AI Inside & Outside the Four Walls - Phil Crawford CTO of CKE Restaurants

Join the man, the myth, the legend - Phil Crawford, CTO of CKE Restaurants, on how he’s using AI to drive better efficiencies for his brand and what he thinks “the store of the future” will operate like.

Moments to Listen for: 

• Harnessing technology more efficiently to save time (labor efficiency), extract data easier (personalization efficiency), and please guests (revenue efficiency)
• How CKE is using new AI technologies at the drive-thru
• How CKE is using AI on the back end to build proactive algorithms
• Kitchen efficiency and optimization strategies 
• The next generation - what they’ll expect 
• True contextual personalization
• Two critical components of a healthy franchisor-franchisee relationship
• Giving back through GiftAMeal
• About the Star Wars figurines 

Related Episodes: 

• Savory’s Growth Formula Starts with Data Ownership – Josh Boshard 
•  The Future of Data Starts Here – Darien Bates 
•  Here’s What Innovation Looks Like – Amir Hudda, CEO of Qu (Part 2 of 3) 

Related Assets:

•  2023 State of Digital for Enterprise Brands 
• GiftAMeal
  
  

Connect with Phil on LinkedIn 

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

Transcript

Qu - Restaurants Reinvented - Phil Crawford

[00:00:00] Phil Crawford: What if I have so much information on you as a guest that your experience in the restaurant of the future is all based off those inputs? What if you pull up into, then it's a little science fiction, into a drive-through, and a board changes and welcomes you back, and again, you see the same kind of personalized menu, right?

[00:00:15] That's all based on data, the tricks is how do you actually actionable it, in the real-time worlds we have with devices on our fingertips, and allow folks to actually interact with it in that way. I think that's the key.

[00:00:28] 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. 

[00:00:59] Jen Kern: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Restaurants Reinvented. This is Jen Kern, I'm the hostess here on the show, and I'm really excited today to be talking to Phil Crawford, the CTO at CKE Restaurants. Welcome to the show, Phil.

[00:01:11] Phil Crawford: Thanks, Jen. Great to be here. 

[00:01:12] Jen Kern: So excited to have you here, like I

[00:01:14] Phil Crawford: I'm excited, too.

[00:01:15] Jen Kern: was saying, like, I feel like, first of all, I've been in the industry four years now, and I feel like your name has been one of the names I've always heard about whenever the topic of technology enterprise QSR restaurants comes up. So, I'm very honored that you're joining me today. 

[00:01:32] Phil Crawford: Oh, thank you. 

[00:01:33] Jen Kern: Yeah. 

[00:01:34] Phil Crawford: I'm either infamous or, or famous, right, whichever way we wanna look at it.

[00:01:37] Jen Kern: Both.

[00:01:38] Phil Crawford: Both, great. 

[00:01:40] Jen Kern: I'm gonna go with both.

[00:01:42] Phil Crawford: I love it. 

[00:01:43] Jen Kern: Yeah, and I know you've been on a lot of podcasts, and you're, you know, you're on the network, you've been, you were at the Olo event last week, and you're gonna be probably at MURTEC, I'm sure, next week and hopefully we'll see you at RLC.

[00:01:55] Phil Crawford: I'll be at RLC. 

[00:01:56] Jen Kern: Yeah? There you go, so

[00:01:58] Phil Crawford: I'll be everywhere, life of a rockstar, I guess, right? 

[00:02:00] Jen Kern: Oh, my gosh. 

[00:02:01] Phil Crawford: know.

[00:02:01] Jen Kern: Oh, it's fun,

[00:02:01] Phil Crawford: Nah, I'm just kidding. 

[00:02:02] Jen Kern: it's nice when we can

[00:02:03] Phil Crawford: It's fun, I love it, especially after all the years you were gone with COVID, couldn't go anywhere. 

[00:02:07] Jen Kern: Right, no kidding. I love traveling, too.

[00:02:10] Phil Crawford: So do I. 

[00:02:11] Jen Kern: Awesome stuff. Well, I don't think we need to give a background, like I said, I think everyone knows who you are, although I'll give a quick background, which is that, you like me, got bit by the hospitality bug, right? You started at, at Darden and Yard House, and then I think you were at Shake, Shake Shack, 

[00:02:26] Phil Crawford: Correct. 

[00:02:26] Jen Kern: and then you jumped out and went over to Godiva, which is what I love, and, and you, you tried your chops there over at retail, and I'm sure you learned a ton, and then you came back to our beloved restaurant industry, and you're now the CTO at CKE, that's a tongue twister. 

[00:02:42] Phil Crawford: It is.

[00:02:43] Jen Kern: CTO at CKE, which obviously, yeah, we all know that's, that's Hardee's and Carl's Jr., and a very infamous brand, an old brand, but with a cult following, I know that, um, so there you go, do, anything you wanna add?

[00:03:00] Phil Crawford: No,

[00:03:00] Jen Kern: I just put the last 30 years of your life in two sentences.

[00:03:02] Phil Crawford: you did, you did it very well, like I, I, I grew up in this industry, too, I got bit by the bug when I was 16, the irony, which a lot of people don't know, little fun fact, my first job when I was 16 was at Carl's Jr. in California.

[00:03:14] Jen Kern: Oh, stop it.

[00:03:16] Phil Crawford: No, and like, mic drop right there. So, like, I've come literally full circle. So, it's, it's quite the amazing journey, I've, I've been blessed and honored to work for some amazing leaders and did some amazing concepts. And you're right, I did miss the industry for two years, but the knowledge I got from traveling worldwide and dealing with the supply chain and manufacturing Godiva really was that other part of my career and quite call it personal curriculum I didn't have, so.

[00:03:41] But the bug's in me, either you love this industry or hate it, there's no in between, and I, I have such a love and passion for it, and it is, it's given me so much I can, all, my next part of my journey is to start giving back, so that's why I do it. 

[00:03:53] Jen Kern: Yeah. Awesome. Love that. So, 16, were you flipping burgers? Were you cashier?

[00:04:00] Phil Crawford: All the above, let's just say, back then, I was, I was fully cross, I was a fully cross-trained employee, you know? After, after school going there, and back then, they had salad bars at Carl's Jr., so those were 

[00:04:10] Jen Kern: I remember.

[00:04:11] Phil Crawford: Carl's Jr. free franchisees and those that love it back then, but yeah, every, every part of the station, drive-through to cashier to, you know, being sometimes a janitor. You gotta do all parts of it, I think that really kind of formed who I am in an understanding of the industry is you're only one part of the cog, and everybody has to chip in and do everything about it, and equally, and you can, you're never, you're never too high or too above, right, to go take out the trash 'cause we all, we all did it at one time of our life, so, and it's kind of just part of, you know, mantra to stay with me all the way through 

[00:04:42] Jen Kern: Or wash the dishes, that's what I was doing at 16.

[00:04:44] Phil Crawford: Or wash the dishes, yeah, right?

[00:04:45] Jen Kern: I was the buss girl, and they used to pull me back and be like, "Hey, we need you to do dishes." I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna get my little outfit dirty, but okay."

[00:04:52] Phil Crawford: Yes, exactly.

[00:04:54] Jen Kern: Well, awesome. Well, again, really excited to have you here. I started this series, ooh, about six months ago called CTO Trailblazers. So, I've been on the prowl on my own little trailblaze and prowl, looking for really leading, innovative CTOs that can help educate and inform our audience about 2023 and what's in store and, and what's going on, and what are some trends? We just released our very, very small shameless plug, we just released our fourth annual state of digital, which looks at all the trends acro, and you took it, actually, so you'll get your report any day now.

[00:05:28] Um, but it looks across the trends at QSRs and fast-casuals and, and one of the big things that's really been jumping out to me, and, and we talk about it a lot in the space is efficiency, and what does efficiency mean in 2023? Like, we can look 18, you know, we'll, we'll talk about some of the future stuff, the future of restaurants, a connected restaurant and all that stuff.

[00:05:48] But, but this year, I mean, there are so many, again, there's so many challenges, like, just sitting right there, I mean, this inflationary environment, the, the, you know, controlling prices. And then, most restaurant operators have a pretty unwieldy tech stack, it's like the Jenga blocks, right? And so, so what I wanted start out asking you is, in, in terms of efficiency, how are you harnessing technology better this year, or how are you just harnessing technology and maybe it's automation, too, data to drive efficiencies?

[00:06:23] Phil Crawford: Automation, that's another shameless plug, I have an event coming up in a couple weeks, I'm on that panel, but that, we won't talk about that. 

[00:06:27] Jen Kern: Oh, good, no, no, tell us.

[00:06:29] Phil Crawford: We will. So, I'll talk, and after, after the, the first question. So, look, you know, I think technology always needs to be the enabler for the business, it can never be the hindrance. So, we look at it as really that catalyst for chains, right? There's so many untapped areas when it's inside the four walls and outside the four walls of the business that we can leverage the technology stack to become more efficient, whether it be through artificial intelligence in-store or outside of store, right?

[00:06:54] Whether it be optimizing shifts through proper labor management, optimizing supply chain through order efficiency, right? Bringing in IoT inside the four walls to, like, really understand how often should you change oil, right, or monitor machines and so forth. I think efficiency is top of mind for us because you hit the two things on the head that's really playing in the industry now,

[00:07:14] quite frankly, a lot of industries is the inflationary environment, but also the labor. So, we have to capitalize and monetize as much as we possibly can based on those two factors. And if we don't, you know, it really hurts the bottom line 'cause we're already working on razor-thin margins anyways with those two catalysts and change.

[00:07:32] So, we really have to kind of control what we can control on the bottom line. And the efficiencies also helps the employee morale, right? They don't want to be stuck and twiddling thumbs and not doing anything, and the vice versa, you don't want them because then you're blowing the labor cost. So, having that fine line and the balance between the two, inside the four walls, and actually, every aspect comes down to better processes and procedures, which leads to better efficiency.

[00:07:52] So, the technology side of us really is heavily focused on that, is how can we make the best out of our employees, right, maximize their effort in order to gain the highest level of efficiency that translates to bottom line profits, quite frankly. And also, you know, that this, this shameless plug also gets four more folks to come back to Carl's Jr., Hardee's, to enjoy their experience, right? Because that's what this is about, you want to be able to capitalize and all these different things.

[00:08:17] Jen Kern: Yeah, yeah. Well, you said the $500,000 word, which is AI.

[00:08:22] Phil Crawford: Yeah. 

[00:08:22] Jen Kern: Right? You just dropped that in there. 

[00:08:24] Phil Crawford: No, I didn't. 

[00:08:26] Jen Kern: And, and, and I, I do wanna unpack that a little bit because, you know, with, with this advent of ChatGPT and AI, and one of the findings in our survey was 70% of operators said that they are pursuing AI this year, and that's a massive jump from the server the year before which was closer to 15%. 

[00:08:45] So, I think people in earnest are looking at AI, and I think there's a little bit of a fear factor that comes with AI and, and particularly if you start talking about, like, robotics type things, like, are we looking to replace people and, you know, you mentioned labor, too, and it's like, well, I mean, there's just not enough people, like, applying for these jobs that, that we can hire. So, yeah, we wanna look at a little AI, but tell me how you're really using AI or how you plan to use AI this year?

[00:09:13] Phil Crawford: Yeah. So, you know, AI is a big word, and there's a lot of things underneath AI, you mentioned what, you know, ChatGPT. So, we're looking at leveraging AI in two facets, first and foremost, I mentioned it inside the restaurant at the drive-through, we've got it deployed in about 30 restaurants right now, both corporate and franchisee.

[00:09:29] You pull up at new Carl's or Hardee's in certain markets where it's tested, and you're actually talking to a machine using natural language processing or NLP, right? It takes your order, it's consistent, it always says the upsells, it injects your order in the point of sale, and the beauty part about it is you have a high level of accuracy, over 90% accurate going into the point of sale system through direct integration.

[00:09:51] But it also then benefits the consumer because they can see the accuracy, there's less of an issue with language barriers because the models have gotten so well, think when you talk about your, your own home devices, how well they understand you, although they're always listening, as we all know. And then vice versa for the employees, they get, get away from some of the most mundane tasks, which is talking to folks through drive-through, right?

[00:10:11] How often you gone through a drive-through, you get somebody that might be having a bad day, we all have 'em, right? This delivers a consistent message, and it really allows the employee to focus on what they do best, which is make the product, right, and, and meet and greet people at the drive-through window.

[00:10:25] So, that's one way we're leveraging AI, and we're seeing some amazing returns on that. The other side of it is really looking at the AI machine learning on the back end through our, in new instances of Snowflake and other reporting solutions, so we can start building models and do proactive algorithms that take a lot of the human element 'cause we all know, like, quantum computing is out here and very prevalent now, can do and process a lot more information and come to amazing results if you train these models correctly.

[00:10:53] And both of that is using intelligence, and the crazy part is it's already in our lives in so many ways, artificial intelligence, like, it's in our day to, it's in our day-to-day lives, it's in other industries rapidly around, it's in loyalty programs, like, it's all over, I think it's becoming the forefront because we're now expanding outside of our comfort zones of how it actually affects the hospitality side of our business.

[00:11:15] And it needs to compliment the business, it can't, you know, go in and there are solutions out there that talk about robotics that make burgers or make fries, right? But it actually kind of, it does alienates, for lack of a better term, the human element, but I think it needs to compliment. So, when you think about that very heavily when it comes to AI in our, in our business, and again, how does it go back into, as a compliment to the business?

[00:11:38] I think also important with artificial intelligence is we're at the early cusp of it inside of our business, I think there's a lot of legroom. So, you're right, 70% at the Olo conference I was just at, they'd mentioned a lot of folks saying "We're experimenting and looking at it," and like, where's it going?

[00:11:52] Like, we've, we're thinking about version three and four inside the four walls, what if you talked to a headset and said, "Go 86, you know, fries," heaven forbid, we have 86 fries at one of our restaurants, bad, bad analogy, um, right, but it, it went through, and it updated your digital menu board or updated your point of sales system, right?

[00:12:10] Our artificial intelligence, which already out there now in different test markets, through camera systems we use, identifies the consumer they're driving up, identifies their car or their face, I can get you a reflection like, "Hey, I'm having a great day." You're a smiley old frown, like, the inflections, like, all that's real-life stuff that can change the experience inside the restaurant.

[00:12:31] So, looking at all those facets, albeit just in QSR, you know, we still have to serve up great product, right? We still have to make sure that the guests were happy and satisfied. So, it's a long answer to your question, sorry. I'm very passionate about it. 

[00:12:43] Jen Kern: Oh, no, it's, same here, it's so interesting.

[00:12:46] Phil Crawford: It is. 

[00:12:46] Jen Kern: And, and as soon as you started talking about the AI at the drive-through, you knew where my brain went?

[00:12:50] Phil Crawford: Where'd it go? 

[00:12:52] Jen Kern: Can I, like, customize the voice?

[00:12:55] Phil Crawford: It, it's, 

[00:12:55] Jen Kern: Can I make it a female?

[00:12:56] Phil Crawford: this is not a marketing call. 

[00:12:58] Jen Kern: With a British accent, with a British accent greeting me?

[00:13:01] Phil Crawford: You can actually do a lot of cool things, um, you know, it obviously has to be brand on, you know, "Welcome to Hardee's," "Welcome to Carl's." But you're right, you could actually do different, different inflections of voice, like, I won't name the directional system you can use in your phone where you can choose, to your point,

[00:13:14] you know, name the person to do so, I'm sure there's some brands to do it that have very key distinct voice actors that do all their commercials and such. I think it'd be cool, I think it'd be an amazing thing to do, um, whether or not you wanna afford it, it kind of plays into the ROI model, but I think it's a great idea. 

[00:13:32] Jen Kern: And right now, is it single language, or you have multiple languages capabilities? 

[00:13:37] Phil Crawford: It's dual language. 

[00:13:37] Jen Kern: It's dual language, okay.

[00:13:38] Phil Crawford: It's Spanish and English. 

[00:13:39] Jen Kern: That's awesome, that's really, really cool. So, what's, what technology are you using for that as you, you can get a, give a shout out there.

[00:13:45] Phil Crawford: Uh, I can't actually give a shout out 'cause they're all

[00:13:47] Jen Kern: Oh, you can't. 

[00:13:47] Phil Crawford: under NDAs, so 

[00:13:49] Jen Kern: Oh.

[00:13:50] Phil Crawford: I apologize, I can't do that,

[00:13:51] Jen Kern: Nevermind.

[00:13:51] Phil Crawford: but there's four, which is great, and they're, um, they're widely known, which is awesome, and I think that, you know, we'll, we're continuing to, to, to go down that path of which provider we can do for both concepts, right, kind of the, almost like a vanilla flavor that exceeds our expectations but also gives our franchisees and our corporate operators the best bang for their buck. 

[00:14:12] Jen Kern: So, you're doing a little bake-off? 

[00:14:13] Phil Crawford: Little bake-off, yes, it's a good way to say it. 

[00:14:15] Jen Kern: Yeah, and how many restaurants do you have it at right now?

[00:14:18] Phil Crawford: 30, give or take, and 

[00:14:19] Jen Kern: Okay, and you said 

[00:14:20] Phil Crawford: we're bringing

[00:14:21] Jen Kern: Go ahead, sorry.

[00:14:22] Phil Crawford: I say we're bringing some on and some off because our business isn't the same volume at every single location and, you know, demographics and ergonomics and so on and so forth.

[00:14:30] So, we want to pray, put it in different models to see how it works because there's some models, maybe I, maybe AI isn't appropriate for the business, they don't have labor constraints, they're high AUVs, like, it actually would be a detriment to the business, there's other areas where it's a, we're seeing massive, you know, benefits to it.

[00:14:46] So, we're trying to play and put it in the right markets, but again, we're also trying to put it in different dialects, the dialect in Southern California, right, just totally different, like, "I'd love to go get a Cali Stoked Burger," like, what the heck is that? You say that in Nashville, they're gonna say, "I have no idea what that means." So, you gotta also play with the areas where that's, where it's gonna go to. 

[00:15:02] Jen Kern: Yeah, yeah, that's really neat, that's really neat. Well, thanks for sharing that, I mean, it's, it's, that's exciting and, and drive-through is so hot, obviously, right now, I mean, everyone's trying to figure out how to, how to improve the drive-through time and speeds. And you mentioned that the, you have some stats, which, again, maybe you can't share, but you said you're already seeing some strong ROI, is that around speed, order time, fulfillment time?

[00:15:26] Phil Crawford: That I can't tell you. So, right, it's, it's actually about speed, right, it's about upsells. So, we're talking about upsells, upselling to a combo, that's a big KPI for us. Higher average checks, right? And obviously the number of conversions. And the last, but not least, it's from a technical standpoint I look at, is the order injection accuracy rate, right?

[00:15:45] Is the technology working? That's first and foremost, 'cause if it doesn't, if it doesn't pass the technology side of it, then never get to the financial ROI side or the business ROI side. So, we have six born KPIs that we're measuring against, and our transformation office and our finance partners and our operation partners are now looking at that to say, "Okay, is it re, is it repeatable?"

[00:16:05] Right? And then, can we expect those same KPIs throughout the entire chain, or which are higher valued than others because all six aren't equally weighed, right, and that's a big, that's a big facet across the decision matrix? 

[00:16:18] Jen Kern: Yeah. Well, that order of accuracy, it's another one that came out in the survey, right? We need to improve order accuracy at, for the off-prem guest.

[00:16:25] Phil Crawford: Correct. 

[00:16:26] Jen Kern: That's where it's really getting dinged the most, and so

[00:16:29] Phil Crawford: I believe it. 

[00:16:30] Jen Kern: Yeah. So, wow, thanks for sharing those six KPIs, too, that's

[00:16:34] Phil Crawford: Yeah, no worries. 

[00:16:34] Jen Kern: really good stuff, that's really good stuff. So, let's, let's kind of continue with this drive-through conversation and kitchen and this whole idea of unified fulfillment, um, which is another thing that's, that's trending right now, if you will, which is how do we get that, the ordering and the kitchen on the same page? There's so many places where the chain can break, right?

[00:16:58] And you've got all these channels coming in, whether it's, you know, your delivery or your branded, you know, mobile and online ordering site, or you're, you're, you're simply in-store making, making these orders and they're all trying to funnel through your kitchen systems and then you wanna make these employees, like you said, more efficient, you wanna use them for the best utilization, uh, is there anything there you're doing?

[00:17:21] Phil Crawford: Yeah, there is. So, we're always trying to optimize the amount of data streams that we get in, right? So, if we can control as much as we can control, whether we can see real-time dashboards into how the kitchen's performing, like, by station, by station, or if we can look into the point of sale systems at the store to see what's being rung in,

[00:17:38] if we can look at their ecosystem, third-party stuff coming in, we can get a better idea of the peaks and valleys of business inside of the four walls, either during immediate real-time, or also then use that data to forecast out, and start seeing trends and analysis so we can better understand how the business has those peaks and valleys.

[00:17:56] And then, that then transcends into, like, supply chain and other parts of the business for labor scheduling and for ordering. I think the best part about it is really, it's all about data interchange, right? It's about taking data sets and compiling 'em in a way that they become actionable. So, we are experimenting with different solutions, whether it be real-time, again, reading of the kitchen systems to understand the capacity and the velocity, right, inside the four.

[00:18:20] But also it's also featuring futuristically looking at it so we can also see what's forth bound coming in. I think a lot of folks look at, and I'll use an example, I won't name the company, that when you open, when you open your phone and it says "Your order will be ready in 20 minutes." How often have you gone there and it's been running in 25 minutes or 30 minutes?

[00:18:37] I've got a bad product, right, I've also been out, we had a bad guest experience. So, to narrow that ge, narrow that, that area down, we gotta get that just in time down. The only way that works is that they can also look at also what's inbound might be PReq before it ever hits the restaurant. So, you have to take all those different facets into the cal, the calculation to get the most accurate information back, not only to the operators, but also the guests, if you're starting to do that as part of your business model, right?

[00:19:01] I think the kitchen operations efficiency really is a big plate, I think if you take this to a next generation, I don't think anybody who's really doing this yet, trademark Phil Crawford if you were to take all this data and analyze it in a real-time fashion, and if you were the guest who were able to pull up your phone and say, hey, and this then ties into a loyalty piece, you have five restaurants that are in your, you know, within a five, ten-mile radius, you can actually see the current wait times,

[00:19:24] you can actually pick, or if you pick a restaurant in, in the app or the web or whatever, say, come back and say, this other restaurant's only one mile outta your way, but the wait time's actually 15 minutes less, I could redirect you, or I could also then start redirecting patterns and traffic, might be able to incentivize you to try a different restaurant,

[00:19:38] that might be a little bit outta your way, but maybe you get a dollar off your coffee. I, I don't know, there's different ways to start playing with this, to really kind of hone the guest to get in the best possible experience, but again, it goes back to understanding what data's inside the four walls, but also external coming into the four walls, right?

[00:19:55] Maybe we talk about delivery, maybe there's a site that gets absolutely obliterated with delivery on a day-to-day basis. What if we could actually real-time talk back to the delivery providers and redirect their drivers based on velocity volumes, not just geolocation of the drivers? So, there's a lot of headroom where to go with this, right? But it all comes back to understanding how the data can be analyzed and then leveraged to, to make a, a more valued decision. 

[00:20:18] Jen Kern: Yeah, and a lot of people talk about throttling, which I think can mean, like, so many different things depending on the context of which it's being used, but the way you're talking about it in your trademark Phil Crawford way, is that you're not just looking, like, at the kitchen 

[00:20:34] Phil Crawford: Correct.

[00:20:35] Jen Kern: in its own, with the capacity, what's coming in, where it's coming, you're looking way beyond that at the whole geo area and thinking of all the different players, if you will, and all the different data sets that you could actually manipulate to make it work better for your business and for the consumer.

[00:20:52] Phil Crawford: Yeah. I think throttling, right, you're right, it, it's, again, it's a catchphrase, is a capacity management, right, is another example for what it is. Like, most systems you base, I can only take 15 orders every five minutes, that's your, that's your throttle, right? I can only deal with throttle of average basket size or number of items in a basket, right?

[00:21:09] But how much are you losing by setting that throttle? You don't really know, there's really any kind of quantum metrics, you can kind of come back and say, after the fact, "Hey, yeah, I've lost two orders." But what does that actually mean larger than that? You're not really sure. I think the fact that if you could have a, back to your machine learning artificial intelligence, a real-time assisting, calculate that demand based on an algorithm, 

[00:21:29] maybe you don't even really need a truth-throttling mechanism in there, right? And there's, and there's some restaurants that we do, do, we know the unicorn's out there, right? They know how busy they're gonna be regardless, it doesn't really matter, but there are, most of the majority aren't set up that way. So, throttling in some ways could be bad, just like make times, right? Just like wait times. That whole kind of "just in time" time management system and, or, you know, quantity solutions are worthless, it's gonna head longer term. No question about it. 

[00:21:57] Jen Kern: Yeah, and we talked about this a little bit on, on our pre-call, I'm just remembering because we were talking about how no one is really tying all that data together right now, I mean, all we are hearing about right now is data, data, data, right? Like, you gotta get your hands around the data, you gotta organize the data, you gotta make it work for you.

[00:22:16] I had Darien Bates on, he just started a new company, and it's all about, you know, organizing that data but then actioning on that data, being able to execute against that data. And you had said, like, no one's really doing it right now, like, even the big name brands that we talk doing really innovative things aren't able to tie the whole chain together, and even, like, one way to make that personalized guest experience, I think you had called it, I wrote it down, true contextual personalization.

[00:22:47] Phil Crawford: Yeah, it, you're right, like, I think we're, we're flooded with the amount of data, we've got so much information. The question is, 

[00:22:52] Jen Kern: Yeah, it's so hard. 

[00:22:52] Phil Crawford: is what do you do with it? It's, it is hard because there's so much you can do with it, the question is what do you with, do with it, and when do you do it? We, we talked about the contextual, right?

[00:23:02] What if I have so much information on you as a guest that your experience in the restaurant of the future is all based off those inputs. When you open up your app, you're only served up chicken sandwiches and not in, not a standard generic menu everybody sees. What if you pull up into, then it's a little science fiction, into a drive-through, and a board changes and welcomes you back, and again, you see the same kind of personalized menu, right?

[00:23:25] That's all based on data. The tricks is how do you actually actionable it in the real-time worlds we have with devices on our fingertips and allow folks to actually interact with it in that way, I think that's the key. I can make decisions on the business based off of reporting and metrics, and we have an amazing reporting tech and have amazing team that does that now.

[00:23:45] The next part is how do we action it for the guests? And I think that's gonna be the key, the person or the business that can figure a lot of that out, and there's much bigger businesses with us, with the, with obviously much more headwind than I've got in this, in this area that are starting to play with that.

[00:23:58] I think you're gonna start seeing more of the norm once this becomes kind of a less of a, a dependency on the bigger change to figure it out, but more of when you find the right solution providers that have done this and can leverage some of the technology stacks that are out there where you can kind of mine the data itself in order to get a solution-based architecture put together.

[00:24:18] We all have APIs, we all have ways to get the data, what are you gonna put in between that makes it a, you know, functional in the world? I think that's gonna be the key side of it.

[00:24:28] Jen Kern: And you use a data mesh, is that, is that right? 

[00:24:31] Phil Crawford: Yeah, we do, correct. 

[00:24:32] Jen Kern: Yeah, okay, okay. 

[00:24:33] Phil Crawford: We have, we, we, we've spent a lot of time and effort building out our entire data stack, we re-architected it from end-to-end because we realized that's the importance of our business.

[00:24:42] We want to understand our guests, we want, wanna understand our employees, wanna understand what we sell, how we sell it, the combinations, the weather, like, all these different mediums that come out in order to give us a true picture after the fact because we're not, we're not recording our days every single, like, video recording every day,

[00:25:00] like, we gotta go back and look at individual things and really rely on the data and make sure the data's clean and accurate in order to make actionable information on the backside of it. I think a lot of folks look at a Pmix and they go, "Ah, I got great reports." But that's only, like, such a small little facet of what needs to actually transpire.

[00:25:16] I think if you start bringing in the entire 360 picture of what your business looks like, internal and external, you get a better view and make much more reliable decisions on that information. And then more importantly, you make enhancements to your systems that create a frictionless guest environment, there's no more, it's not omnichannel that word is dead, it's omnipresent, like, it's always available 'cause everything talks in every single way. 

[00:25:40] Jen Kern: Yeah. Ooh. I have to make that change on my website.

[00:25:44] Phil Crawford: All good. 

[00:25:45] Jen Kern: We have omnichannel, we have a lot of omnichannel here, omnichannel there.

[00:25:48] Phil Crawford: It's the same word.

[00:25:50] Jen Kern: You know, the longer I'm in marketing, the more I'm like, "Ugh, I don't like marketing words."

[00:25:55] Phil Crawford: Marketing words, exactly.

[00:25:56] Jen Kern: I don't like marketing words, I just wanna use, like, plain English speak.

[00:26:01] Phil Crawford: Yes, it's 

[00:26:01] Jen Kern: But it's hard because people relate to certain things and

[00:26:04] Phil Crawford: They do, the buzzwords are the, are the keys, right? The buzzwords come out, and they're stick in people's heads, but at the same time, if you can't simplify it and explain it, then what's the point of it? 

[00:26:12] Jen Kern: Yeah. Well, you know, and I'm thinking back to my conversation with Darien, and he, he kept talking about, you know, to your point of the, of the, using AI, not to necessarily replace people, but to make some of these processes work better on the back end, and how, he kept talking about people as being, like, innate discoverers and explorers 

[00:26:33] Phil Crawford: I like that. 

[00:26:33] Jen Kern: And that e, yeah, and that each employee in the business needs to have that mindset of discovering the data, that there's not necessarily one group of people right over here that are looking at data and that everyone's kind of curious about the perf, the data, and what's coming in and coming up with ideas and not just putting it in a, like, a reporter dashboard and putting it over there and then making decisions.

[00:26:56] But, and I feel like that's what you were talking about, you're talking about making this more in the moment, which, I mean, we tend to call it real-time, but what is really real-time? I mean, it's like, but just being able to make those decisions faster. So, it kind of brings me to my next question, which I'm really curious about, which is how do you manage all this in terms of your cross-collaboration with the folks in operations and with the folks in marketing?

[00:27:21] Phil Crawford: Yeah, I, look, I think it's easy for us to sit at a corporate office in a top level, right, to look down and say, here's what we, we know. I think our key to success it's, you take it down to lower levels. I think if you look at what we do, at a leadership level, we have, we have to make a, we have all the decisions, right?

[00:27:39] But we're not living in the day-to-day at the, at the store level, quite frankly, I think it comes to inverse, we have all the power, but okay, none of all of the information. Wouldn't they give a lot of the power back to the individual stores and operators, right, because they have more of the information themselves,

[00:27:52] they're seeing it real-time. That's, so one of our successes here is we've had a great partnership from the IT standpoint, working with the different franchisees and our operators to get their buy-in and get their input because without their buy-in and input, our decisions are basically hypotheses, which aren't always accurate.

[00:28:08] And so, when we go into meetings, and we talk about new features in the apps, we talk about new systems in the stores, or we talk about new cross-functional programs, it really is a collaborative effort to understand how does it affect the bottom line, our most important and valuable people are our team members, right? It really has to resonate with them and get their input as well before things go to a larger stake. 

[00:28:30] Um, I have some amazing leaders on my IT team that really drive that all the way home into the stores, whether it be going and looking at a shift, right, or working a shift, or going and ordering at a restaurant. I think that, that the cross-functionality also as we realize that we're not experts in those other fields, so we're gonna align on their expertise in order to help, you know, fundamentally make our changes and vice versa.

[00:28:52] We might be the experts in technology, but how we apply it operationally could destroy the restaurant, which we don't want to do, or vice versa to marketing standpoint. Um, I think having good partnerships and peers is gonna be key, and it's gonna be, can you be key? It's also, you know, you talked about culture, the buzzwords, the what it is,

[00:29:09] I think the culture, you know, Trump's strategy all the time, without that, if I can't go to my peers and have those discussions or I can't go to my employees and, and walk in and have an open door policy, and there's no wrong idea, take a risk, I mean, you name the, the key buzzwords that are out there, then everything is kind of for naught because the last thing you wanna do is make decisions in a glass castle 'cause eventually the glass is gonna break and the castle's gonna crumble. 

[00:29:32] Jen Kern: Yeah. So, I imagine you have strong leadership there, and you also have, I know, a strong fran, franchisee network. 

[00:29:40] Phil Crawford: We do. 

[00:29:40] Jen Kern: Any best practices you can share about building a strong franchisee network? How do you keep those communications open and really empower them, like you said?

[00:29:49] Phil Crawford: Look, I, I, I think the franchisee community, and I'm speaking specifically about the IT groups that I, I work with day in and day out, you know, we have 3000 domestic restaurants, and we're 93% franchisees, 7% corporate. So, we gotta have those relationships. It's about transparency and humility, right?

[00:30:06] And bringing them along in the journey, I think our success number one here is that we put our foot forward and say, we want to try this new solution before you invest, we're going to invest and put 'em in our company stores. And then we're gonna share the results, but I'm gonna share not just the winners, I'm gonna show the losers as well because that adds validity,

[00:30:24] like, okay, look, you went and tried this solution before you came to us and made us do it and spent all this money in research and marketing and operations, you tried it, and it failed, but at least you admitted it failed, or vice versa, you have these discussions with them, and you have an open conversation, and you get their inputs, and you work the solutions together with them

[00:30:44] because as much as I think I know everything, I don't, it's a joke by the way, I don't, um, uh, it's good to get their feedback and get their input and get their buy-off and have them be part of the process. That's the winning formula. There's so often you have a franchisee, franchisor, um, relationship that's very, you know, um, conflict-oriented. 

[00:31:04] Jen Kern: Yeah, it's too often, too often.

[00:31:05] Phil Crawford: Yeah, I, I think it doesn't need to be there, there's, it doesn't need to be there, it can be collaborative, and I think that's when the key to our success is have open, again, open dialogue and transparency really is, I can't say it any more than that. And it's realizing, again, that you have your wins and your losses, and you express them, and with that builds trust, right? And with that builds respect. And when you start having those things, you might continue to develop and evolve your platforms in cooperation instead of competition. 

[00:31:34] That's really been, again, our, one of our big successes, which way we'll be able to roll out so much stuff in the last two and a half years since I've been here, we've done a lot of radical stuff which my CEO says it all the time, we've done more in the last two years than we've done in the last 10 years, and it's because of that, quite frankly.

[00:31:50] Jen Kern: Right. Well, and I love the way you're going about it 'cause you're, you know, just the example you gave with AI and during sort of, like, this test bake off at, I assume at your corporate stores?

[00:31:59] Phil Crawford: Yeah, and franchisees.

[00:32:01] Jen Kern: Yeah, so, so, you're

[00:32:02] Phil Crawford: We got them involved, too. 

[00:32:03] Jen Kern: You're getting them involved, they're seeing a little sneak peek, they can give you that feedback, you're also using different tech tools that makes us better, it makes the tech providers better because it creates almost like a healthy competition, healthy tension, I would think.

[00:32:17] Phil Crawford: It does. 

[00:32:17] Jen Kern: And so, the whole system is sort of getting that same level of transparency and improvement and visibility, and yeah, that's, I mean, it, it, it, it kind of makes my heart hurt a little bit when I start talking about franchisees 'cause, like I said, I wasn't in this, I mean, since I was 16, you know, whatever, I worked at restaurants for, for quite a while in my youth, but then I spent most of my time in B2B tech companies as a marketer. Um, it was straight B2B, it wasn't hospitality. I come here, and obviously, it's a massive education on the franchisee-franchisor system for me, and it took me a while,

[00:32:56] it took me a better part of the first year to understand all the nuances, and a lot of the brands we work with, 'cause as you know, we just work with QSR and fast-casual, are heavily franchised, and it's such, it's so often such a contentious relationship, and you think, how did, how did we get here. Yeah, right? Like, how, how did this,

[00:33:16] and I think there's just so many factors, we won't go into it too far, but, I mean, there's just so many factors involved with that, but to hear that you're doing this in such a collaborative way is very uplifting and I'm sure, you know, a great example for other folks listening, maybe if they want some tips, they can call you,

[00:33:33] or you'll be at the shows, you'll be at, you'll be on the network. So, you know, I wanna, there's something else I wanna talk to you about that we also alluded to in our, in our pre-call, which is, you know, what has materialized and stuck in terms of tech and innovations and what hasn't? And you talked a lot about, like, preparing for the next moment in time,

[00:33:52] God willing, it's not another pandemic, but preparing, you know, everyone, every industry goes through a reckoning, we're, we've been through a big reckoning, and what is that next moment in time gonna look like? And you started reflecting and, and kind of listing off all these things, and in fact we did a poll on LinkedIn recently, like, things that have stuck and things that really haven't materialized.

[00:34:14] So, where do you see the things that have stuck continuing to stick besides AI, 'cause we've spent a lot of time on that, um, but yeah, what else do you see as being something that you think is gonna be around for a while? 

[00:34:26] Phil Crawford: Yeah, you know, it's funny, it's a great question. The reason why I ask 'cause you talk about the previous, people were talking about drones, people were talking about autonomous delivery vehicles, people were talking about robotics and kitchens. Those are fads, right? I think that really that's gonna, that's gonna change,

[00:34:41] I mean, this sounds very cliche, outside of the hospitality, which is the industry we're in, regardless, really, it's gonna be about the device in your hand, right? These things are gonna stick and to continue to evolve, loyalty and dedication to brand is gonna continue to evolve, period. I think the ability for guests, you know, in order to get whatever they want at any given time by leveraging their own device and sharing more information with you to have that one-to-one relationship, look, now it sound like a marketer, um, uh, really is, 

[00:35:14] Jen Kern: It's okay.

[00:35:14] Phil Crawford: going to, it's, this is where it's going, right? The world is changing, our next generation of people, you know, our young, our young kids, are your next influencers, like TikTok, right? Social online games, that whole ecosystem is gonna hit us, it's gonna hit us square, I mean, look at MrBeast, not a plug for MrBeast, my kids follow that gentleman, and he's a big philanthropy individual, right?

[00:35:41] But that's where it's going, this is where we're going to go, we have to be in the mediums and the moments that they want, and we need to be able to provide this solution to technology stacks that communicates with 'em within that way.

[00:35:51] Like, think about where the TV ads were before COVID and no streaming service. Now, we're all streaming services, and the whole marketing paradigm has shift to what you advertised for. Same with technology, I think it goes back to putting more valuable information inside people's hands so they can make more informed decisions and make it a frictionless environment.

[00:36:09] That's where it's going, like, in the store, the future, you look at me, personally, I kind of said this for those of you who sat in the meeting with my, my last thing was, you walk into the store eventually, I may have said earlier today as well, everything changes around you, the store knows who you are when you walk in that door.

[00:36:24] Everything contextually changes around you, who you are, thinking, like, you have your own social score, like, you're a four outta five, a store knows who you are, identifies you when you walk in the door, like, all that stuff is digitalized in the next generation, and that's where this is going, a hundred percent. 

[00:36:40] Jen Kern: Do you worry about security? Like, I know that's a big concern when it comes to the data, and yeah 

[00:36:43] Phil Crawford: I always worry about security, a hundred percent, there's no question about it. But a real simple principle, I, I work with a great gentleman, my, my head of security here and, you know, it's always about if somebody's gonna trust us with your information, we have a social and ethical responsibility to take care of that data.

[00:36:59] So, it's always first and first and foremost in our minds whenever we build any kind of solution that becomes there, right? So, we need to be cognizant of it, we also need to give people the rights to get out of there, if they wanna walk away, we, we have the ability to go and truly expunge out of the system.

[00:37:12] So, security is always gonna be part of the decision matrix as we start evolving as a brand, also as an industry as well. Look, all it takes is, you know, one bad incident, and the industry has to flip when it comes to data privacy, we've already seen it happen in different states. 

[00:37:27] Jen Kern: Right, right. And it's really interesting in terms of how it's gonna play out with the next generation, right? Like, you mentioned your kids, and there's an expectation of, like, they grew up with that phone, and there's an expectation of the Netflix and the Amazon, like, experiences, and yet there are some of them, too, that are super nervous about people having my data and that kind of thing.

[00:37:50] And me, I mean, I don't know if it is 'cause I'm a marketer, but I, I wanna be catered to in the most personalized fashion, like, I don't know about walking into a store, and like, everything changing but, but that's like, "What?" Um, but I do wanna be known, I want a super, like, customized experience 'cause it just gives me the warm, and fuzzies, I'm that kind of person, right? But I think with that next generation, it's gonna be really interesting to see how that all progresses.

[00:38:19] Phil Crawford: Uh, I think it, I think it will, like if you, if we'll take, I don't want to use the channel, but whatever you're doing, they're capturing data on you regardless, whatever you view, whatever you watch, whatever you click on, or whatever you sign up for

[00:38:33] Jen Kern: Even if you're on those browsers that, like you say, you know, following me. 

[00:38:36] Phil Crawford: Well, I'm, we won't name the browsers, but yeah, there's always ways for somebody to track you. If somebody says that there's just this out there, it's just, it's a commonality of, I mean, even your phones track you wherever you go, then you turn everything off, some other system's tracking you some way, when you've seen it in news articles and everything else. I think, yeah, I think that generation is, is, is probably more critical of data, right? 

[00:39:00] They want, but I think also they want to be more informed, I think is the key word, I think previously we never informed people what we were doing, I think the information is the key. If we tell them, here's why you're giving it to us,

[00:39:12] here's what we're doing, and be upfront about it, I think you're gonna over-cross that barrier, you're gonna give that trust initially. I think there's a lot of the naysayers out there are saying, "Ooh, you're kind of deceptive. What are you doing? Like, what's bo, what's your true in, your true initiative here?"

[00:39:25] I think that that's kind of where it stems from, again, I'm not a young child anymore, wish I was, different story, I live, I live vicariously through my teenagers, um, 

[00:39:35] Jen Kern: Yeah, same. 

[00:39:36] Phil Crawford: uh, but I, I, I think over time as they grow up and mature and they go after college and they start seeing the value, there's, and they learn about how personal preferences are, like, it changes. I think of, like, back to banking, right? Honestly total tangent, we used to walk in and talk to a teller, right? And you just write a check and sign your name, people are like, "What the heck's a check?" Nowadays, it's all on your phone and you, you never talk to support, it's all an automated tellers and so forth. 

[00:40:02] That, those decisions were based off of data metrics, right? They, the people had to trust them to make these evolutionary shifts and paradigm shifts, I think we're in that same kind of evolution in our industry, right? We're going through these massive paradigm shifts that were forced upon us in order to make the experience better, and that's what they've done, they did it for efficiencies, they did it for labor savings, they did it for all the different reasons you would do it, right? We're doing the same thing in a kind of a different context. 

[00:40:26] Jen Kern: Yeah. It's such a good comparison, it's such a good metaphor, thinking about, I mean, it wouldn't be for people a lot younger than us, 'cause they don't remember walking into a bank and having to deposit with the tubes and stuff like that, but you're right, oh, my gosh, that's, it's a great. 

[00:40:41] Phil Crawford: Yeah, like, do you trust taking a picture of your checking your phone, it's to your check, because they do, right? And making sure it goes to your bank and posts, there has to be that trust factor there all the way through. 

[00:40:52] Jen Kern: Yeah. Okay. My next ques, question comes from one of my colleagues, Tom Dunigan, who I know you've met. 

[00:40:57] Phil Crawford: Okay, yes, yes. 

[00:40:58] Jen Kern: And I'm gonna ask it because, and, and I preface it like that because it just doesn't sound like my kind of question, I'm gonna a, um, he says, "What is the cool, gnarly stuff that you're doing on the back end that no one sees?" That's such a Tom question. 

[00:41:11] Phil Crawford: That sound, that sounds like a Phil Crawford question 'cause if you know me, I'm like, in a hoodie, and like, you see now, in jeans and sometimes flip flops, but we won't go there, dress codes are a different story. Um, y, yeah, you know, I think I kinda alluded to it earlier, I think a lot of these tools, tools stuff with machine learning in the back end really is gonna be kind of the secret sauce of what we're doing, 

[00:41:29] and you, you touched on it earlier about the capturing of data, what you're gonna do with it? Like, I can't, I can't spill the special sauce, but there's a lot of cool things we're doing with our recent, you know, spin-ups of our app and loyalty programs. They're really gonna try to play in some of the things I've talked about that might be in the future that we really can kind of hone and really understand our guests and make decisions on it based on product we're doing, based on LTOs,

[00:41:52] but it's gonna be more about the modeling itself and taking away the guessing that sometimes restaurateurs do, and have the system spit out the ideas, I mean, I'm gonna use the words ChatGPT, you just brought it up earlier, like, you'd be able to input a question into a system and say, "Hey, what would happen if I added bacon to a cheeseburger in this demographic, in this legion of regions, but on a Tuesday with, like, sunshine and we had a special for $3?

[00:42:19] Like, what model would that stood out?" But it becomes that kind of contextual machine learning, I think is as we're actually partially building it, but I think that you, people will start eventually seeing as some of the, the back end stuff we're doing internally because it's, takes so much human element to mine that data that you can actually use the lot, machine learning modeling in order to get the output you need based on algorithms. That's the cool stuff we're doing on the back end. Now, again, it's not sexy, like you

[00:42:44] Jen Kern: But it's pretty cool.

[00:42:45] Phil Crawford: It's cool, but it's not sexy, it's not like, "Ooh, look at the new flashy toy you got." Right? It's not there, but it's behind the scenes, the uber nerds like myself are like, "Now, that's a flashy cool thing, like, we love that stuff."

[00:42:56] That's the, that's the, that's the gnarly stuff we're doing, and I think that, um, if we can expand upon that and we can expand upon our individual internal marketing and tech, tech stacks, I think it'll start to leverage and make changes on the front-end in a quicker, more affordable fashion. 

[00:43:13] Jen Kern: Yeah, yeah. I, I actually think that's really cool because the front-ends of, like, there are too many gadgets and flashy things, and you all got 'em in the pandemic, and now it's about that reckoning of, like, "Wait a minute, how can we make this more efficient?" Which is kind of where we started. 

[00:43:29] Phil Crawford: Correct. 

[00:43:29] Jen Kern: Um, so we're coming up on time, but I didn't, uh, get to ask you about your Star Wars figurines that you really wanted to make sure were in the background.

[00:43:36] Phil Crawford: Uh, yes, yes, see, it's like you can take the, the geek out of the nerds, then you can take the Star Wars out of the nerd either way. Um, so, yes, a big diehard Star Wars fan as you can see 'em over my shoulder, you can't see 'em all, I have walls and walls of Funko Pops and collectibles and it's so great because I have, my, my teenage son is a big Mandalorian Star Wars fan, so, you know, passing down that torch of the Lucas Empire of what it is, it's, it kind of keeps you, it keeps you grounded, right?

[00:44:04] I always tell the teams, you're like, "I am who I am, I have a, a high level of, you know, self-esteem and humility of just be who you are." Right? 'Cause people would, one of my favorite people I follow is Pastor Greg's show, and he's always had some amazing phrases when I visited, people would rather be, follow somebody that's honest and true to themselves and always right,

[00:44:22] it's the same thing, like, be who you are, bring toys in, like, personalize who you are, and it, and, and it's, it's also a conversation piece, like, "Wow, wow, really good, like a bunch of toys in their office, do you really work or do you play with toys all day?" So, that's kind of, where's kinda what, growing up, and again, it's kind of the technology science fiction side. 

[00:44:40] When I first started with my computer was because my mom, right, gave me my, an Apple II when I was like, you know, yay, big, and, and a Commodore 64 is, you might be getting programming on, like, that's where it started. And so, it continues to evolve, and it just is that extra little childish bug in the back of my head that says, "You know what? Stay in your roots, man, it's cool to be that way." So, that's why I have Star Wars toys.

[00:45:02] Jen Kern: That's so cool. It reminds me of the Michael Singer story, have you ever heard of him? And he has this, uh, his book's called The Surrender Experiment, and he talks about the first time, he handed a building, a huge tech company, it was HR, you know, tech. But the first time he was in a, it was like a radio tech type store, and he bumped into a computer, which fell on the ground, and he's like, "What does this thing do?" This is like the eighties, right? He's like, "What does this thing do?" And he, that's how he started programming.

[00:45:28] Phil Crawford: Yeah, that's

[00:45:29] Jen Kern: That's like, it's kind of cool.

[00:45:31] Phil Crawford: I know, and, and, and, and my team hates it when I sit there and they, the rule here is we don't give Phil any admin access because so do damage, is, is I like to tinker with code, you know, on apps and the web stuff we're doing, I like to go in and play because it's just, keeps me grounded, but it's, it's my passion, my,

[00:45:49] like I, I know there's software development lifecycle very well and I like to tinker with the latest and greatest stuff like ChatGPT, right? And doing stuff like DALL-E and different things on it to start developing because why not? 

[00:46:00] Jen Kern: Yeah. Listen, if you can put play and work together, snap. 

[00:46:06] Phil Crawford: Look, I, this, this doesn't work for me, I keep telling 'em, like, people, like, "Why do you do this?" I'm like, "I love what I do." If you love what you do, it's not a job, it's not work, it's a passion. So, I mean, I can talk for hours, which is why I, I do podcasts and I, and I have these discussions 'cause it really is a fire inside,

[00:46:22] you can kind of, it gets, it gets me invigorated to come in every day and get to go, I get to go play with computers and technology and bleeding-edge stuff and deal with food and beverage, like, oh my gosh, what is better than that? And I'm probably an antithesis, you know, IT guy, I'm a big extrovert, so it's like, it's like, wow, you're feeding all my ADD, OCD, ADHD kind of things,

[00:46:47] Phil Crawford: all in this one, yeah, all in one time. So, it's, it's killer, I love it, a hundred percent. 

[00:46:52] Jen Kern: That's so cool. And you mentioned you're passionate about giving back, and you had a plug early on that you wanted to? 

[00:46:59] Phil Crawford: Oh, yeah, yeah. So, albeit, um, so, obviously we have MURTEC coming up, uh, I get to be a judge once again on Start-Up Alley, which is awesome, uh, I might squander into the panel OT, gotta come in, and find, and see that yourself. 

[00:47:11] I'll be at RFIS in a couple weeks talking about automation, uh, with a couple key panelists. But yeah, giving back, so I, I recently was kind enough to, to join Andrew's, uh, you know, GiftAMeal as a, as a board member. 

[00:47:23] Jen Kern: Oh, yeah, I did see that.

[00:47:24] Phil Crawford: And that's just an amazing cause, right? It's about, you know, give a meal, gift a meal to help those less fortunate, you probably saw the, the wristband on, you know, with Noah Glass and, you know, No Kid Hungry, like, and I do Round It Up America.

[00:47:37] I started with, you know, Harald Herrmann and Jennifer Weerheim back in the Yard House days, like, giving back to, giving back to the society that's, has given me everything I've got is kind of, you know, part of the mission, it's to give back. In time, right, and giving insight and value to these start-ups or other groups to grow and continue is how you do so. And as much as I can talk about 'em and, you know, give benefits, a hundred percent, that's what you gotta do. 

[00:48:01] Jen Kern: Yeah. I had a chance to meet Andrew about a year ago, I think it was at a show, I think it was at MEG, actually, right before NRA, and I was just thrilled to hear about what he was doing and actually 

[00:48:13] Phil Crawford: It's taken off, too. 

[00:48:14] Jen Kern: I need to have him on here 'cause he, he, he did want, he was interested in coming on, and just sort of got distracted, but, um, what a lovely young gentleman he is. 

[00:48:23] Phil Crawford: A, absolutely, it's a great idea, too, right? And it's, it's a low-level lift to get going, just like, you know, the other two plugs they gave as well, and it's, it really does benefit. When you sit back and you see somebody that gets a check for a local food shelter and what that actually does to feed people and realize how blessed you are to actually have that what you have, and see how much far that money goes,

[00:48:44] it really is, it get, it, it, it gets at you, and that really is what people should really, you know, if they can do so and give back their time and, or funds, they should really their, def to do so, makes them, you know, not to get all biblical, but it's, it's the right thing to do. 

[00:48:57] Jen Kern: Yeah, I agree, I agree with you. Okay, last but not least, coming up on time. Food, we didn't talk about the food yet. Any new, fun menu items coming out and?

[00:49:08] Phil Crawford: Well, we did, but it was so popular we sold out. 

[00:49:12] Jen Kern: What was it? 

[00:49:13] Phil Crawford: So, we had a Philly Cheesesteak going on, by the time this airs, it's already way long gone at that point. But the problem, though, is that it had such big demand on both the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's side we sold that within two weeks.

[00:49:25] Jen Kern: Wow.

[00:49:26] Phil Crawford: Yeah, so it's 

[00:49:26] Jen Kern: And you're not bringing it back?

[00:49:28] Phil Crawford: No, I, I think it's gonna be one of those that, you know, we won't name the other concepts that do that, that get shelved and maybe backed by papa that are band, it'll, it'll, it'll come out in the future. But it was a great success, I think it was a great product, and that was one I missed out on, I mean, I got to test it early, but never got to actually go enjoy it because it was gone so quick. 

[00:49:47] Jen Kern: Oh, wow. Was it in a long roll, or was it in a bun? 

[00:49:51] Phil Crawford: It was in a, it, both. So, they had a Philly Cheese Steak Burger, which is, like, meat on meat, which is, you can't get wrong with that. And then it was, for the Hardee's was in a burrito, and it was phenomenal for breakfast. So, great product, great, you know, menu engineering, uh, great value, and I think the consumers really clambered onto it, uh, outside of the, the ads that were done on social and TV, and obviously some of the, the promotion thing we did. It was a tremendous hit, and we sold that. 

[00:50:16] Jen Kern: Sounds amazing, I mean, I'm, I grew up right outside of Philly, so when you say Philly Cheese Steak, I'm like, "Mmm, ugh." 

[00:50:21] Phil Crawford: Well, it's funny, too, 'cause when we launched it was like the week of Super Bowl.

[00:50:25] Jen Kern: Oh, was it?

[00:50:25] Phil Crawford: It was the Super Bowl, there you go, right, so, obviously, taglines and everything else, I think that actually was also the catalyst too.

[00:50:31] Jen Kern: That's a good marketing, people.

[00:50:33] Phil Crawford: Yes, we do, they know what they're doing. 

[00:50:35] Jen Kern: Awesome. Well, Phil, any last plugs or announcements you wanna give? I just wanna thank you so much for all your time and all your insight and we, we know you're an innovator and you're doing really cool stuff, so I'm sure people can follow on you on LinkedIn, but any other ways that people can get in touch with you?

[00:50:49] Phil Crawford: Find me on LinkedIn is the best way, you know, keep an eye out on podcast such as this, it's just a pleasure to, to talk to you and talk industry and talk things non-industry, talk Star Wars, talk food. So, it's kind of fun, right? It brings a full 360 together, but absolutely, I appreciate your, your invite and always enjoy talking. 

[00:51:05] Jen Kern: Super appreciate it. Well, thank you again for your time and good luck with all the fun things I know you have planned this year, including your travels and, and now your events, and I hope to see you somewhere on the, on the road, but if you're not out there on the road, go follow Phil on LinkedIn, send him a note, thank him for being on the show and pick his brain a little bit 'cause he's got lots of ideas. 

[00:51:23] Phil Crawford: That works. I like it. 

[00:51:24] Jen Kern: Awesome. All right, you have a great day. Thanks again. 

[00:51:27] You too. Thank you. 

[00:51:28] 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.