Matt Plapp, CEO of America’s Best Restaurants | S1E25

This episode was originally published as part of the Restaurant Growth Podcast. It has been rebranded as part of The Pre-Shift Podcast as of January 2023. The information presented may no longer be up-to-date and may differ from the viewpoints and insights currently shared on The Pre-Shift Podcast.

Matt Plapp and his team have been to more restaurants than anyone. Since 2021, they’ve taken cross country to visit and document America’s best independent restaurants. And they’ve learned what separates successful restaurants from struggling ones. 

Matt joins us on the Restaurant Growth Podcast to chat about:

• His career in radio advertising to restaurant marketing
• What 90 to 95% or restaurant are not doing—but should be
• A ton of creative ways to collect customer data 
• The importance of storytelling
• Whether or not Matt has taken his van to Hawaii
• And more!

The Restaurant Growth Podcast is presented by 7shifts and hosted by DJ Costantino.

Meet Matt Plapp
First, I’m a husband to Christy for the past 20 years, then a father to Paige & Cole. Next I’m an AVID marketer, CrossFitter, Author, Speaker, Consultant & Business Coach. I’ve owned my marketing firm since 2008 and since then we’ve helped hundreds of companies market with a purpose, that purpose is ROI! Since 2016 our main focus has been to help independent restaurants and today we help restaurants all over the country.

I commonly get asked, “Matt what do you do”?

#1 I’m the CEO of America’s Best Restaurants. We help independent restaurants tell their stories, acquire customers and build sales momentum.

#2 I’ve written 3 books on restaurant marketing and my 4th is coming out late 2023

#3 I’ve personally traveled to over 1,000 restaurants to understand what works and what doesn’t, when it comes to restaurant marketing. CLICK HERE to see what I learned on that path.

#4 I’m the host of two podcasts. MPTV is my podcast talking to restaurant owners and fellow entrepreneurs. Restaurant Expert Roundup is the 2nd podcast where I interview authors and influencers in the restaurant business.

At the end of the day, I exist to help independent restaurant owners WIN! And this didn’t start yesterday. It started in 1999 when I first started helping restaurants working for WGRR 103.5 with radio advertising. By 2008 I had become an accidental expert in digital marketing and turned my attention to consulting. Fast forward to 2015 and I’d created an online marketing strategy that helped restaurants FINALLY see results with their marketing and build their customer database like never before.

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Credits
Host & Executive Producer: D.J. Costantino
Editor: Fina Charleston
Producer: Samantha Fung
Designer: Jake Sinclair

Transcript

DJ Costantino: 0:00

Hey everybody, what is going on? My name is DJ, and you're back with the restaurant growth podcast by seven shifts on this show, we speak with the best minds in the restaurant business to give you big insights and new ideas on how to help your restaurants grow today on the show, we welcome Matt flap, the CEO of America's best restaurants. He makes it his mission to help independent restaurants, market smarter. Get both customer attention and retention by levering social media inspired by GAFI and his red Camaro. Matt and his team have taken advanced cross country visiting well over 1000 restaurants, which they have profiled on their site and social media pages suffice to say, they know what makes restaurants successful. From a marketing standpoint, Matt shares his stories, some of the best practices and ways that independent restaurants can get that repeat business, that owner stream of not to mention retaining staff while they're at it. As always. We'd love to hear from you, tell us who you wanna hear on the show, what you like, what you don't like, and anything else that comes to mind. Just shoot me a message@podcastsevenshifts.com with that. Here's Matt. Matt, how

Matt Plapp: 0:59

are you today? I am doing amazing. Outstanding. How

DJ Costantino: 1:03

about you? I am amazing and outstanding as well. So glad you could come on the show today. I'm

Matt Plapp: 1:09

stoked to be here. We're

DJ Costantino: 1:10

really happy to have you. So Matt, you know, you could probably do an intro better than I could tell us how you got started in this restaurant business of our.

Matt Plapp: 1:18

Cool. So I'm the CEO of America's best restaurants and that's what we are now. It started back in 2008 as a digital marketing company called driven media. And my concept was pretty simple to help small businesses leverage technology in 2008, which it's crazy to see where it's come since then. Yeah. But it's also honestly crazy to see. A lot of what I was preaching in 2008, still isn't happening with small businesses. And so kind of rewinding before that my background started in the late nineties. I worked in TV and radio. I degree in broadcast journalism communications, and learned on accident about technology. I built a website in 1999 for a family boat in RB dealership that we were creating at the same time. Of creating that business. I sold radio advertising and selling radio advertising. Saw that nobody called on the mom and pop restaurants. And it's kind of ironic because it's where it led me to today. And like, I look back like, how'd you get the restaurants? And like, it changes every time I look at it because right. It started really when I was a kid, my mom and dad had an insurance company. And my mom focused on the consumer side, my dad focused on the B2B side and he had, I wanna say almost every restaurant in the Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati region, the big name ones in shirt. Yeah. And so we always would, would eat out. It was never eat at home. It was like, we're gonna go to Mike Franks this night, barley corns this night, the glass men, it was just, there was a whole list of restaurants that he would go to because they were clients. It was networking and taking care of a client. And so when I look back at my history, it, you know, it started at a young age. I was always at restaurants and they were all independence. And in the late nineties, when I got in the radio, the negative in radio, when you're brand new, is that all the good accounts are taking the car dealers, the casinos, somebody already works with them. And so I started looking at things and said, okay, who is nobody talking to? And nobody was talking to the Ferrari's little like Ferrari little Italy. So one location restaurant in Madeira, nobody was talking to the personas. And so I went to them, found a solution that would help'em on radio advertise. And that kind of launched my career there. And when I went into consulting with this company in oh eight, I had a lot of those restaurants reach out and say, Matt, show us what this Facebook thing is. Show us about the internet. Uh, the first restaurant I ever worked with. Was I went there, a friend of mine shared their coupon on Facebook and this crazy looking burger called the bar. Zillows like this big. Yep. And I went down there and had lunch because of that Facebook post. Well, I'm talking to the owner. I said, this place is awesome. It's a little hole in the wall. I love what you got. I said one suggestion. They said what? I said, well, you currently your Facebook post that was made. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It does great. You have a person named barbs burgers. If Facebook sees that they will delete your profile, you need to have a business page. Well, I don't know how to do that. I'm like, I'll help you. Well, what can we do? I'm like nothing I'll help you so, well, we wanna do something. I said, gimme a free burger. And so that led to them giving me like 250 bucks in food a month and we would handle their social media. And so from there, it kind of ballooned out to where by 2015, we had created a, uh, technique. That has since been copied by a lot of people of how to gather customer data from Facebook and Instagram into messenger, through VIP programs. And then, you know, we just ballooned out from there 2017, we went national and got rid of all of our other clients, car dealers. Yeah. And became America's best restaurants. And, you know, that was, it's kind of surreal. Five six years ago, it was me and a couple, one full-time employee and a handful of part-timers, uh, you know, we're hiring two or three people a week now, the last three years. Wow. And so we not a week by, we just always are hiring. Yeah. And so, you know, this week I've hired three people and we're up to, let's say we're about 48 to 49 people now with about 15 to 20 freelancers overseas. And we work with restaurants, nation. It's exciting. That's

DJ Costantino: 5:16

amazing. Congratulations on all that success. And, um, thank you. You know, it is an interesting journey, right? From 2008 until today. You know what I guess I'm curious. So what, what are some of the biggest changes, but also what are the, what are some of the, the concepts, what hasn't changed since then?

Matt Plapp: 5:31

So my last book I wrote called restaurant marketing that works came out late last year. Like, what was that? Yeah. Late last year. The title of it was supposed to be, I was writing it before the pandemic. There was restaurant market that works, uh, and it was gonna be back to the basics 1 0 1. Actually it came up two years ago. I think. I can't remember. The years are the last two years is like one, one big year. It seems like one month. It seems like. Yeah. And so we changed the name to before, during, and after the pandemic, my publisher called me up and he said, Hey, Matt, on the book we were doing it. He's like, what's changed. I said, what do you mean? Like what you just said? He said, what's changed in marketing restaurants. I said, nothing. The things we've been preaching for the last seven to 10 years are as relevant today as they ever have been. If not more. Yeah. And it's the same stuff. And so that's where we decided to change the, the title of the book from restaurant marketing that works to restaurant market that works before, during, and after the pandemic for that reason. Because what we were preaching five years ago, telling your story, gathering customer data and using the data correctly is more relevant today than it was then. You've got a, you got a consumer that's confused.

DJ Costantino: 6:41

Yep. And the competition is, is, is bigger than it ever has been. I think, especially with all the bigger players kind of getting bigger past few years and really creating from, from what I can see as an industry, that's like the big guys and the small people and the divide is even bigger than it ever has been. Yep. So tell me a little bit about the roadshow that you guys do. I know you, uh, you visited thousands of restaurants more than in the past few years. How did that get started? And, and what's

Matt Plapp: 7:06

that all. Yeah. So there's actually one of the two vans are here right now. If you can see that. Ah, very cool. Yeah. There's one of the vans. The other one is in Erie, Pennsylvania right now I believe is where I think Luis and all and Ryan are at. Okay. So in 2018, when I was traveling, not like I got'em all sitting here. I was traveling, speaking at food shows are my first book. Don't 86 year restaurant sales. And I had a friend of mine recently. I don't understand the title. I said, good. I didn't want you to Cause you're not a restaurant person. They understand 86 and. When I was traveling with that book, I always would say, and this is even more ironic, cuz I just got back from Monday spending the day with guy Fietti. But I would say back in 2018 that restaurants don't do a good job of telling their story that they don't do a good job of telling their story. And there's nobody out there with a megaphone screaming for, and there was two examples I would always use. I would always say, if you look at Yelp, Yelp is a place that restaurants get a lot of attention. And the negative is they don't control it. And then I look at the other side and I look at guy Fietti and diner driving design, the most famous personality in the independent restaurant space, hands down. And I used to say, imagine if guy I was telling my team, cuz we have a large marketing team and then we also have the media side. Now I used to say, I want you to imagine if guy looked at that restaurant owner, he had just got done talking to and said, Hey, I wanna, I wanna sit down and talk to you. I see some things in your restaurant. You could be doing different marketing wise. Would you be able to talk? There's not one. That would say, no, I'm not interested. Right. And so that was my theory was okay. What if we do those things? What if we figure out a way to create a platform that allows the restaurants to control their own narrative, unlike all the other platforms where the consumers have input. And then what if we create a show that allows us to Chronicle the little guy in their journey that mom and pop independent restaurant in every town. And then at the same time, now that we're doing that, Hey, if you need help, our team's behind you, whatever you need. So, 2018, I started taking my phone a tripod and I would go to re. So when I would travel and speak with the book, when I would go to food shows and have booths, I would find 4, 5, 6 local restaurants I'd have a conversation with them. One of them actually came up in a Facebook memory the other day from four years ago, it was June, you know, yesterday, four years ago at a place called buzz bull Creamery in downtown Cincinnati. And that was one of the first ones. And so we started doing that and I realized that my vision was never gonna come to fruit. Because my long term goal was for America's best restaurants.com. It was.net back then. Cuz we couldn't afford do com to be completely transparent. I looked at the amount I had to pay it. I'm like about that. That sounds pretty

DJ Costantino: 9:49

good.

Matt Plapp: 9:51

let's bring to it. Yeah. Net, I guess net like do net net. So back then we had the.net and the Brandy, ironically wasn't orange and blue. It was gold and black. I was trying to separate the two. Yeah. And make them look different. Eventually I realized that was wrong, but. Back then I had this vision of America's best restaurants, not net of being a, a place where consumers would go to find local restaurants, not chains, not franchises for the most part. Now some regional franchises, but not like McDonald's and taco bell. Right. Find that mom and pop restaurant. And I soon realized that if Matt flap was trying to be the guy fi. It would never happen because guys been doing it since 2006. And as of last year, I think the number I heard he said in an interview was 1300 restaurants. He had visited since thousand six. Yep. My goal is to get a hundred thousand restaurants on the. And so in 2019, we kind of shelved it and I looked, sat it back and said, okay, let's focus on running the company. Let's figure this out eventually. Cuz I, I still can't wrap my head around it. Well, by late 2019, I started watching a couple of my employees cuz I'm real adamant on my employees be involved in the community, be involved on Facebook on Instagram when you go to lunch interview the owner. Yeah. And it's funny cuz people would never do it. I'm like, Hey, grab your iPhone interview the owner. Well, I look and I start seeing two of my employees, Doug and Luis. I. These dudes are better on camera than me. like, I think I've become pretty good at being on camera. They're unbelievable. Yeah. And so I got both of them together and said, Hey, I got an idea. What if I bought a motor home? And we took turns, drive the motor home for one week, I'll drive it for five days across the country. I'll stop and interview 15, 20 restaurants. You fly in, you take the motor home, you leave. Doug comes. That was the game plan. Hmm. And everybody's like, love it. Love the idea. Luis is like one problem. I go, what he. I can't drive a motor. I can barely drive my car. Like you think I'm a maniac drive my Mazda. Like you think I'm gonna drive a motor home? Like, okay, that's a good point. So then I started thinking about it and we used to be a motor home dealer, uh, back in the day. And I, I remember the Mercedes sprinter chassis, you know, the small van. Yeah. That Amazon's got everywhere now. I said, what if I bought this? And that's the one out here. There's what we called. One Kenobi. It's the first one, our, our vision. We're trying to finalize the number. I think the number that will make sense for our company is about 25 to 30 vans on the road in five years. Yeah. So I bought that van, uh, hired five more people were up to 15 now just in that department and they travel to two to three restaurants a day, uh, be in the different. To it's a three to four hour shoot. And the whole concept is to help them tell their story. We go in, we, we actually launched some pretty cool things this summer, cuz we trialed it out a lot. Last year we went, we started in June, 2021 or thousand 21 and we went to, gosh, I think the first month we did 8 78 restaurants. Wow. Which is a lot. And we had to do a lot of trial and error cuz I'm a big person. I always say first to fail. Yeah. Be first to fail. Get there fast. The quicker you can get the failure, the better, the quicker you can find the. And so I started doing that. And when I got to the point last year, we started tweaking it. Now we're at two vans. We had a west coast and an east coast van. I realized really quick how hard it was to manage a team on the west coast. We're in Kentucky, Northern Kentucky by Cincinnati. And it was me flying every couple weeks out there. And it was just wasn't feasible at this point. So I brought the van back and what flew one of my employees out, he spent three days driving it backwards, snow skiing, a couple places, had a blast. Nice. And brought it back here. Now both vans run out here and that vision is, you know, the, right now, the way we're pacing is that financially, cuz it's not cheap. We spent$700,000 last year on it. And so when I talk to restaurants and they go, well, what's the catch. I've never heard of you. What are you doing? Yeah. I'm like, well you've never heard of us cuz we're brand. But the name America's best restaurant says all you need to know, like diners drive-ins and dives 10 years ago meant nothing to most people. They had never seen the show. Yep. If your, if your restaurant gets on Facebook or Instagram and says, Hey, America's best restaurants is coming in a month to film, to film with us. They've never heard of us, but they get excited. Because the name drips credibility. So last year we did that. We, we, we bought the do or guess two years, we bought the.com. We trademarked the brand. We built out a lot of, uh, lot of branding and, and, and everything's that nature. We built America's best restaurants.com. It's a pretty cool site, got a map colors of the states or orange we've been to blue. We haven't been to yet. And then I hired a team of five. What we call assistant producers. They find the restaurants and we don't go by Yelp or goo. We go by what we see. And then two phone conversations, which lead to a Google, meet our zoom call and hear the story. And if the restaurants a fit, we propose them, us coming out. And then we go from there.

DJ Costantino: 14:35

I'm curious, you said you kind of just made a couple phone calls. How do you decide where to go? Where are you

Matt Plapp: 14:39

looking? So we we've built an avatar. Uh, okay. And the, the, the theme that we use is a restaurant you would eat at weekly. Okay. And I tell my team to think about that. Would you eat at a restaurant that had a banner hanging on the front door for their BA their company for two years? Doesn't exude a lot of confidence to me. If you can't afford to put a sign on your building. Yep. Would you eat at a restaurant that had dirty diapers on the floor? So what we came up with is, is an avatar of what we believe as a restaurant, people would visit every week. And at the end of the day, it's what we would visit, you know, well taken care of. Yeah. Updated. We had a restaurant recently that applied cuz restaurants can apply to be featured. And one of my producers brought it to me and said, Hey, this checks off a lot of the boxes, but there's a couple ifs to my, my, my book. I said, what do you got? Let me, let me look at it. I said, what's your, if he's like, well, those tables and chairs are from 20 years ago. They aren't, they aren't antique chairs. Right. They're just shitty old chairs and tables. And I said, well, and I I'll leave it up to them. I'm like, why, why does that question? They're like, well, if they haven't spent the money to update the restaurant, Is it just a dive restaurant? Is it a dive barn? There's nothing wrong there. There's probably good food. There's people with good intentions, but with us where we're at now, America's best restaurants. I want it to be that local restaurant in your neighborhood. That's easy to get to that you will go to every week that has great service, great food and a great atmosphere. And somebody in the four walls that cares. Right? Because there's a lot of businesses I interviewed yesterday on one of our, we have four podcasts and one'em. I interviewed a. Who was, uh, Steve Robinson, who was a marketing director for Chick-fil-A for 35 years. Wow. And he talked about what was different. I asked him, I said, how does Chick-fil-A keep that local ownership feel when it's a national chain, a big one? And he said, because our owners for the most, like think 90% of'em only can own one Chick-fil-A right. That is their business. They're inside the four walls. Whereas I know a guy that has 28 of this one. Yeah, and he's never inside the four walls and it's obvious. And so that was a key element with, to me was I want America's best restaurants to be a sounding board for that independent restaurant, because there's another side of it. It's gonna take a few years, but America's best restaurants.com. And about three years is going to be a place that is first on all the searches that consumers are looking at to find restaurants in their neighborhood. And I want that to be filled with places that. That have owners and operators that it directly impacts versus the millionaire. That's got 35. McDonald's right.

DJ Costantino: 17:18

So really focusing in on the, the independent mom and pop owner, giving them kind of a leg up on the, on the big, the big guys or the, the big boys, I think, as you call it on, on your, uh, on your site. So I'm curious beyond the kind of, I think that's kind of table stakes is, you know, restaurants that care, right. Because we've all been to one that does, and we've all been told one that doesn't, how many have you visited in the past few years as a team, over a thousand.

Matt Plapp: 17:42

A lot. I mean, we've, we've filmed at almost a thousand in 11 months. Wow. Uh, per and we've, we've visited another four or 500 in kind of, you know, if we're out and. Today, Luis and them are up near Erie, Pennsylvania, somewhere, wherever that's at. I don't even know it's somewhere near Pittsburgh, but I don't know exactly where, but when they're out and about, they've got a list, we develop a list of about 500 restaurants a week that look ideal across the country. Okay. And when those guys are out there, like they're film two episodes today, but they'll stop by five restaurants, right. As a customer. And shake a hand and look at the place and then get, get on the phone and tell that producer, Hey yes, this place is a, this place looks great. This would be a good fit. Talk to the owner or, Hey, no, take this one off. Like I almost got shot and then from, and then, and then from the marketing side, I've personally outside of America's best restaurants, the roadshow I've visited somewhere in a neighborhood of, you know, 1500 to 2000 restaurants since 2017. Cause I've up until February of this year, I was traveling every other week. Wow.

DJ Costantino: 18:45

So I'm curious with all of those, those visits under your belt and experience and all that. You've probably been to more restaurants, I think, than probably anybody in the country. Yeah. You know, I, I wanna take a two kind of pronged approach to this, so I want to know first and for. You know, from a marketing and customer retention, customer service standpoint, what are the restaurants that are cut above the rest? What is the biggest difference between them and everybody else from a customer service standpoint? And I do wanna talk about some of the employees and the culture and that too, but first we'll, we'll kind of go in the, in the customer.

Matt Plapp: 19:12

So I break restaurants down three ways. Like I had a restaurant, this guy's name was Lenny. About five years ago, we had driven about a thousand customers into his restaurant in 60 days through this marketing program that we have. and he goes, well, how do I know they're coming back, Matt? Cuz that was his question. Like we, we drive'em in for the first visit and we don't wanna coupon the next two years. We wanna bribe them ethically for the first visit. And then after that, it's up to the marketing to stay in front of them to retain them. Yeah. And I said, let me ask you a question. Lenny, is your food suck? He looks at me really shocked and I goes, is your food socking? And he goes, well, you can just ate. What did you think? I said, I think the food's excellent, but I'm also sitting here with the owner. And the chef probably knows that he goes, no, our food is excellent all the time. I said, okay, cool. I'll give you that. I said, what about the service? He goes, well, the online reviews show us like a 4.4 to 4.6 everywhere. I said, okay, that means you probably got solid service. I said, the atmosphere looks great. If your service is good, your food's good. And your service is good. Why wouldn't they come back? And so those are the three big things I look at with restaurants is, is the food service and atmosphere. Yeah. And so on top of that, Is the Mo the only way you bring those people back on a consistent, dependable manner is marketing. And so the biggest thing I noticed, uh, and this is gigantic is that between 90 to 95% of restaurants are not actively involved in gaining customers data. When you walk in the restaurant, number one question, you'll get asked if you go tonight, I promise you if you and your wife go to dinner tonight and you walk in, let's say you go. Casual dining restaurant. You walk up to the front counter. Do you know the three words they're gonna ask you? Have you been here before? How are you? Oh, right.

DJ Costantino: 20:54

they don't care. I was hopeful that they would ask if I've been here before

Matt Plapp: 20:56

they're gonna ask. I I've I've literally have went to a hundred restaurants and charged it 90 to 95. I'm gonna ask you, how are you? Don't give a shit how I am. I don't care how you are. It's a nuanced question, right? What they should be asking is what you just said. Have you been here before? No, I haven't cool. Before we go any farther, we've got a V I P program that you get a free dessert on your next visit. Do me a favor. Stand this QR code. It's gonna take you here. It's gonna ask you five questions. You're gonna get something bonkers that you're gonna love. Now let's take you to your table. Hmm. 90 to 95% of restaurants are not doing anything to gain the customer's data that walks in their four walls. And that. Blows me away because my background from when I worked in radio from 99 to whatever it was, oh three at that same time, 99 to oh eight, we owned a boat in our dealership. Nobody walked in our boat in RV dealership, front doors without giving us their phone number, name, email, birthday, and nobody ever fought it because if you frame it correctly, if they were in there to buy a boat or camper, it's pretty easy. Hey, before we get forward, I want a couple questions I asked. They're gonna give'em to you. Your name, your phone number, email. Cool. What are you looking for? What to. If they're a customer coming to buy fishing tackle, I wanna make sure you're in our, our birthday program. Cuz you'll get a$25 gift card for your birthday. Oh, you're kidding me. No, fill this out. We were doing that in like, oh two. Yeah. And restaurants in 2022, aren't doing it. So that was the biggest thing. And the reason I bring that up first is that if you've got awesome food, awesome service and an awesome atmosphere, why wouldn't somebody come back? Well, they won't come back because you have failed to retain their attention. Scott, uh, Sean Walsh and I Sean's one of your guys. Yeah. We started a podcast. It comes out June 22nd called own their phones. And the whole concept of the podcast is to follow the journey of my company, working with Sean's company to help him market better. Cause he is awesome at digital storytelling. He wasn't awesome at use of data. So we're coming in, we're teaming up. We're going from there, but the concept of the podcast is to own people's. Be relevant on their email, on their text, on their Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace. I don't care where it's at but the only way you can do that in a predictable manner is to have their information. And so that's a huge element. So outside of that, the things that I've noticed as far as the restaurants that stood out, storytelling's a big one. So back in June of 2000, I went to our tech team. Tom on our tech team is called the build and tech team may help connect technology for our clients and make sure that customer data comes in from great place from all the places. And I asked him, I said, Tom, I want you do me a favor. Go analyze the top. 25 and bottom 25 restaurants we work with. Cause we have a pretty sophisticated dashboard that monitors the front end acquisition. We can see if they have 20% conversion rate, meaning somebody 20% of the people that give us their data. Walk in the restaurant, they got 2% how much they spend all this stuff. I thought he was gonna come back with some really cool chart and Hey, okay. Restaurants with this many Facebook fans, this many emails, this many texts, like I thought he would gimme like a roadmap to what we need to do. Yeah. And he came back and he goes, you're gonna love this. I go, why? He said the people that are doing the best are the ones that tell their stories on online. Yeah. The ones that are visible. As the owner on Facebook and Instagram and this past Monday, I was down in pigeon Ford, Tennessee with a downtown flavor town, a client of ours and guy Fietti, he's the, the name behind the restaurant. One of our clients, Bucky ma owns it and created it along with him. And I talked to guy, we've got some footage coming out soon, but I talked to guy, I said, that's exciting. I said, tell me, cuz I, I, I didn't know his business for a lot of theories. I've seen him on TV a billion times. Never met him. and I didn't know where he stood business wise. I said, you've got triple D. We've got America's best restaurants road show. You're doing it on food network. We're doing it on the Facebook page of the restaurants. But tell me 2022, the importance of a restaurant telling their story on Facebook and Instagram. And he was like, Matt, it's what they have to do. Yeah. People don't come in here for the calories. They come in here for the app, the relat. You know, and then, you know, 20, he said 20 years ago when I owned my restaurant, when I first got in the restaurant business, you had to buy billboards and yellow pages and maybe radio. And if you are lucky TV, now, you don't have to do that. Now you can get on all these social media platforms and the most important part of all that is the person. And he said something I had never heard before, man, it's so deep. He said a song means a lot more when you know the story of the artist. Mm. There's a, you know, there's an artist from Kentucky named Jack Harlow, a rapper, and my son gets a kick out of it that I listen to Jack Harlow and I don't listen to Jack Harlow cuz I love his music. I listen to Jack Harlow cuz I know his story. Like I know the story of him in sixth grade going around his school with 10 Nicks tapes that were probably God awful, but it didn't stop. And that's me like some of the videos I did 10 years ago were God. And so when guy said that, I was like, wow, that's deep man. And like you think about that from a restaurant standpoint, that was the reason that I supported barleycorns during the pandemic, that when we had a choice in may of 2020, where to eat. I didn't go to the subway or McDonald's, or even Chick-fil-A I went to barley corns. Why? Because I knew the high family owned barley corns, and we went there, we got our wings and our Saratoga chips and our French fries and our cheese sticks. And we sat in our damn car in their parking lot and had dinner two to three nights a week on average for probably three to four months. Yep. And it was because I knew the owner. And so that's, that's what I think is a huge element there. Not think I know is that restaurants need to know that. And by the way, uh, there's a URL. Can I put, give you a URL which tells a lot of stats your life? Yeah, of course. So it's America's best restaurants.com/stats. If you go to America's best restaurants.com, you won't find us on the menu. This is a, a standalone page, and this page is fed by life stats. Every day. My team have a little holder on their phone. If I go on my phone, I can go on here and I can click this button. And it's gonna do, what's called a restaurant attention audit. And so on that attention audit, it answers six questions about the restaurant's use of marketing. And that's how our team understands. If the place is a good fit for us to talk to'em on the marketing side. So we started publishing those stats on that America's best restaurants.com/stats. And it's updated. If I go on there right now and review a restaurant on what we see, it'll update the stats. And so there's some pretty cool stats that are kind of scary, but that storytelling also goes. So what's the number one problem. The last 12 months restaurants have had in the United States, labor, labor hiring, you know why a lot of restaurants, it doesn't look fun to work there. Right? I get the applications I get all the time. Here are unbelievable. I have two friends of mine recently who have companies like mine and different niches, but they do marketing and consulting and they said, man, we can't find anybody. I said, that's because you don't build an assign story. What do you mean? I said, if I go to your Facebook and your Instagram right now, There's nothing that gets me excited about wanting to work with you. Actually it looks really damn boy, and it's really self absorbed. I said, if you go to my Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, you're gonna see how I use the Lambo. You're gonna see our road trips. You're gonna see our Nerf basketball court. We put it in the basement. You're gonna see our ping pong room. You're gonna see our weight room. You're gonna see that everybody here wears the orange gear in rocks Jordans and gets Adidas when they start, like we have shoes you get, when you start that master company of colors we've and we put that on video. And so that was a big thing. I've got a lot of restaurants that didn't have a problem hiring people. Why? Because the owner and the team are always in the marketing, always on TikTok and Facebook and people that are 18 to 30 years old that were looking for the restaurants base said, okay, I can work at these 20 restaurants. These 15 all are just a job. These two or three pay a little more. These two or three look funny. And that's where they picked. And, and it also goes back to the thing to think about it. If, if you worked at a restaurant and you didn't enjoy the day and you didn't have fun time and the culture, wasn't great. And you went home at night and you had a roommate and your roommate said, Hey man, how was work? Oh, Hey, it sucked the owner's a jerk. This happened. That happened. That roommate wouldn't go. Oh, cool. Can I. But if you went home and said, oh, it was great, man. We had a good time. It was a good day. Had some things happen, but man, you know, team's great. The owner's awesome that roommate or spouse or brother is gonna go, can you gimme an application? Right. And so that was a big thing. And that goes back to what you asked earlier with culture. Is that how you treat people, how you handle things. We've got this right here. If you can see the money. Every Friday tomorrow I go to the bank tomorrow and I'll have to withdraw based on this week's sales, I'll probably have to withdraw about$2,000 cash. I will put the$2,000 cash in here in between tens to a hundred denominations. And my there's 12 people from our team that contributed to the sales that get to reach into the money bucket tomorrow at we're doing that one 30 tomorrow. Yep. And so that's fun. And so when they go home and their friends are looking for a job and they say, man, on this point, How'd you get 300 bucks day dude, cash money, the money bucket. What's the money. Have you ever heard of a money bucket at an office? No, exactly.

DJ Costantino: 30:37

We definitely don't have that.

Matt Plapp: 30:39

and, and, and that restaurant's need it. Like we, I have clients of mine that we've trained on the money bucket that we say, Hey, you've got your VIP program. You know, you've got your sign ups like this, you know, you got your, your napkins on the table and your server. You'll walk up and go, Hey, do me a favor, scan the B, scan the code and join our B P program. You're gonna get an awesome gift next week at a free steak for your next meal, whatever it. Right. And when they do it, they walk back or they, they, they walk back the owner and say, Hey, I just got somebody to sign up. Cool. Reaches the money bucket. And now that server's out there doing that stuff, they're having fun. They're making more money, they're making cash. And then it's benefiting the restaurant by getting that sign up that I mentioned never happened. So those are little things with culture outside of that. I'm not an operations guy. So, uh, I don't really critique service. And I think it's been impossible to critique service, cuz even for me, The best restaurants still have had some limited capacity with regards to what they could do the past couple years. But those are some of the biggest things I've seen in the restaurant.

DJ Costantino: 31:40

Absolutely. I I'm curious about this kind of gathering, like the VIP list, you know, the napkin, you just held up with the QR code on it. So I think I've been talking to a lot of people lately about, uh, paint in the past couple episodes. Our last episode with, um, Phil Crawford. He, he works, uh, technology, chief technology officer for, for Carl's junior Hardy's. Oh, cool. We talk about loyalty. You know, the, the big, the big players in the, in the industry is everyone has an app now. Yep. And they're getting really good at it. You know, Starbucks is great at it. McDonald's is great. You know, and they're getting that loyalty, but I think the average restaurant can't create an app and they should competes with that, but they don't need to. Right? No. So it seems like these are the kinds of things that the mom and pops, independent restaurants can approach loyalty in a different way. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, you're competing with the big players. Yep. You know, so what are some of the ways beyond the kind of the napkin that you recommend you teach or that you see restaurants doing to get people back in, in, and getting them on the list and then utilizing that list?

Matt Plapp: 32:34

Well, so, so number one, I'll, I'll address the, whether if the elephant in the room, if you're an independent restaurant with, I'll say under 20 locations, don't waste your time with an app. I eat out all the time. I'm not downloading it. People, the, the people that have apps that do. Chipotle Chick-fil-A Starbucks Duncan, the big boys that have massive money that people eat at all the time. And they just dump a lot of money into that process. But I'll also say this, like I eat at Chipotle. I don't have their app. I'm not a big ad person. And so if you're an independent, you're a small chain, you're a small brand, the app. Isn't where it's at. We actually just have a, a client. We work with a, a franchise that's on their they're switching to their third. In four years. Wow. And it was kind of comical was they were hardcore pushing it about a year ago. Well, always hardcore pushing about a year ago, they're telling one of our, our locations that we help gather email and data and drive a VIP program that they needed to get quit doing that. And just focus on the app folks on the app. And I said, what are your, what are your sales? What's your pull through on the action? Like it's between eight to 11%, depending on the month, I said, what's your pull through with what we do? 35. Interesting. So they spent tens of thousands of dollars over here on something. And the reason that is, is number one, people don't want apps at the end of the day. Right? The other thing is that about 60 to 70% of the people that we see that walk into the restaurant are new or lost, or they're an infrequent guest. And so they're brand new and they're infrequent. If they're brand new and infrequent, they are not doing an app. They aren't even doing a loyalty program. If they're a frequent customer. Yes. They will do a loyalty. They'll do a loyalty program. If they're a frequent customer, that's hardcore. Yes. They'll do an app, but that that's 10% of your audience. Like I've not seen yeah. A, a midsize to smaller chain yet be above 14% when it comes to that app usage on their, on their, their customer sales. What we look for is there's three places. We preach. Restaurants need to find data. Now, first, our acronym we use for America's best restaurants is ABR attract, build, retain. So there's three main places you can attract attention. You can attract tension on your website. You can attract tension on social media. You can attract attention inside your four walls. Inside your four walls is the most important on your website's. The second most important. And in social media's third, most important everywhere you attract attention, you should be leveraging it to gain data. So it's, father's day this coming Sunday, and this week, a lot of our clients like almost all of them, haven't been doing Facebook posts saying happy father's day, come in for the brunch. They've been making Facebook posts with a picture of them and their dad and saying, this is me and my dad. Here's a memory about us. By the way, drop your memory below in the comments for a chance to win a$25 gift card. And next thing, you know, a hundred customers comment. The reason I say that is that we have that hooked up to automation that takes the conversation, the messenger and says, Hey, Matt, thanks for your comment. By the way, I see you and I member of our VIP program, click below to join and get four free offers. And so you've got social media tactics like that, that can build a database. You've got your website. If I go to your website, The only places I typically see restaurants have way together data is when I order food. What if I'm there just peeking and looking right? You ought have a popup that boom bumps my face and says, get a free waffle hell yeah. Free waffle click. It gave you my data. Boom. And the big thing with when I say that people are surprised how my end customer will do it. Customers will give you their information. When you position it correctly, Matt, you want a free waffle? Yes. I want a free waffle great click. Here they go to me. Here's your free waffle. Don't be they come to me. Here's your free waffle with a purchase of nine entres two drinks, and you have to name your kid after us. Right. And I heard something the other day on the, uh, restaurant Topia podcast. You ever listen to that restaurant? Topia? I'm familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah. So Anthony, I think is who said it? He said, you know, consumers become loyal to a restaurant with free. They become loyal to a coupon with a. Meaning when you keep giving coupons out, like in these lame magazines that you consistently like this restaurant, this is actually a friend of mine's restaurant that's in here. I'm sure. Actually look like a different one, but he he's got a coupon in here the last 10 years, 10 off 30 last 10 years. Doesn't listen to me. I'm like, dude, everybody that's using that coupon knows it's in there. They're using every month. Your customers are. You're cannibalizing your profits from it. Right. But they're addicted to the coupon. Whereas if it said a QR code and said, scan this for a free X, a free offer, it's like, here's this the turf club that actually is a client of ours. So the turf club got in here five off in the order, free burger, if I'm him, which I'm going to text him, actually one of my managers doing there tonight, I I'll end off, I can't make this stuff up. I'm gonna take these out and put a giant QR code and say. Want something amazing and free scan me. And there's the QR. They scan it because if this person gets this and they do this six times a year, they can always use that free burger. And you don't know who used it, and you don't have any, any way of having their data. You have that QR code, they go into your tool, whatever we use, messenger, whatever that you use, they go into there. And now all of a sudden you can get their information. Every time they see this, this ad in the future and they scan it. It notice them, Hey Matt, welcome back. We see you used your free burger, but you have a dessert available or, Hey, we see you've used all your VIP offers. We appreciate your loyalty click here to go to our website and see what's going on. I mean, you can do a lot of different things with it. And so of course, when you gather data, you've gotta look at all of your inroads, your marketing in store, which I would consider that kind of an in-store marketing element. You're online marketing your social media. So inside the restaurant, the, the biggest opportunities, your servers, if you're a casual dining restaurant, let's imagine you and your wife, what's your wife's name? Rachel. Rachel. So you and Rachel are having dinner. You just, what's your favorite food? Uh, I mean, I'm Italian. You're Italian. So you just crushed giant feta Chi Alfredo bunch of bread. You're full and the server walks up to you and shoot me straight. What you would say, server walks up, you guys are full, you got the, you got sweats from eating so much. They walk up and say, uh, Hey, Rachel, you guys in for dessert, what are you typically saying? Probably I'm too full. You're too full. You know what you are, you crush that Fe Alfredo. So I

DJ Costantino: 39:15

saw you. You definitely are. That that

Matt Plapp: 39:16

was delicious. And you're like, yeah, it. I want you to do me a favor. Have you ever had our cheesecake? It's the bomb now? I've not had it. Okay. Here's I you do. If you scan this code and you go to messenger, go ahead and do it. I'll do it with you. They throw out, scan the code. You gotta do it with them. Right? It's gonna ask you five questions. It's gonna have you enrolled in our VIP program. You're gonna get a free dessert and a couple other offers for your next visit. When you come in next time you got that cheesecake for free. And so now what happens is you just, cuz what that conversation usually is. Hey, are you guys in for dessert now? We're full. Okay. I'll get your check. Right. I call that my she's my chair pie. We call that the warrant we've got names for our different call to actions is that you teach the servers that technique instead of going okay, I'm gonna get your check. You are full, you crushed it. Let me do your a favor. I want you to have a free dessert. And then what happens is that person, now you have their email, their phone number. You have'em pixel and tagged on Facebook and Instagram, right? You follow them around for the next two weeks. They come in your restaurant, they use their free cheesecake. They have that delicious cheesecake and now their next 20 visits, they buy the cheesecake. Right? So you not only had a good engaging conversation on that. You not only got their data, you not only drove a future visit. That was more predictable, but now you've just upsold a piece of cheesecake LA Rose's pizza is a pizza brand down here in Cincinnati, about seven, eight years ago. They did a cookie brochure. I didn't know they had cookies. Like it's a pizza place. It's delicious. We go there, we get, we had a free cookie promo and I'm like, we'll have our free cookies. And they brought three of'em out amazing made in the pizza oven and they were. We get the cookies. Every time we buy the roses, I had a ping pong tournament at our office. About two months ago, I ordered 27 cookies for the team on top of bunch of pizzas. And so there's 27 cookies. I think it's like 5 99 for three. So I ordered whatever that is. 40 or 50 bucks in cookies off of a free promo for like seven years ago. Wow.

DJ Costantino: 41:16

Are you still getting.

Matt Plapp: 41:18

Still get'em every damn time.

DJ Costantino: 41:20

Yep. I mean, I, I tell you my, one of my favorite restaurant, my favorite restaurant here, where I live here in Brooklyn park slope, shout out to the double Windsor, just neighborhood bar and grill, everything done. Right. They have specials every week. They have a new draft list every week. I probably go twice a month if they just texted me the specials and they texted me the new draft list. Once a week, I'd be in nervous. What's your,

Matt Plapp: 41:39

what kind of

DJ Costantino: 41:39

beer you drink? Uh I'm I'm like a, I like the more like Mexican loggers, you know, that kind

Matt Plapp: 41:44

stuff. Okay. So let, let's say, for example, the next time you're in there that server walks up and says, Hey, how much changes in this growler? That's almost planted it. And I keep it here. How much changings in the growling? You're like, I don't know. Do me a favor, scan the QR code. It's gonna take you to Facebook answer, just guess on it. You're got a chance to win hundred dollars gift card, whatever. Right. So now you do. And then you go to, when you scan that code, you go to that post and you comment it opens up in messenger and says, Hey, thanks, Dominic, appreciate your guessing on the contest, by the way you wanna join our V I P beer program. You wanna join the beer tasting association, right? What's that? Oh yeah, exactly. You say yes. You go in there first so we can get your membership activated, answer three questions, your, your email, your visit frequency in your phone number. As long as you lay it out, what they have to answer, they'll do it. And then after you answer that, what are your top three beers? I'm a Mexican logger. I'm a Hef and I'm a IPA, right? So now in a month, when a stout comes out on tap, they don't bug you. Right. But in a month when they get some new imported Mexican logger, You get a text message that says Dominic, you're gonna love it because you're on the V I P beer list and you love Mexican loggers. Right. We just got X, Y, Z, and can't wait to see us soon. You're walking in the restaurant. Yeah, I'm there. And so you are, and I, I use this number it's called, I call it 600 friends. You know, if you owned a restaurant, the most frequent customers would be your close family and friends, right? Yep. So it would make sense that if you could develop a, a group of 600 more. You would have a more successful restaurant. So what I always talk to customers about is using tactics inside your four walls on your restaurant's website and social media to grow that 6,000 person annual list. There's no way in heck there's no way you can't find 10% of those people to be awesome friends. And if you find at the off from friends and you use that data, it's not hard to drive six more visits a year 600 people at 600 visits is 3,600 visits a year. Let's just say it's an average check of$3. Let me go to my Handman calculator here. 3,600 times$30. That's$108,000 in gross sales minus let's say you got food cost of, of 30%. So now you're down to$70,000 and you've already got your electric. You've already got your water. You've already got your staff. You've got all of your costs already there except for the food cost and the marketing. So you just probably turned$50,000 in profit. Simply by engaging people correctly, getting their data, getting a depth of data. So you can segment it by logger and IPA and stout Hef. And then you talk to'em more often.

DJ Costantino: 44:34

Absolutely. And just engaging with people in, in a more meaningful way and making sure you're, you're getting their, you're not just asking, Hey, gimme your phone number. Right. But you're, you're, you're giving people value. And I think that's the key to getting, getting people in. You know, a lot of these times you downloaded restaurants. You know, download app free fries, whatever. That's enough for me to download something. Right. But I think on the local standpoint, there's a lot of room to grow. I I'm curious, you know, we're getting outta time here, you know, I, I kind of like to understand a little bit of like the diagnosis. Why do you think restaurants have been so far behind on this?

Matt Plapp: 45:05

Do I, I think they're afraid to seek outside help, you know, the number of restaurant owners that called me. Matt flap, the marketing guy, you know, I'm not an accountant, right? You have a pretty good understanding of that during the pandemic to talk about PPP and idle loans. Hmm. Matt tell about this PPP. I thought I saw you did a webinar. It was pretty cool. Explain the PPP. This is, I literally got this call every day for three months and I'm like, do you not have an accountant now? You don't have a trusted banker. You're you're a trusted person for financial advice on the pandemic as a damn marketing person. Right. I think a lot of restaurants are so busy working in the business that they have failed to work on the business. And when you work on the business, you ha like this conversation five years ago, Matt plap was the only salesperson for our company. I had operations out the galore. It was just me selling everything. And I did 30 or 40 sales calls a week. And I did probably five podcasts a week. Now I do maybe two sales calls a week cuz we got 12 people and I do probably 20 podcasts a week. Right. I don't work in the business anymore. I work on it, working on it is spreading our word like this. A lot of restaurant owners can't get out of the kitchen and if they can't get outta the kitchen, they can't study their crafts. If they can't study their craft, they can't identify. That marketing company that's out there that can help them become more digitally savvy. They can't identify the tax accountant. That should be their go to person. Yep. And when you can't identify those person, you don't do it. And that's a big problem. And so why a lot of these restaurants aren't tax savvy is because they've never taken the time to educate themselves or hire people like me. This is, this is my bookshelf of restaurant books. Those are all restaurant focused books. Yep. These are the seven books that I read on a quarterly basis. I read the seven say or eight books now, same eight books. Cause they're the only eight that I need to make my business better at every angle. Yep. And when I talk about reading to a lot of my restaurant clients, like I haven't read in 10 years, like you, you've got to. Yeah,

DJ Costantino: 47:18

you gotta keep yourself educated and keep yourself on the pulse and really just take that time out of your business to step away, even if it's for a day, just to really think about things. And it's a challenge. It definitely is. But I think it, it just takes the kind of intent to, to wanna do that and to, and to say, look, I need to step away. How can I do that? You know, maybe I just need to trust somebody else for, for a couple hours to, to handle it. But yeah, I think, I think that's, that's a big part of it. It's just not enough time out. Be able to. Step outside of the restaurant and say, let me actually think about this because it is such a challenge to run a restaurant. It takes so much energy and so many hours and so much effort. So with that, I have no go.

Matt Plapp: 47:54

I'll tell you real quick, quick story. In the last two Fridays went to Nashville two weeks ago for my son's lacrosse tournament. I went to Columbus, Ohio last week. My son's lacrosse tournament. I visited two restaurants that have done business with my. I don't know either owner. Yeah. I texted my team member and said, Hey, can you let them know I'm coming by? I just wanna shake their hand. I'm not there for a free meal. I don't take free meals. Right. I mean, I've been forced to'em, but I'm just there to shake their hand. That's why I was giving them business cuz they've given us business. And so I stopped by the restaurant in Nashville and the owner in an hour and a half has, does not have the ability to leave the kitchen and come say hi. The next Friday, this past week, I go to restaurant up in little Italy and Columbus, Ohio near Columbus. Avery not only has time to leave the kitchen. He hangs out for 20 minutes. Talk to me. Yep. And he tells me he is like, Matt, I wanna thank it. Was kind of ironic. He goes, I wanna thank you. I go well for what he goes from you. I found David Scott Peters. I started following, I dunno if you know, David Scott Peters has been DSP

DJ Costantino: 48:54

genius. Yeah. He's been on the shows on the show back

Matt Plapp: 48:56

in, uh, in March guys. Unbelievable. He said from you, I found DSP. I went down the rabbit hole of watched a hundred DSP videos. He now is my coach. I do his system. He goes, Matt, I can I work five hours a week in the restaurant right now. Nice. From putting his that's the in place, that's the dream. And that guy is now able to work on his business. He's able to analyze, Hey, I can put, I need to put napkins out like this. I need to do this. His restaurant was spotless. It was up to date. It was, it was up, up the servers were, were happy. The food was excellent. The other restaurant I went to was average on everything. Yeah. I mean, it, it had the potential to be great, but the owners in the kitchen. And if he's in the kitchen, he can't work on the business.

DJ Costantino: 49:44

And that's, the key is not working, is working on the business and not in the business. Yep. With that. I think we're almost at time here. I have one last, last question. I've been wondering since we started talking about the van, have you taken the van to Hawaii?

Matt Plapp: 49:58

No, not yet. That's it's funny. You said that. Cause I actually interviewed, uh, you bill Tobin is

DJ Costantino: 50:03

I'm not familiar. No, but I, I will definitely look him. Bill

Matt Plapp: 50:05

owns a Tiki restaurant in. Honolulu, wherever Honolulu is at whatever island that is. Yep. It's the large, I believe it's the largest independent restaurant in Hawaii. Wow. And he's got a book and he is got a podcast and he is awesome. And he's joked about that. Yep. Because my goal is to have 25 to 30 vans to wear in five years, there's vans roaming around the entire country. Yep. And he's like, you realize that means Hawaii. I'm like, oh no, I gotta figure that one out for much island. So we might do would be tricky.

DJ Costantino: 50:35

Maybe we do both

Matt Plapp: 50:37

now. That would be interesting. An amphibious vehicle that just goes island

DJ Costantino: 50:41

island. It goes like the ones that have in, uh, in Boston,

Matt Plapp: 50:43

we, we will get to Hawaii. I might have to take like a cardboard cut out of the van and stand in

DJ Costantino: 50:47

front of it. There you go. I think you can make it happen. But with that, um, we're almost at time. So Matt, thank you so much for coming on a lot of great advice. Take back to the restaurant America's best restaurants.com. Um, and where else can people, people shoot you an email find.

Matt Plapp: 51:01

yeah, my cell, phone's the easiest way to find me. Uh, 8 5 9 7 4 3 2 4 0 8. All right. 8 5 9 7 4 3 2 4 8. Awesome. My website got also Matt plap.com. So excellent. Reach out. I'm an open book. I love helping people.

DJ Costantino: 51:15

Absolutely. And thank you so much, Matt, for fighting for the independent restaurant owner. Um, and, and helping them, uh, get back, um, you know, and, and really compete in this, in this crazy market. So, thanks again. Cool. Thank you. Thanks again for checking out the restaurant growth podcast presented by seven shifts. We're so grateful to our listeners, and we'd love to hear from all of you. Send us an email to podcast@sevenshifts.com and check us out on social we're at seven shifts on all platforms. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next week.