How Communication Shapes Restaurant Brands and the Stories We Tell (with Danny Klein)

In this episode of The Leadership Table, Jason E. Brooks sits down with Danny Klein, Editorial Director of QSR and FSR, to explore how communication, storytelling, and cultural consistency shape great restaurant brands.

🎙 Topics include:

• Why storytelling is more than marketing
• Hiring for culture (not just skill)
• Lessons from Chick-fil-A, Taco Bell, and emerging brands
• How Danny's “CEO to CEO” approach connects the industry
• One fishing tournament story that changed his entire leadership mindset

📍 Recorded via Riverside.fm
 📲 Connect with Danny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-klein-1a230752
🗞 Subscribe to QSR & FSR: https://www.qsrmagazine.com / https://www.fsrmagazine.com

🔔 Subscribe for more leadership insights:
 Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Buzzsprout

Until next time—Manage | Lead | Coach | Repeat.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership and Communication in Restaurants
• 2:52 The Evolution of Storytelling in Restaurant Media
• 10:18 Creating Collaborative Spaces for Industry Leaders
• 22:20 Building a Cohesive Team Culture in Restaurants
• 30:46 Cultural Branding and Consistency in Restaurants
• 36:09 The Power of Storytelling in Branding
• 48:20 Lessons from a Fishing Tournament: Leadership Insights

Transcript

Jason E. Brooks (00:01.627)

All right, Welcome to The Leadership Table where conversations inspire, lead and elevate. I'm your host, Jason E. Brooks, bringing you insights from top leaders who are shaping industries through leadership, culture and success. Today, we're honored to have Danny Klein, the editorial director at QSR and FSR magazines. Join us and he's joining us in order to discuss how communication

shapes restaurant brands and the stories that we tell. Now, Danny has been with Food News Media since 2015, starting as an associate editor for FSR magazine before moving into leadership roles. In 2021, he was appointed editorial director, overseeing content for QSR and FSR, two of the restaurant industry's most respected trade publications.

A graduate of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, Danny spent over a decade covering high school, college, and professional sports before transitioning to the restaurant industry. His expertise in storytelling and branding has made him a respected voice in hospitality. Before we dive in, be sure to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow leader.

who could benefit from today's conversation. Now, Danny, welcome to The Leadership Table. I know I just gave you a brief intro, but still.

Danny Klein (01:35.95)

I know I need to bring you with me, Jason. You gotta come with me places to intro me. No, thank you for having me.

Jason E. Brooks (01:45.949)

We walked into Burger King, I was like, Danny, Danny Klein, editorial director, the University of Florida College.

Danny Klein (01:55.372)

Yeah, no, I'll take it. No, thank you. It's good to be here.

Jason E. Brooks (02:00.287)

Excellent. Well, you know, one of the main reasons why I wanted to reach out to you to come on to this show is that, of course, we are focused on conversations that inspire, lead, and elevate. And we are speaking through the leadership culture and success that brings leaders to the table. Some of those conversations that are at that table. The question, though,

is how do you decide which stories resonate most with restaurant leaders and operators? Because you are a huge, you and your team are a huge voice to where the industry leans its ear towards when it comes down to leadership, hospitality, and those conversations.

Danny Klein (02:52.014)

Yeah, I have a, man, there's so many ways to answer that question. Kind of a quick overview. I think a long time ago, and even when I started in media, I would say that there was a lot of this element of we're here to tell you what's important and you're reading it. Still a thing, right? But there's so much more of that now is that because the networks are open and going both ways, you have this.

now part of it, the conversation where you're reacting to the way people respond to the things that you write versus constantly, you know, it's sort of like if you had a textbook, right, and you gave it to everyone and it said in there, you should be focused on the world being round, you know, and interestingly enough, like if you look at you go hop on X or whatever these days, and if you really believe the world is not round, you go find a whole bunch of people who believe the world is flat.

And while we don't want to necessarily promote such things that are inaccurate, you do have to take into account as a media organization that it is more collaborative on the content side than it used to be. And that is a really good thing if you want to embrace it, which for me, many years ago, my former boss, Webb Howell, who was the owner and founder of QSR in 1997,

had me read this book called The Content Trap. was written by this Harvard professor and it was very boring but I knew I should read it since he asked me to and he was my boss and I was pretty new to the company and what did he want me to learn from this was kind of what I was asking myself as I was trying to stay awake reading it every night for a while. And the whole book honestly was kind of about

you know, looking at content through the lens of user connections. So what does that mean? And so it's this idea that you can take a bunch of different forms of content and it can be seen through a few different ways. And one of them being like, I'm going to pick up QSR magazine because I want to be educated. I want to see what the trends are. want to be entertained and read about the industry that I'm in. But I always still want to read this because

Danny Klein (05:12.332)

I would like to be the guy who I'm reading about or I wouldn't mind being in the room with this person who's being featured in this story. I aspire to be within this space. so for us, became this idea of, and this is years ago, I had looked at this chapter on the economist and the economist had gone through this transformation of realizing like, we can't really compete with the way the internet has opened the floodgates to content.

you know, a page view perspective or from an engagement perspective. But what we can do is we can create a magazine that is very specific for a very specific person and they're going to pick it up again to better themselves, but also to say like, I wonder what Jason thinks. I wouldn't mind meeting Jason someday or like I'd love to be in the room with this guy. And so that is, I wrote this mission statement, this whole thing of like, I want QSR to be the economist of the restaurant publication world, but

less pretentious. But the idea being like, let's create the restaurant magazine for the restaurant enthusiast, or restaurant nerd as we called it at the time, and then we went back and changed the wording, because, you know, nerd is a little, got some weird connotations. But that really created this idea for me to start looking at like, how do we pick what we want to write about? So here's a good example. Three years ago I got this,

Jason E. Brooks (06:13.631)

you

Jason E. Brooks (06:35.551)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (06:40.524)

maybe three years ago some amount of years ago i got this message on twitter from this guy you know relatively well-known guy making fun of us for writing this really long story on Taco Bells Defy location in in Minnesota you know the drop down two-story drive-through that they had created he put in there something like all man like what's going on in the world when you've got breathless coverage of a Taco bell

And so I responded to him. was like, if someone's going to provide breathless coverage of a Taco Bell, is QSR. And I screen grabbed this and he wrote back something stupid to me, but I screen grabbed this interaction and I sent it to everyone on our team, on our sales team. And I said, this is who we are. Like we are the person who's going to provide breathless coverage of Taco Bell. And what's, and where that starts to do.

And as someone who's familiar with us, thankfully you're also a contributor of ours, you can start to see this in action because what we have created in a lot of the ways that we write stories and the way that we plan in person of events and the way that we do webinars and we do these virtual power hours for our Women in Leadership series and the way that we do social media, it is all designed with this idea of creating this gravity point.

for you to not only come to us, but then for us to connect you upward through the industry. And this is a very complicated way of saying that we write about the news so we tell you what's happening. We also give you how-to information from industry experts. And then we give you features that go behind the scenes. And we do all the things that everybody else does. But then the added element to our content

In my opinion, and it makes us who we are is that we have created this user connected universe for you to be a part of. And that is the guiding post of how I view V2B content and the way that I think we view conferences in particular these days, which are, you know, making me old. But if you do look at like how they're different compared to some other conferences, you'll understand like kind of where

Jason E. Brooks (08:57.119)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (08:57.57)

brain is that. So that's a long answer but to be fair to me you just asked me basically why I exist. So it is not an uncomplex thing. like here, last example I'll give you, we just launched a few weeks ago, three or four weeks ago, I'm sure you might have seen this, we did the CEO to CEO series right? I if you saw that.

Jason E. Brooks (09:07.454)

No

Danny Klein (09:25.304)

So I had been thinking to myself, I'm like, you know, I wanna do some sort of video. I see other versions of this from competitors, nothing wrong with it, not knocking any of these things. But like, what could I do that's QSR-ish, right? Like a version that feels like us that I'm comfortable with that I think serves like our broader mission statement that I'm telling you about. And it was to get out of the room. I just got out of the room, right? So I brought him into the...

Zoom call to CEOs and I shut my camera off and the conversation is just the two of them talking for an hour. And it's very rich content. So it's that deep breathless thing that I mentioned before. And it's also user connected content. didn't really do anything, but give them that ability. And what you end up coming from that is not only really useful insights, but they appreciate that access to one another.

Jason E. Brooks (10:05.993)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (10:18.338)

And then I have other CEOs who reach out and they want to do that with a CEO that they know. And so now you're creating this kind of upward continual version of this QSR space where people know to come here to see that other person, right? Again, it's a long answer, but that is the answer. And it's ever evolving every day.

Jason E. Brooks (10:39.551)

No, no, you have just really hit it on the head. Hopefully readers go back and hit rewind, not readers, watchers, viewers. If you're listening, hit rewind. There are so many golden nuggets in what Danny just said. A few of those are wanting to make sure it's not a one way direction of this is what we're writing.

This is what we deem is important. So this is what you are going to read or listen to. It has converted from that in the past for every magazine, every newspaper, to how do we make this a user-friendly two-way road highway of the interaction going back and forth, and not just back and forth with the reader or the listener.

and QSR or FSR, but even stepping all the way into CEO to CEO, creating that room, that space for them to actually go over what's most important that's on their minds. that is key, because whenever we think about what resonates most with restaurant leaders and operators, they should have the space.

to actually dictate that. They should have the space, the room, the opportunity to bring what they want to the table and to have those discussions and then we can add value to it. So I actually love that.

Danny Klein (12:23.598)

Yeah, and so you'll see this in a lot of stuff. So, you know, like, like yourself, you know, we have a lot of contributed writers and so we're giving a voice to, you know, people from coaches to operators to vendors and, know, vendors are always an interesting outlet to me. Really one that you should tap more often because if you think about like, who's trying to figure out the solution, it might be a person who hears all the problems.

So yeah, and we look at podcasts that way too. And you know, I interview a lot of people on there and sometimes I, you know, I get asked this question like, are the metrics? I'm like, I don't really know. But I do know that like I'm building the network. I'm continuing this conversation. You know, and then when, you know, like our event as you might've seen the other day when I posted, like I had to really think about this.

You know, from a perspective again of like other events I've been to and what I want to do. And I just opened the door to moderators this year. have moderate. So year one, and this, a lot of this was just cause it was bootstrapped and we were trying to figure out what's going on, but like our team internally, I was just doing what I see elsewhere. We moderated every single panel. It was crazy. was five tracks at once, two days, and I must've done 20 of them. don't remember this year. We are not moderating. I'm not moderating well, at least like.

Jason E. Brooks (13:38.303)

Mm.

Danny Klein (13:48.568)

from the panels themselves. I have a moderator for every single topic this year. And that is the type of thing I think, like I find that to be very valuable to the network. To give them that opportunity, again, not just to promote and amplify the people who are doing the moderation, but now five, six people at a time. Every one of those groups, as you know from experience, they become tight, right? You gain the access and the resources to each other.

And what the end result is is now we have an event that really feels to me like less like we're putting it on and more like we just opened it up, right? And I had to, know, one of the parts of that is I had to take myself like off stage and you know, it's not, you know, not that I like, don't, I actually think I have like an anti-ego that I could use to have more ego, but like I'm not.

I, so year one and year two, eight keynotes, right, on the big stage, I did all eight of them. And it was good for my career, I'm not gonna lie, like in terms of exposure. I'm not doing any of them this year. And it isn't because I didn't want to, or like I didn't feel like doing the prep work, or I'd rather sit in the back and watch. It was because I realized that this could be more valuable were I to become more integrated, you know, bringing in.

you know, and a moderator like Dustin and, know, having a conversation between Satine on my team and Whataburger who know each other and then doing all these little different questions of looking like, again, if our goal and we're really trying to live this ethos of being the restaurant industry publication for the restaurant operator, like let's go aspire and also be a part of a group. This had to evolve in that direction. And so.

I also, you know, in terms of like speakers, get asked this question every single year. People will like email me on the agency side and be like, what's the process? Where's the form for me to fill out? like, you know, I'm like, I do not have one. I either

Jason E. Brooks (15:55.879)

Jot form, where's the jot format?

Danny Klein (15:58.656)

Right. that, and would that make my life easier? Yes, it would. because we have other publications who do that and it's great. but I'm not willing to do it right now because I, I like this idea that like, put this call out on the LinkedIn and I get people who come to me who want to speak that I have no idea who they are and never heard of them. I may know their company or the restaurant brand, but like we haven't interacted before, but like just having that.

open conversation, I think creates this version of an event that's different and people feel it. like, you know, get, so this year in particular, I got a lot of speakers who have not spoken year one or year two, who I've never seen speak at any event. You know, I did a podcast with one of them recently from Biscayville Charles and he was just incredibly insightful guy. mean, and I would have never

had that opportunity had I not opened that up because he wouldn't have sent some official communication through, you know, whatever channel our corporate account had set up like email wise or something. Cause I had never heard from him, me. Like I didn't know who he was. And so he messaged me on LinkedIn and he's just like, yeah, this looks cool. I'd love to be a speaker. I think he's on a panel that you're on actually. And

Yeah. And I got to know him a little bit and you know, now we're giving him a voice, right? And he's, you know, his insight is not the type that you hear every single day on every single conference and every website. again, like we're all as media organizations covering similar brands, cause that's kind of like, you know, Taco Bell had a major news thing yesterday. So of course we're writing about that and it's great. But like the Charles from Biscayville, like how do get him to the table? Cause he deserves to be there. Right.

Jason E. Brooks (17:52.767)

Wow.

Danny Klein (17:54.28)

And we're going to have more value as an organization having people like Charles involved and listening and being a part. So yeah, you just got to keep those doors open and not let things get in the way sometimes, whether it is ego or, you know, pay to play models or some of this other stuff that is just historically part of magazine publishing. And for us, I just want to create the biggest, most inclusive network that we can.

and let those other things flow from there. so I don't know if Charles will listen to this, but if you are listening Charles, I'm really happy to have you on board. His podcast actually runs the week of March 2nd. So everyone will look forward to learning about someone that maybe they didn't know before.

Jason E. Brooks (18:43.593)

Charles, I'ma tag you on LinkedIn or whenever this drops. But everything that you're saying, every one of us understands what that really means. And I'll put it in a different context. How many times have we been to a annual meeting or just any meeting and we get there and we think it's going to touch on everything we've found important.

whether in our job or role or industry. And then we get there and it covers all the crap that we didn't care anything about. And now we've spent all this time getting all of this information that wasn't truly important. What you've been doing with being able to create the space for that communication to come directly from the people that are out there doing it.

It is different. I'm not going to say it's world changing Mahatma Gandhi type of, you know, different, but what I'm stating is.

Danny Klein (19:46.03)

Yeah, no, I'm that smart.

Jason E. Brooks (19:51.891)

But it is absolutely, absolutely helping to gain back time of not feeling like time is wasted. There's too many times that we go to conference expos, even just regular weekly meetings, and we're there and we think what's going to be covered doesn't. Being able to have the people create those spaces, have those conversations, touch on those topics.

ask the piercing questions to each other, not just to a voice, not to say that FSR and QSR is just a voice. But there are many voices within our industry doing many things. And then the last piece on that is social proof can be damning. Social proof can be misleading. Yes, you can hear about someone and know of someone and read something from someone.

but that doesn't mean that they are the best content giver on things that would be impactful for people listening. So first thing is, if you are someone out there, if you are someone out there and you know what you know, don't be scared to reach out to other people that are in the industry. Your value to what we do.

Danny Klein (21:00.728)

Yes, it's true.

Jason E. Brooks (21:18.075)

in this space, in any space is very important. Yes, there is that fear of rejection, but get to the table, reach out, say hello, raise your hand, because your information of how you see things is very important. Now, speaking of information, speaking of how we communicate, now, besides branding, talking to your team,

is very important. You lead a team of people within your role. Lots of restaurant brands do the same thing. And you've spoken with a lot of executives of how they try to get across their brand to their team and to their guests. What have you learned about how the best restaurant brands keep their teams on the same page with what the value is, what the vision is?

and what they're trying to get across to their customers or guests.

Danny Klein (22:20.778)

Yeah, it's a very loaded thing. I think it's probably a lot of what you hear in just terms of like that standard and expectation and transparency is a day one thing. I will give you some personal experience on this. And I actually think we spoke about this when you were on my podcast, but being a manager is pretty new to me. Although at this point it's getting less and less new over the years as I get older.

But what I have found out is there is a very powerful element of like having a clear directive of who you are and who your brand is. So all these things that we're talking about, I had written a mission statement out a few years ago and I was like, why am I doing this? Is anyone even gonna read this? But what it wasn't so valuable to people already on my team, they kind of looked at it, were like, yeah, know.

What it has turned out to be really valuable in is the people who I've hired and then also having people in certain leadership positions who live these things, right? And this is true in a restaurant as well as my publication. So you have these cultural pillar pieces. You want to nurture these people on your team. They're so, I think you used to even talk, you used to call mini GMs, right? I'm getting that correct. So these people are, I just had this conversation with our CEO recently about

kind of going through some people I view to be these cultural pillars, right? So when I hire people, the more you get that person in place and the clearer you are about what that means, the less work you're doing really trying to manage somebody and you're trying to say to them every day, how can we get here? How can we get there? How can we do this? So at our women in leadership conference the other day, whether or not this person realizes this or not.

I was having a really good conversation with somebody who is a leader of a brand. She's awesome. And I just sort of self-selected her as my new mentor because I don't really have one. I told her this the other day when we talked for about an hour, like a follow-up call, and she gave me some amazing advice. And so I think a lot of times leaders, we need leaders to help us to take stock of like what we're doing. And then you just need people culturally on your team to put into the positions to

Danny Klein (24:46.434)

get that expectation off the ground right away. And what you end up finding is you start to hire people like Satine is our newest team member. And she right basically like 90 % of this is on her, 10 % is probably on us. But she went right off the gate. She was that person, right? She understood how we operated, what we wanted. And she went after it because she was motivated to do a great job. But she had that playbook and she had...

Ben on our team and Callie on our team as sort of guideposts to be like, I should follow their lead. So I instituted these two people and it goes down a ladder. Now you suddenly have this really high performing, you know, younger employee who I don't really have to tell her all that much what to do. I get to stand in the back of the room. had a really interesting conversation with her. She moderated the keynote of our women in leadership conference, which is not easy to do. And I mean, she's

22 years old she had never done it before and I was sitting there and I was talking to someone else and I was like you know I could tell you within 30 seconds I knew she was better at this than me and that is and I am NOT upset about this I only gonna figure out ways to leverage that but I can write she started talking at the beginning and I turned to this person on our event side I was like Satina is a better moderator than me and she

better than I will ever be. I don't have what she has, I could tell you right now. And she got off and I didn't tell her that necessarily. I was just like, wow, you did an amazing job. I know you were nervous. You had nothing to be worried about. She said something to me like, well, in my upbringing and my life, doing a great job is the expectation. So I just feel like I went out there and did what I was supposed to do. And I was like, well, okay.

Jason E. Brooks (26:35.391)

you

Danny Klein (26:35.522)

You know, I guess that is, part of that is internally too. Like, yeah, it's, know, her parents and all that, but it's also like, she understands like what I expect of her, what our organization, how high our standard is with events, how much we care about the keynote person we put up there we want to do a good job for them. And so that's, you know, that's kind of how I look at it is that it is really this, if you want high performing people, you gotta A, have other high performing people.

Jason E. Brooks (26:39.347)

Mm-hmm.

Jason E. Brooks (27:04.585)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (27:04.684)

You have to have transparency and expectations and accountability. And you have to pay attention to people who are not high performing. you know, my, new life coach, she was, we were going over some things and she's like, well, ask yourself sometimes like, how much time did you spend with, you know, ex person trying to tell them like what you hope they can do. And then after a while you might just be like, well, this isn't a capability question. It's a willingness question.

And you just spent a month on this. And if you hadn't spent a month on that and that person was like Satine or somebody else, imagine what you would have accomplished in that month instead of constantly trying to figure it out. And I thought, yeah, that's a hard reality, but you're correct. Because I look at it, it's like, I got this like list of ideas, right? They can be bold, but like, you could have went after that with the right person. And instead you've been trying to figure out.

Jason E. Brooks (27:44.391)

Wow.

Jason E. Brooks (28:01.427)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (28:03.598)

for way too long whether or not this person's even willing. So you really, so that's something I'm working on is trying to learn how to manage through situations of that nature where somebody is gonna be defensive of what they're doing or they've been doing it some way and they don't necessarily agree with you versus that other side of the coin which is this is the organization you're coming to work for.

And that's just unique to my situation. But I do think that in restaurants' case, that's when you see the best performing cultural organizations are the ones that, Taco Bell told me this years ago, that they have the unique task in life of employing fans of the brand. How often does that happen in our world? Like you go to work for an accounting firm or a bank and you're like, I love Wells Fargo.

Jason E. Brooks (29:00.863)

you

Danny Klein (29:00.958)

I eat here all the time, right? So like, you have a, they have a certain expectation that on day one of people who come in the door and they're like, Taco Bell, I've eaten here my whole life. This is how it looks in my brain. And it is on them to either live up to that or to fall completely flat on it. And being a large franchise organization, of course, both things happen, but.

That's the unique thing that a lot of restaurants have on the start of it. And if you look at Chick-fil-A, this is the gold standard example, it just is. No one's gonna argue with that, right? People ask me all the time, how do they have such good hospitality or employees that are so nice?

Jason E. Brooks (29:47.593)

They brainwash them inside the office. No, that's not what happens. Dunk them in the water.

Danny Klein (29:50.062)

Right, Well, sort of, right? So, mean, yeah, so number one, number one that they do is, there's two like anchor points. One is being the fact that they're owner-operator-led restaurants, so they're corporately empowering community-driven leaders who are not necessarily like large multi-brand franchisees, and not there's anything wrong with that, but these are like people who live in Houston and know Houston and know the market and

care about the people and they get to pick the way that they hire and the wages that they set in the organizations that they want to donate to. So that's the start. And they pick these people. It's harder to get a Chick-fil-A than it is to get into Harvard. They pick them based on those kind of traits. So they're interviewing in the corporate suite on personality and leadership and not necessarily on restaurant experience. They have enough systems and SOPs in place to...

train anybody to run a Chick-fil-A. And then they make you work in the restaurant too, right? So that's like part of it. And then the second thing that they do is they're very siloed in the way that they run their restaurants. So people have a very specific task. You're the person who greets people outside. You don't do five different things. So that's like their other kind of anchor point along with the technology they use. But more importantly, in my opinion, and the reason that this is true is because

Their cultural branding and who they are is so ingrained in the mind of every single person who works there and comes to work there that you know the minute you get there that that is who you are supposed to be and they have zero tolerance if you are not. But they don't run into that all that much because you are not going to go work there if you are not a hospitable human being. You will not make it through the interview process.

And you also understand that expectation because the commercials, the way that they come across, the experience you have from eating there. And so that, think, is the thing for restaurants across the board is like.

Danny Klein (31:57.61)

You can basically have this feed itself if you are very set in who you are and that expectation exists more holistically than the manual that you have to hand somebody on day one that they're not gonna read. So that's my answer. That's a lot of pieces to that answer but that's how I would describe it.

Jason E. Brooks (32:21.791)

You you you hit it on the head though, you know in in in talking through how restaurant brands keep their teams on the same page one of the cord nuggets that I took from that is Your customers your guests have to know who you are Your your your people walking into your restaurant to eat to dine through your drive-thru

They need to know who you are. If we aren't focusing on how we appear to our customers as a culture, that's where we go wrong with keeping our team on the same page. Because our team is simply focused on tasks and duties. It's more than that. they are focused on task and duties and roles.

The customer is more so looking at the image. Whenever we can get the image right, the culture piece for our team can fall in place sooner. You touched on something else. The core pillars within your brand and hiring people in order to fit those core pillars. They should be fitting in one of those five, one of those three.

One of those, and hopefully not 10 pillars, 10 pillars is way too many, but one of whatever number of pillars that your brand is, whether it be magazine, hotel, newspaper, restaurant, you should be fitting people into those pillars because you want them to lead in one or more of those pillars. If they don't fit in any, if...

If they can't fit in any of those, why are you bringing them on board? Then creating the space for them to be able to help lead while using core people on your team to help keep up those guiding posts, to let them have the space without it feeling like top down direction for them to grow and to help lead in it within a way that you didn't think of because you are right.

Jason E. Brooks (34:43.647)

Hiring someone a bunch of Jason's or a bunch of Danny's doesn't make sense It's gonna be so far leaning this ship is gonna tip over You need to have that balance on all points of your ship in order to make it through those rough waters and also the calm ones as well and then going through Chick-fil-a, know it that is correct You can get hired in Miami in Denver in LA or Fayetteville, North Carolina

nine times out of 10, you know that you will be trained the exact same way. You know what that expectation is. But all of those things, all of those things help to make sure that the brand, the team, and even the customers, they all get the same consistency of being on that same page. Now, I know we've gotten into this, but a few more questions.

Danny Klein (35:41.388)

Yeah, you're good.

Jason E. Brooks (35:42.769)

You do great. You do great at storytelling, you know, and storytelling is super important for brands. You did touch on this some when speaking through Taco Bell and Chick-fil-A of working at or eating at a Taco Bell your whole life. And then you had this picture in your mind. But story storytelling is super important for all brands. How do restaurants?

Use stories to build strong relationships with their guests and help stand out in the market.

Danny Klein (36:17.024)

Yeah, I think it depends on who you are. I just went to this new ice cream shop opened by my house. I had seen it in a dad's group, like a local dad's group that I'm in.

Jason E. Brooks (36:17.289)

Yeah.

Jason E. Brooks (36:30.917)

Wait, wait, wait, hold on, we have to pause. Danny, you're in a local dad's group.

Danny Klein (36:35.298)

Well, like a Facebook group, but you know, I'm actually, I'm a lurker in there. I don't ever meet up with them, which is on me, I guess, but I do like follow what they talk. They talk about like places to go and so anyway, I saw this like ice cream place that they're like, just, just open in Chapel Hill. It's, you know, lives up to the hype. And I went there and had some like punny name. It was called Chapel Chill or something. And it was great. I ice cream was really good, local.

zero storytelling inside the restaurant though and I would tell my wife at the time I'm like you know they really could use like a something in here because I had read about them like I saw the storytelling outside like I looked them up and it was you know made on site and all this random stuff or whatever it was cool you know they were trying to you know they were low seriously local right but you went inside it looked like a

They don't look like a chain. I'm not, I'm trying to give them advice. I didn't tell them. It's like, went up there and I'm like, I work at QSR. Here's some advice. But it was just something I thought. So like that's one side of it. Of course. you know, the other side of it is, you know, of course you could do on like social and marketing. And again, it kind of depends on who you are. If you're, if you're Wendy's right. it's a lot different than like pepper lunch and you know,

Pepper Lunch's CEO, Troy Hooper, is a master storyteller. I mean, I told him this before, at least I think I have and if I haven't, he's listening, he knows I feel this way about him. But like, has done such a good job of like, getting his brand, okay, is it your earlier point of like, meeting and putting yourself out there?

It isn't just like him posting about what they're doing and what's going on, but like you can see in the interaction and the reaction he gets to news of like a new prototype or an opening. And again, like in the grand scheme of the world, like QSR industry is a large place. Taco Bell's, well, you know, when we get to 10,000 locations, they're talking about yesterday, there's already 7,000 or whatever number is. Troy, know, Troy, I don't know what Pepperlunch is at right now, but it's not a lot, right?

Danny Klein (38:44.694)

And that's totally cool. They're on the journey. They're big globally grown in the U.S. He can post about opening one location. It is a big deal. And that's a testament to his storytelling talent because he has made it. He's created from going to conferences, from putting himself out there, from doing podcasts with other people in the industry that he does on its own. And then he comes on other ones. And he, know, Paul and his team is also great at this and they have this huge world, right, that they have.

put themselves into through the user connections of like, hey, I'm going to congratulate you. You're part of my tribe. And it's not just this like solo go at it yourself thing that you're not willing to talk to anybody about. I had him on the CEO to CEO thing the other day with my friend Scott Taylor, who has a multi-brand company he's running now. And so they already knew each other, right? They were friends.

So storytelling has a lot of different elements. Again, if you're, if you have giant marketing coffers like Wendy's or Taco Bell, that's a different thing. You're showing up on social media and all different personalities. mean, Wendy's is the absolute master of this, right? You know, their Facebook strategy versus their TikTok strategy versus their X strategy is just unrivaled in how great it is.

And that's similar to like, you know, a of brands, they show up in that way in their storytelling. Like McDonald's doesn't need to tell you their story. That's not how they, they operate or go about driving trial. And so again, it's like, everyone is different and you have to look at like, what are my goals? Are you the CEO of an emerging chain like Pepper Lunch who's looking to

put yourself on the map and to get as many people to help you as possible from their insight and to share that insight both ways to learn about vendors to figure out how this technology is working at Portillo's will it work for me you know things like that this is an example but that kind of idea again he's an amazing example again all the

Danny Klein (40:52.654)

credit in the world. sit there and marvel at it sometimes and there are other versions of that out there. He's just, I guess on my mind for some reason at the moment, but he's coming to our conference and we had a conversation about it a couple months ago of like, hey, do you want to be on this panel? And he's like, what if I just did this session on AI and I just gave him like an open my playbook to the people. And I'm like, that takes a certain level of

Jason E. Brooks (41:04.927)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (41:22.318)

something that wouldn't have been, that would not have happened years ago. Restaurants wouldn't have done that. They just would not have said, here's how I do it in a room full of other restaurants. Just wasn't a thing. You know, I was like, hey, here's a competitor. Here's what I'm doing with AI. But Troy sees the value in that and sees that it doesn't have to come at the expense of him. In fact, he could become a better brand there. could get the message out, get franchisees interested of other people he runs into or.

Jason E. Brooks (41:39.935)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (41:50.914)

find his brand opening a location with a huge line out the door and having that chance to be celebrated. So he gets it in my opinion, and a lot of people do. And again, if I were Taco Bell, I probably wouldn't do such a session, but I understand like the value. So you really have to kind of look at yourself, understand what is you're trying to do. But to your earlier point, I would very, very much recommend trying to have a larger network.

Go talk to people, come to our events, come to our webinars, come to other things that we do where you will just have that opportunity to learn from somebody else. And you might have to teach them something, right? That's the trade off here. But you will find that the end of the day when you're running into a problem or you're trying to figure out which POS you want to use, the more people that you can engage with, and this includes vendors,

just ask them for help. And that is my, I live this too, in my version of storytelling is I was on a, I have another little anecdote for you. I was on a webinar about menu trends recently that we were hosting and ahead of it, I was just like, I don't like, I don't know anything about this. I can write this article, sure. But like, I don't have any insight here.

And so the two speakers that we had, which were both great menu people, I told them, I'm like, you have 45 minutes. I was like, do whatever you want. I'll be here in the background troubleshooting the questions, but there is power in this moment for me to give this floor to you. I don't need like, like, yeah, if I had hopped on there and talked myself and I led questions and I played a very active role, would I have built my personal brand on some level? Maybe.

But to me it was way, way better for everybody, for me just to give them that stage and to let them be the experts. And so that's my advice in storytelling is like ask yourself if you, who can help you? I ask it all the time. I'm always asking for help. I have 25 moderators this year because I asked for help. wasn't any other reason.

Jason E. Brooks (44:09.599)

You

Danny Klein (44:12.544)

I got Dustin doing the main stage keynote because I asked him to help me out and I thought he would do a better job and I just thought it would be good for everybody. You gotta lean into people helping you out and then you will find that it will help you too. You gotta give and take a little bit.

Jason E. Brooks (44:36.849)

I tell you who does a great job within the same circle of Troy Hooper when it comes down to storytelling and that's Sean Walsh. Sean Walsh with Cali Barbecue. He started Cali Barbecue Media on the West Coast and people are like, well, why the hell would a barbecue guy start a media company? And when we think about

Danny Klein (45:00.366)

right here.

Yeah, he's a trailblazer.

Jason E. Brooks (45:05.566)

He's the I mean, he's he's just a damn amazing. When you when you think about storytelling, we all think that, well, I told it to my team. Now everyone knows my stuff or I was interviewed on a podcast. now everyone knows me or whatever. That's a lie. It's false. It's not real storytelling.

Danny Klein (45:10.146)

is.

Jason E. Brooks (45:32.549)

in the context that we think. We think that we may tell this once, but it reaches the smallest sliver of people that are out there. Storytelling is generated over and over again from campfires back in the cave man days. And that's how culture was actually built. It was actually built sitting around

feasting over the day's kill of the foraging and retracing through what happened and the moment that that stops is the moment that it no longer exists. So even when it comes down to brands and people, that storytelling aspect is so powerful as what you just described and it's not just telling the story of the brand.

is telling the story of how you connected with that brand in your role working for that brand or being their competitor. Whatever that story is, it helps weave that contextual thread that helps people to really see what the whole map looks like from different angles. Everyone will have their own different point of view, but that storytelling.

that connection, helping to weave that picture. It is very important. And I'm glad that I can help to contribute articles to FSR in order to help give some of that context. I'm glad that you asked me to be a part of QSR Evolution Conference to help be on the panel to help weave some of that storytelling.

So I hope all of the listeners really take away from this. We may be introverts. We may be focused on task and goals and building our companies or working for a great company. But building your community, connecting with your network, putting yourself out there, not too far out there, not 20 feet out there, but taking two, three steps.

Jason E. Brooks (47:51.077)

further out of your normal routine in order to speak about your moment so that others can learn or answer questions when others have challenges. That also helps to that storytelling. Now, I know we are getting towards the end, but there's one question that I like to ask. I gotta ask every guest this question. All right, so at The Leadership Table.

Danny Klein (48:08.846)

You're gonna block that in hours.

Jason E. Brooks (48:20.391)

We believe in conversations, of course, that inspire, lead, and elevate. What's one conversation, just one conversation in your career that profoundly shaped who you are as a leader?

Danny Klein (48:36.276)

yeah, yeah so I've told this story before. Many years ago I was, when I first started my sports writing career, was at this tiny beachside newspaper in Florida. Cool place. First assignment I was given was to go do this fishing tournament from Brooklyn. I nothing about fishing.

anything about this and i ever size said that there's two guys on staff i said and i spoke to them like you know color advice on what i should do and one of them was like so you know you basically sit there and then like they bring fish in off the boat in lake you don't really know what the big fish was until the very end of the day so you could sit there all day long but nothing happening right and so i'd asked the one guy i'm like what do i do and he's like yeah you just show up like it

7.30 at night, get the quote from the guy running the organization, you know, and then you leave, right? You write your little story about this guy who picked this 50 pound fish, it's 600 words long, goes in the newspaper, knock yourself out, it's not a big deal, Danny, don't worry about it. But I looked at this and I'm like, I don't know if I wanna be this guy. Like, I know, this isn't me, right?

So then I asked the other guy, the higher performer, the boss, I'm like, what should I do if I go here? And he's like, look, here's all you need to know is go cover this fishing tournament. Make sure everybody there thinks this is the most important thing in the world to you. Do not let them know you know nothing about fishing, but not from an ignorance standpoint. You could tell them, hey guy, I'm from New York, I don't fish. It isn't that, don't let him know you don't care.

Make sure that he thinks that this is the biggest story of your life And I'm sitting there going like how hell am I gonna do that? So then I got two very different sides of the coin in this pivotal moment of my career as a 22 year whatever hell age I was Sitting like okay. which guy do want to be? Do want to be the guy in charge? Like the guy who's doing a great job that everyone in the community loves? I to be the guy who's kind of like, you know, he's cool nice guy, but like he's just sort of

Danny Klein (50:56.622)

coasting the road, So I went there, right when it started. I was there the entire day. I ended up doing, so I did the story about who had the biggest fish. But I also, I found this guy. was sitting there and he was like, he looked broken. He just looked like he was messed up, right? So was, in a I'm telling him, like, you know, like what happened out there?

You like an old man in the sea? And he told me this long story about his family had been in this car accident, the boss stuff, whole crazy thing. And all these people who had been in this accident were here. They were part of this one boat out there fishing. And so for the next three days, I followed this journey with them from all the stuff they had gone through in

Jason E. Brooks (51:36.51)

Mm.

Danny Klein (51:55.618)

this emotional tragedy and crazy stuff. so I ended up doing two different lines of coverage, right? I did the dude with the 40 pound fish and this family. And so this family that I had written about for three days ended up going on the like front page of the news side of the paper. And again, I'd been there three days and I did the sports story and the editor of the paper was just like, I don't know where in the world you like found this, but

You know, this was a really good human interest thing. And the organizers of the tournament, and this has been going on for 40 years, have been covering this thing. You know, when it was over, they were coming up to me and thanking me saying, no one ever has covered this like this before. The family has called me for weeks after this. All this kind of stuff, right? And I learned a really valuable lesson through that experience. And I've always tried to...

Jason E. Brooks (52:40.425)

Mm.

Danny Klein (52:51.608)

tell people I hire about this, not necessarily that story, but just like, when you go to write something and someone's entrusting to you their knowledge or their story or their information, the worst thing in the world you could do is sit there at the end of it and maybe they're a really small brand and then going, wow, like if I was Burger King, he probably would have tried harder.

Like I want everybody that I ever write to or talk to or engage with or interact with to know that like this is all I have to give you. And you may think like I get this feedback sometimes like I'm kind of like a monotone, never super excited personality. This comes off in my like moderation style. But it isn't that I don't care. Like people, I do not want anyone to ever think I don't care. And if they think you care,

Like you've won 90 % of the battle. so, you know, that I've taken through my whole career was very, very valuable in sports writing, because I was covering everything from little league baseball to high schools. And I'd get this, I was, I used to get that feedback a lot where I would, I remember we had a girls lacrosse team one time do this. Like they went to the state title game and I had been given that assignment because nobody on staff wanted to cover girls lacrosse in high school.

It's not the best thing to watch. It's got weird rules. But I mean, this family's that were involved in the coverage, the articles that I'd written, everything from like one of the kids had cancer to all this different stuff that we got into over the course of like two, three weeks. I I still to this day, once in a while, I'll post on LinkedIn and it might be hidden down there in the comments, but there will be someone who will be like, I remember when you...

We're in St. Augustine. I remember what you did for lacrosse. I hear from this other lacrosse guy all the time where he'll be like, I still remember. I'm like, yeah, I know you remember. I get it. But there's this other guy who had a son who was on this Bartram Trail football team. He now works for Chick-fil-A in some capacity. I don't really understand. But I hear from him once in a while. Because they just knew that I cared, even on days where maybe I didn't or I didn't want to.

Jason E. Brooks (54:48.647)

Wow.

Jason E. Brooks (54:53.631)

You

Danny Klein (55:13.324)

I don't like lacrosse that much. I'm not like I knew anything about it. I sure as hell don't like fishing. I don't knock people who fish. It's just like, don't, not in part of my grown up life, but you cannot allow your clients who are in our case, the people that we're writing about to ever feel that way. And so that to me is number one, a hundred percent. The most important thing as a journalist that you can do. tell every

young intern I have this is that you have to, and you cannot as a, I had this happen to me, this will be my final anecdote of the day for you. This guy sent me a story once that used to work for me. And the email in his subject line said something like, I know this isn't good, I'm sorry, I ran out of time, but this story sucks. And I tell him back, I'm like, look, if you ever tell me that again, you're not gonna work here.

Jason E. Brooks (56:09.887)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (56:10.382)

You might as well have just told me this is the best story I ever wrote because if you think that way, like, it's not okay. He ended up not staying around very long, thankfully. But moral that is, like, that is my one thing. Do not ever appear like you don't care. I have no tolerance for it. I don't care what industry it is. I don't care what we're doing. I don't care if you're moderating speaking. And I am very much a closed circle person where I will

be very loyal to the people around me and I'll I get asked like how you get a speaker and I'm like cuz I like cuz he's helped me cuz he's open with me because we have this this back and forth that I trust them and I will do the exact same thing on the other side of that equation that if I don't think you don't care I don't think you're supportive if you don't be a part of it you can go somewhere else so that is my gospel of leadership is treat everything

like it's the World Series, even if it's a fishing tournament or Little League Baseball. That's my spiel for it.

Jason E. Brooks (57:15.839)

You know, that's the this no, this is exactly why exactly why I wanted to have you in the seat at the table in order to give this perspective you We have talked about so many great things. I'm not gonna go through everything again right now But before we wrap up because I know you're busy. I know our listeners

have probably parked their car before going into work because they wanted to hear everything. before we wrap up, where can everyone, how can they connect with you, learn more about you, your work, the magazines?

Danny Klein (57:55.918)

Yeah, well me personally, you know, LinkedIn, it's the easiest way to get me. I'm not really on other social media currently. I do have an ex account, but I'm a ghost. So LinkedIn, obviously you just find my name, but otherwise, know, qsrmagazine.com and fsrmagazine.com, would personally suggest signing up for the e-letters. They're both free. You'll get Jason's content.

You'll also see other things, know, because a lot of times people are like, how do I know when to register for this? Or how do I know to apply for young leaders? Or how do I know? Whatever it might be. I'm like, that is where you know, like I send that out every single day. you get, know, FSR is four days a week, QSR is five days a week. So was nine of those a week. And in those nine e-letters, we will keep you posted on every way to get involved that we have discussed here from under 40 lists to...

whatever right all the different things that we do so that's the way I would say it go to our websites of course register for our conferences which are now open qsrevolutionconference.com and the next-gen restaurant summit which are co-located but yeah you can register but if you ever have any questions I'm always around I try to be open to these things as long as you're not selling me something because here's the one thing that people don't realize Jason is that I don't have

Jason E. Brooks (59:00.809)

Mm-hmm.

Danny Klein (59:20.46)

financial power. So I get these companies all the time on LinkedIn, you drop in there and they're like, I see you work at WTWH media, can I sell you printing? And I'm like, you don't realize like, don't buy anything. So no, you can't. Right?

Jason E. Brooks (59:35.689)

have that poll like that. I'm just here to help for the content, not for sellings or buying things.

Danny Klein (59:39.86)

Right, exactly. Right, so as long you're not trying to sell me something that I can't buy, and it's not that I'm ignoring you, I just literally can't buy it, please reach out, DM me or whatever. I'm happy to help.

Jason E. Brooks (59:54.769)

Love it. Well, to our listeners for today, we have explored how Danny's dry humor has caused him to be a ghost on X and on everything else except for LinkedIn. And we also explored how communication shapes restaurant brands, leadership, customer loyalty, and team member loyalty as well. Danny.

Thank you for sharing your expertise with us at The Leadership Table. And again, to our listeners, if you found value in today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share this episode with a fellow leader. You can also visit us at www.jcenebrooks.com for leadership insights and resources. Until next time, keep leading with impact and remember, manage.

lead, coach, repeat. Thank you and have an excellent.