feely, warm, fuzzy thing. and so we did move to a digital platform and it was, uh, a little challenging because of they wanted the sticker card. You had to do a conversion, bring in a card, use it by this date, et cetera. Uh. As we did that, the benefit with being digital, right? I got some analytics, right? Mm-hmm. I get some data, I get names, I get emails, I get phone numbers. I get the ability to reach back out to those people and entice them to come back in, or at least make'em think about us. And so that's really where we look at, the loyalty play. Um, we work with Punch. It's been a great, lots of ways to target people, look after them, send general rewards, you know, so we play a little bit of both games. We play segmented where we're gonna go after you because we know you like a burrito, you know, you like queso on your burrito. So guess what? You're gonna get a case of offer. But then we also will come back, you know, with an LTO like our ghost and Reaper currently. And say everybody's gonna get that because that, that's, we're telling everybody about. It's a great opportunity. So we, we walk the line between trying to be very targeted and also being very broad and have some fun with the messaging. so it's, it's become an integral part of our marketing and every, we got stuff going out every week. Um, every campaign is built around having some element of it. it, it, it just, I think there is a, a groundswell of debate whether you need loyalty anymore, is it the right thing anymore? I'm still in the camp of, it brings us, uh, a lot of repeat business. It lets us reach our customers very easily. so I'm in the camp of, yeah, we wanna have a loyalty platform. and where you wanna look, I think where you start to get sketchy on it is your discount rate. Mm-hmm. So if you see that you're just obliterating your discount rate, then maybe you want to, you know, a little timeout and how do we do this? So. We walk that line pretty good. We don't run a super high discount rate, uh, impacting our stores, even though we do run some really good offers. Like this week we're running a order online and, Buy, you know, spend 10 bucks or more and get 50% off your next order. Right.

Speaker:

So, well, I feel like you're, uh, you're reading my playbook here'cause I was gonna ask,'cause one of big things that I know a lot of people talk about, Peter, this is gonna be kinda the last line of questioning Okay. Is converting people from in-store to online. From online to catering, from on catering back to in-store and kind of being able to get more usage out of them. Mm-hmm. You know, obviously you've got the, you know, the idea behind loyalty is that you're gonna, um. Help people remember you when they've lapsed. Yep. Know where they're at, create some reason for them to come in. But I also find a lot of times regulars don't know you have a catering program, and so they don't think of you guys that way, or they don't think of you as a DoorDash drive opportunity or any of those kind of things. So converting them. So I love your thought that says, oh, you come in here. Now your next order online is this, or you ordered online now your next in store purchase is that. And so I'd love to get your thoughts, Peter, on kind of, you know, you're a marketing guy who lives in it as well. So the, the convergence of those two is huge. And I think way too few brands think about converting between the different ordering channels to drive top line sales and ultimately. Um, more frequency within the store. So I'd love, love to have you, uh, expound upon that if you could. Yeah. That,

Peter Wiley:

that's, that is a a million dollar question. Mm-hmm. It's hard driving those top revenue sales. where we have seen, some, I'd say our most success is seeing people once they come into the app, we can statistically see that they're more likely to order online and have higher online ordering sales. So a lot of our campaigns are driven around, join a rewards club. You join the rewards club, you get an offer. I realize that, and we have lots of debates on now I'm excluding and we're about a 20% rewards participation rates. That means I got 80% of my customers. I'm not making the offer to. But what we've seen when we do that, even just a like last week around a couple different offers around queso in guac, and while the offer was redeemed pretty well with the rewards members, what we looked, what we gotta look at is. What did it do to my sales? Not, and not just my rewards members. So if, if all I looked at was where my rewards member results, I'd be like,

Speaker 3:

eh,

Peter Wiley:

it's okay. What? It didn't blow me out of the water and, you know, I'm doing cartwheels. But then when I stepped back and said, but what did it do to my queso, for example? What did it do to my overall case of sales for that day? It was just a one day national case of day thing. We look back and our case of sales were up, anywhere between 10 and 20% in different locations. Forget the rewards members, just how many queso items were ordered. 10, 20% increase is. That's a huge success, right?

Speaker:

Yeah.

Peter Wiley:

Uh, at least in my book, maybe other people are getting 90, at a hundred, but we're

Speaker:

not, not even close.

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. So, uh, so as we start to, and we're getting better at it, this is something I think is a learning curve. I think it is a lots of ab and testing. So we're trying to do more tests. You know, on some of'em we'll run, we'll throw marketing dollars behind it. On some of'em we won't. We're in tv, radio, and lots of different platforms. Sometimes we've con, leveraged those platforms to promote those. And sometimes we haven't to try to see does it make a difference? where do we see the results? So, so I, I think hopefully that helps out. Just be willing to experiment, uh, and be willing to try some different things and don't just focus on the loyalty results, but focus on. What did it do to your store sales, uh, or even those item sales you're promoting, so,

Speaker:

yep. No, and I think that's huge that, uh, using data and, when we've made it 30 minutes through, uh, I'm sure there's something you guys are doing AI related. Maybe I should ask you, what do you, what do you do in AI related, just'cause everybody's always intrigued and I'm sure you've gotten asked the question the last half a dozen panels you've been on. Oh, yeah. Everybody, ai,

Peter Wiley:

ai,

Speaker:

uhhuh,

Peter Wiley:

the extent of our AI is currently, uh, most of the time it's with chat GBT. We also use Gemini some. Uh, but we've leveraged it for a lot of brainstorming. what can we do? What are the questions? What are, you know, even some. Scripting ideas because you just get, you're doing this for a while at the same brand. A little stuck, like I've said the same thing in the last 10 commercials. Why? How can I say that differently? so that's been super helpful. It's also kind of cool to look at some data. it, it's, you know, it's not perfect and you hear about, you know, it's, it's ghosting or miscalculated and you're doing something like that.

Speaker:

Sure. But most times, directionally, it really is helpful to get to the next level if you, if you do it properly.

Peter Wiley:

Exactly. And we're looking at bringing on, a new data platform, a customer data platform, um, that has an AI built in. So it will help us evaluate even more. an ai, you know, if I could throw out a, a, uh, a request to punch, it'd be, man, you know, incorporate an AI platform right into punch because there's so much data in whatever your loyalty platform is. Uh, there's so much data in there and you know, with a traditional SQL query, you're trying to go through a dashboard, it can be challenging. But it, but being able to use

Speaker:

natural language processing that says, gimme my top 10 restaurant, top 10 guests for this and I'm gonna send them an extra$10 off this week and to give to somebody else or whatever. That'd be huge.

Peter Wiley:

And it opens up to your entire team to ask those questions versus me being a data nerd or my IT guy who, you know, go in, figure all the options. It's like, no, I can just, like you just said, anyone on my team doesn't have to know anything, can ask those questions and get some answers. And I think, I think that's super cool where a, you know, for us. I think it's gonna make the data that much more accessible so we can make better decisions, in our scenario.

Speaker:

I love that. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot one last set of questions, Peter. Okay. if people haven't been a hothead burritos, what is the number one seller and then how does Peter,'cause you've been working with this brand for a while. Yeah. I'm certain you have some crazy modifications that you do to your orders, or at least everybody that I talked to in restaurants. So what is kind of the one or two go-to for people that have never experienced the brand, they walk in and it's like, these are the one or two items that made you guys famous. And then what is Peter's go-to order?

Peter Wiley:

Yeah, probably the most popular is our Sweet ha and Aero Burrito. everybody thinks it's gonna be hot and it's not. and our chicken is a proprietary signature marinated chicken, so that's a substantial portion over our sales. So people really love getting that. So you get sweet ha and arrow comes with rice beans, ru in cheddar cheese and sweet ha and aero sauce. You can always add anything else, you know, you can add other choices to it. But that's really a go-to and something we recommend. If you don't mind, just a little bit of zip and prefer something a little more savory instead of sweet. Um, the hothead sauce, we have a, a Leroy spicy chicken Leroy's, our mascot. We call'em, probably see'em behind me on the wall.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Peter Wiley:

Uh, that adds some more heat. Uh, again, it's a proprietary spicy sauce. We have a lot of things that we've developed that are unique to us, so you're not just walking in and getting ranch, uh, you're walking in and getting, Southwest or hothead sauce or, uh, avocado lime. So sweet habanero would be the go-to. And we have a lot of people that mix'em.

Speaker:

Okay.

Peter Wiley:

I never, I've been here a long time and I never thought about putting sweet habanero and hothead together, but it's amazing that they do. Or they'll take teriyaki and mix it with something else You're like. Okay. Hey, man, you like it, you like it. My go-to lately has really been probably our h or um, our jalapeno Ranch Bowl.

Speaker:

Okay.

Peter Wiley:

Which is one of our craft recipes. But I really like the Jalapeno Ranch. It's got a little bit of kick. It's not too much. I try to, in theory, do a little bit of a low carb diet, so sometimes I'll swap it out and go with lettuce instead of the rice. but yeah, that's kind of my go-to. So.

Speaker:

Awesome. And protein on your, is it the chicken? Is that what you go with? I

Peter Wiley:

go back and forth. I kind of alternate. So, uh, I do chicken a fair amount, but I do the steak a fair amount too. We got a nice, seasoning and dry rub on it that I like so.

Speaker:

Awesome. So Peter, how do people learn more? How do people stay engaged with the brand? Um, you know, obviously if they're in the area, go check it out. If they're not, uh, sure go check out the website. But what's the website and how do they stay engaged to, to learn more about what you guys are doing?

Peter Wiley:

Yeah. Hothead burritos.com. Uh, super simple. If you wanna check out our catering, it's just slash catering. It's all up there. we just, we try to have a good time. We're always revamping doing some stuff. If you wanna have, you know, engage with the brand a little bit more, I'm gonna plug our, we have some games out there, hothead burrito slash games that has been a lot of fun addition to us, a little bit on the tech nerdy side, but a little bit on the, uh, playful side too. So

Speaker:

I love that. Well, Peter, thank you for sharing kind of your guys' journey. thank you for continuing to create a unique experience'cause, uh. Again, as a, as a consumer, it's a, it's a fun brand to go check out and you guys have a lot of different options to, to serve a lot of different palettes. So, to our listeners guys, you guys have got a lot of choices, so thank you guys for hanging out. If you haven't already subscribed, please do so on your favorite listening platform and make it a great day. Thank you.

Speaker 4:

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

Head Shot

Jeremy Julian

Host