5 tips on launching new tech in restaurants with Costa Vida President, Wade Allen

The Menu Mix is a hospitality podcast that talks to senior thought-leaders across the industry, uncovering the future of the sector. Subscribe on YouTube to follow.

In this episode George Wetz (CEO) and Matt Holy (Director of Strategic Projects) welcome Wade Allen, President of Costa Vida Fresh Mexican Grill, discusses his experiences leading digital transformation at both large and small restaurant chains, revealing valuable insights for restaurant operators of all sizes..

Key Takeaways

1. Big Budgets vs. Strategic Bets: Allen contrasts his experiences leading innovation at Brinker International, a publicly traded company with vast resources, and Costa Vida, a smaller, privately-held chain. At Brinker, he could make numerous large bets on emerging technologies, while at Costa Vida, he prioritizes a more focused and strategic approach to innovation.

2. Embracing the Off-Premise Shift: Allen highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated Costa Vida's off-premise business from single digits to over 68%. He explains how the company strategically invested in its digital experience, loyalty program, and operational improvements to optimize this growing segment.

3. Revolutionizing the Call Center with AI: Allen shares how Costa Vida is pioneering the use of AI in its call centers to handle transactional inquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex customer needs. He outlines the company's methodical approach to testing and expanding AI capabilities, with an eye towards future applications in ordering and drive-thrus.

4. The Future of Restaurant Tech: Allen explores the potential of emerging technologies like computer vision and audio analysis to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. He envisions a future where AI can help identify and address customer problems in real-time, as well as improve order accuracy and streamline operations.

5. Cultivating a Growth Mindset: Allen offers career advice, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning, proactively seeking new challenges, and building strong teams. He encourages aspiring leaders to "dress for the role" they aspire to and surround themselves with talented individuals who complement their skills. 

Episode transcript

George Wetz:  Okay. So joining us today is Wade Allen, president of Costa Vida, fresh Mexican grill. Now Wade has got over 20 of experience in the industry across various leadership roles, uh, with Brinker international, including as chief digital officer, and CEO. Chief information officer and VP of marketing. Now, Wade is one of those people who's recognized across the industry as being a real innovator in digital experience. And he's always got his finger on the pulse of the latest emerging technologies. So he's a regular on industry panels at conferences, places like QSR Evolution, FS Tech, Food On Demand, Myrtec, the list goes on, I'm sure. So we're really, really excited to have you here today, Wade, on The Menu Mix. So welcome to the show.

Wade Allen: Thanks, it's awesome to be here. And George, you gave me a great introduction. I don't know if I'm that well pulsed in, but man, I sure love this industry and love, love tech, love hospitality, love food. Right. So glad to be here.

Matt Holy: Yeah. Awesome to have you here, Wade. Um, yeah, I guess just jumping straight into things, uh, very extensive background in hospitality, spent many years leading different teams, uh, within Brinker. So kind of like massive restaurant business, publicly traded company. Uh, now you're with Costa Vida, president of Costa Vida, leading the teams there.

And just wanted to talk to you a little bit about kind of the scale of each of the businesses and maybe what some of the key advantages and disadvantages are. So could you speak a little bit to, I guess, some of the things you've been able to implement and achieve within each of the business sizes and yeah, what the advantages are?

Wade Allen: Yeah. I'd love to talk about that. I, I, um, it is, it's very different. Right. It's, it's kind of the tale of two cities or two worlds. Um, you know, I, I came into, to Brinker, uh, very green. I didn't know restaurant very well. I'd done a little bit of work as a consultant and as a, um, as an agency guy with some restaurants and in that 10 year timeframe, I kind of moved from a VP of digital marketing. the C suite of a CIO, head of innovation, and ultimately the chief digital officer. Um, but, but when you play in the really, you know, the, the, the dichotomy or the, or the, the real difference between these two worlds You're in a great big company that's publicly traded. The demand is every quarter for Wall Street, but you also have huge budgets.

I mean, I dare say not unlimited, but pretty darn near close, right, to do whatever you need to do, whether it's build, buy or develop technology. And you, really are more about, in those settings, you can push the envelope. If you get a good leader that allows you to play in the innovation space, right?

You can really do things that other companies can't do. What tends to happen if you don't have a great leader that wants innovation in those big companies is that you just try to play to the center of the fairway. They get really nervous because it's publicly traded companies. They don't want to do that. To miss  hit to the right or to the left to use that golf analogy. Um, and sometimes that's the worst thing they can do is not to go for the green, right? Staying that same analogy is being aggressive. So, but at Breaker, my experience was, um, through a couple of different leaders and a big company. was about big budgets.

It was about be aggressive. Um, go, go be, um, be an innovator and change the space. And that was really core to my character. That's where I had come from as an entrepreneur and doing a lot of things in the digital marketing and digital mobility space. If you fast forward the tape now to where I am at Costa Vida, we're a much smaller organization. Right. Our top line is just below 200 million. We're, um, our EVs are strong at 2. 1, but we're a much smaller footprint at a hundred restaurants, just, just under a hundred restaurants. Where with Chili's it was 1, 500, right? Where it had, um, a lot more, uh, a lot more horsepower, if you will, from a budget standpoint. Costa, it's tight. We've got to keep our budgets in check. We've got to make sure that we're only spending in the areas that are the most important. Um, and, and we've got to rack and stack every quarter. On what we're going to put our focus on, because, um, if we get too, uh, scattered, we don't have big enough teams to move the ball down the field.

We do, we just get in trouble. We won't, we won't, we won't complete initiatives. So, um, this transition has been interesting and, and, and I would say I love both of them. I think they are both super fun. They have their different pros and cons, but I am more geared towards taking a small brand initiative. To a bigger playing field.

And so I feel like the role I'm in now, I have been, uh, being groomed for, for the better part of my career. And so grateful to be now the president of Costa Vida and, and driving this business forward.

Matt Holy: Yeah, that's really interesting. And, uh, like the unlimited budget I'd bring, it sounds like they're a very forward thinking kind of. Definitely let you, uh, maybe crack a couple eggs to, to see what was out there. Could you speak a little bit about some of the things that you tested in Brinker that, uh, you know, because of those big budgets and because of the mentality that they allowed you to like really push the envelope that maybe some that you're surprised that really worked and maybe others that didn't quite pan out as technology has evolved.

Okay.

Wade Allen: So I would say, um, with the ones that I was proud of that actually worked, that I actually didn't think it was going to work. I think putting tablets on the table, uh, back in 2014 and 2013 was an early As an early adopter, I didn't know how that was gonna go. In fact, I remember putting the test down.

I got there right as they were starting to start this test, and I got involved with that, and I thought this isn't gonna go anywhere. Guests are gonna reject this, it was a huge success for that Brinker brand. Um, and Chili's really thrived with that, that partner. And that continues today. They still, they've gone from that partner to another partner to back to the old partner, but tablets on the table.

It's still been something that casual dining, um, that surprised me. I didn't know it was going to win. I actually, you know, I think further down the line. Um, started implementing robotics and, uh, uh, robotics in the restaurant, um, both from carrying trays back and forth from the kitchen to the, to the front, as well as machinery in the back that was robotics based on, um, frying fries and cooking fried chips and some of these other things, um, that, that didn't ever stick. You know, I thought for sure those were going to be the win. Um, to be, yeah, we have a big capital outlay, but the, um, the delivery from reducing the, the training, the turnover, the intellectual capital, walking out the door when that happens, this would be a big win and making the team members job easier. And, and they just didn't really pan out. They, they, they delivered a little bit. And I think if we had continued to work down that path, it may have come, but we may have been too early on both drones when robotics in the restaurant, both front of house and back of house. Um, and so while I chalked those up as, uh, I don't say necessarily failures, but they were not, they weren't completed and we didn't get exactly what we wanted out of them. Um, you know, there's a few others that were kind of skunk skunk works with data and tokenization and identifications of customers and computer vision that we were playing with, those, those didn't work either. But man, I learned so much from that process that now, now, as they've started to mature in the current industry, leveraging some of the knowledge that I had, uh, two or three years ago in, in starting those projects.

Thanks. now implement into my business here at Costa Vida. You know, AI is a big conversation. We talk a lot about AI, the precursors to AI with these large language models and computing vision, um, was what we were toying with three or four years ago. I'm now using some of that tech. Or, or starting to use some of that tech here at Costa Vida on a smaller scale, but, but now it allows us to compete with the big companies that have these deep pockets to go hire a fleet of people or staff their restaurants because they're bigger brands than we are.

George Wetz: Yeah, I just want to pick up on that, actually, because you about the difference in scale and the ability to try lots of things, but you're still innovating. Yeah. Costa Vida. So how, how do you approach innovation differently for brands that maybe are a similar size to Costa Vida? Like, can you share a bit about your process and how you think about placing those, those chips when it comes to innovation, because not

Wade Allen: Yeah. I mean,

George Wetz: out, like you say.

Wade Allen: At Brinker it was placing 10 bets on the board and generally getting two or three of them to play out well. Right. At Costa, it's been Putting two bets down or three bets down and and hoping we get one to hit So it's the port the portion sizes is smaller is what I'd say, right? So we have to be a lot more deliberate And intentional about the bets we're going to make. Um, because we have, we have, we have fewer bets that we can put on the proverbial table where at Brinker, I could put 10, 12, 15 down, and if I hit two or three and they were big enough at 1500 restaurants or 1300 restaurants, that scale would more than pay back from an ROI a hundred restaurants. I got to keep my team super focused.

We've got three good ones. really, really one of them is probably going to go. And if one of them goes, okay, this could work, um, at a, at a hundred restaurant scale and, um, and, and be in a good place. So that, that's kind of, um, that, that, that's how I look at it. That's how, that's how it's been different.

There is a process we go through, you know, we, we prototype and we, we do betas and we get everybody involved. And then we. We launch and we measure, and then we have an end to the test, and then we review. Like there's, there's a whole process we go through, but it isn't that much different than you get at a big, big organization like Bri.

Matt Holy: Yeah, so you just spoke a lot about, I guess, changing the business through technology, different ways that you test it, uh, kind of the risk and reward involved with that, but looking at Costa Vida's business specifically, there is actually Quite a big change that happened, I guess, organically in part due to the pandemic in terms of your off premise business, right?

So I believe pre pandemic it was single digits, part of your mix, like six or seven percent, right? Now you are Like more than half of your business is off premise. So can you speak a little bit to, yeah, I guess some of the changes to customer persona and value proposition that just this natural evolution of.

Customer in your business has had an effect on the business.  

Wade Allen: Yeah, I mean, I, I, first of, I'll just caveat that, um, a lot of that shift and transition, was not started by me, although I fueled it as I've, as I've come in, in the last year and a half. It, you know, this brand was really set up and built to be a hospitable brand of buy people into a warm dining room, sit with them, have some great, you know, custom made Mexican food in a fast, casual, comfortable environment. But the dining room is everything. And the brand, um, really kind of outsourced. Their guests experience in the digital space to partners. They didn't really take a lot of ownership. They didn't have a lot of intellectual knowledge or capital or understanding of what needed to happen and how they wanted to control that. And that could have been because they were just a lean team and they didn't have big enough budgets to really do it up. Right. the shift through COVID really kind of spurred this idea that, Hey, we can be an off premise business. Hey, we don't have to be just a dining room business. And, and, and there's, there is a very deep. palpable was what I'll use that term transition between the old guard and the new guard and and some of the old guard of of the individuals who started this restaurant and own this restaurant. Their mindset had been traditionally about restaurants to them was sit down restaurants. I think this they started to get on board once they went through covid like, Oh, my word.

There's a whole nother world here and convenience is king, right? People love fresh fast food. Can they get it? So it doesn't feel like they're eating out of a sack at one of these QSR restaurants. And that's where Costa went. Holy smokes. We've got something here. and so now as we're on this transition and you, you know, you talked about it. Hey, what percentage? Well, the number is when you look at drive through, when you look at catering, when you look at delivery, and when you look at, uh, to go, that's 68 percent of our business today, right? So it, the landscape is massively shifted from where it's been. that is now.  Tremendously fueled by a new web and app experience, a very dialed in and deliberate loyalty program and incentivize incentivization to take money faster through the app and the web, with visual cues so that people can quickly add saved orders, uh, you know, wallet transactions, um, good signposting on the web and app to show them where they can pick it up, when they can pick it up, when it will be delivered. Um, what the process is to get it, uh, on a, on a pickup shelf in our restaurants. So all of that's continued to fuel where we think, um, convenience is taking our guests. So I hope that answers your question, but that's really the journey we've been on. And I do think as we push into the future, um, we're going to see more and more of our restaurants built with, uh, with drive thru windows.

We still see a powerhouse in, in drive thru. We still see a huge transition of people moving online and into our digital experiences. And we're seeing a lot of pull now come off of third party into the first party app because of the, uh, the, uh, white labels, what I'll call it, option to work with our delivery partners to have our food delivered via our own app.

So that those are all big shifts we're seeing and we continue down that path.

George Wetz: that's really interesting. And it's with your brand in particular, it's had a core product. would translate really well into the off premise experience and, provide something that's differentiated than what was elsewhere on the market. And what's really interesting hearing you speak is the intentionality of not just, we're going to add these channels and see what happens. Like there's been so much strategic focus on how do we execute on that. Like how do we continue to innovate and improve so we can make that quality of experience better and better and grow that as a channel. I think this will resonate a lot with other people who are considering, maybe they've got an off, uh, an off premise offering right now, but thinking, well, where could I take that?

Is it right for my brand and what the kinds of things I should be doing now? And another area you are innovating is all around. Um, one of them is AI and in your call centers, right? So. This is quite forward thinking still in the industry. So would you share a bit with the audience about what you've been doing around with AI and call centers and some of the, you know, the benefits, but also maybe some of the pitfalls that you've experienced along the way.

Wade Allen: Yeah, for sure. And, and, um, again, I'll just caveat. I don't know everything, right? But until I investigate it and play with it, I don't, I don't really know what I don't know. So in during COVID, as we transitioned, um, in and through COVID, we realized we actually built a call center, a localized centralized call center that, um, would take catering orders and questions because at the time our restaurants were running at, minimal labor, but full capacity trying to get food out the door. And they just didn't have time to answer the phone. so we, we created this call center. Um, it did great. And it's been a great, great investment for us. But now as we've come out of COVID, we've realized that now we have this expense, um, and people are still kind of calling in and asking questions. And what we found is that 75 percent of the call ins were not, um, we're not necessarily going to the sales.

They were just general questions that could be answered. we're like, Whoa, three quarters of this is just. When do you open? What are your hours? Do you have a patio? Um, are you closed on Sundays? Do you, you know, you know, what, what's, is it gluten free? I mean, think of all the questions that would come up that somebody would want to pick up the phone. Or they could find it online, but for some reason they were calling into our restaurants. so, you know, along with, I want to place an order after I've answered a few of those questions, or I want to place a catering order. So we said, we've got to do something here because this expense is, you know, there's got to be a better way than just throwing bodies at this problem. And we found an AI solution that we started to test. Uh, the group is a pair pay and they were small and, uh, and fairly new in the market, but they said, Hey, can we just come in and see what we can do? And so we, we put them in our call center and we started to evaluate what was going on. So they did a quick evaluation to determine this kind of pie chart.

I just told you of a 75, 25, um, mix. And they said, our, our, our AI call attendant can answer these questions and actually assist you guys. So I said, great, let's do it. And we've seen, we've started to, you know, very strategically. Dial back hours of the, um, of the team members in that call center, um, keeping the same staff, but just reducing hours to see if I can actually cover that gap in this test. Well, we we saw this success. So then we rolled the test to 33 of the restaurants that we own and a couple of franchise partners as well. I think we picked up another 6 or 7 of our franchise partners. Restaurants and by doing so now we've been able to reduce and take out shifts because the AI is actually handling it without a problem. the next thing we're tackling, we're going very methodical is okay. Now can it handle a sales call or a order? a catering work? That's too complex, but can it handle just an order? And if we can get success there, we'll test it and roll it out. And then we're just going to keep marching down that path.

Then it's a catering order. Then the next horizon is probably going to be, can we test it at our, uh, at our, um, drive thrus in our boards at our drive thrus. So we've got this plan. If this continues to bear fruit, um, to find a way with this hospitality and how things are going on. So. Um, I think this is the path to be very strategic and focused on how we kind of march down, uh, to improve it. as opposed to, I'm afraid of it, I don't want to deal with it, or I don't want to test it, or there's too many options. You can get frozen in the plethora of choices and the conversations that are happening around AI today because there's so many of them. I think you just got to pick something off and say, can AI have an application? Bring it in and start methodically testing it to see if you can prove it out.

George Wetz: So underpinning what you've said, the question I have is about kind of the nature of hospitality. So your customers are calling, were calling in to ask generic questions about business you're a, you've been able to find ways to. Um, use AI to be able to service a lot of those. when you think about the customer, how do you think about this? Maybe it's not a trade off. I was going to say trade off, but between speaking to a human versus speaking to an AI, how do you think about the different types of interaction that a customer might have with a human and how sensitive they might be to it being with AI versus a human being like, and how'd you get that kind of, I guess, feedback from customers on that and that,

Wade Allen: Yeah,

George Wetz: area, you see.

Wade Allen: I don't have all the answers to it. This is what I was telling you as we thought about this. you're placing an order, there's a little bit more care and attention that needs to go into. And that's where we've been hesitant to put AI in front of the order yet. When you're just asking generic questions, when do you close? Uh, do you have a patio? Uh, you know, the things that are more transactional is what I'll say about just getting information back. Um, guests, guests are just wanting to get the info, right? It's just an urgency to want to actually have that dialogue or not an urgency to have a dialogue, but urgency to get the information. Less urgency around. I want to have a conversation. I will tell you, people are funny because we can hear the calls and we can see how the AI actually, um, uh, people are asking it and as soon as they figure out it is an AI and you know, there's no surprise when you hear it, you can kind of tell it's AI generated, but people ask it. Tell me a poem. Um, you know, can you, can you tell me a joke like it'll start, they'll start to actually play with the AI more about, Hey, this is funny. I'm going to ask it stuff and see what it does. And you can see the, like the crazy number of questions that are getting asked that are not necessarily related to restaurants because they've determined, Hey, this is an AI utility.

I'm going to play with it and see what I can get. Um, but I think George, to answer your question, it's, it's, I think there's more sensitivity around things when they ask things like, maybe, maybe if it is a gluten friendly, do you really have vegan options? What is, what can I order that would be a vegan option?

That's when it gets a bit more sensitive to the AI, because if it's giving them generic stale answers or not, um, empathetic responses, it can be viewed as cold and cast off, kind of casting people off. I, I have not seen that necessarily. We do have a feedback loop where guests can give us feedback. It's been very minimal complaints on the, in the transactional information. We haven't taken it to order yet. And I think if we take it to order and it feels very transactional and not empathetic, we might hear some pushback from our guests. So we're just going to test that water slowly.

George Wetz: that's very interesting how people are playing with it. I wonder if there's a, cause you know, in theory you can have so many concurrent conversations going on with customers. I wonder if, I wonder if brands will start to look to really more brand their AI

Wade Allen: Yeah. I

George Wetz: you know, they can feel the kind of talking more directly with you.

It's got your brand voice and. Yeah, that's quite interesting

Wade Allen: mean, I'd love to hide some Easter eggs inside of the. And so the AI, right? So that if they asked you, you know, what's the best Costa hack it, you know, if you knew the right thing to think it would say, Oh, you mix the horchata and the root beer, or, you know, you definitely have the case. So mix with the red sauce and put it in the, you know, something that would be fun where if they, if almost, it's not a secret menu mentality, but it's the idea that you can find the Easter eggs.

If you know what to ask or what topics to play with. Um, but to be determined, we're still working through some of that.

Matt Holy: this is where, uh, AI and chat GPT prompt generation just becomes more and more important. They'll be use it to get secret menu items, potentially, or special combinations. That's really cool. You you spoke a lot about. Just like  testing, testing, testing, and kind of moving slow and making sure you don't like go too far into it, uh, at the risk, at the risk of hurting the guest experience.

And, um, I guess back to when you were at Brinker, you tested some things, maybe they were just a little too early on in their, in their technology growth cycle. But now it feels like maybe if you implemented it and you said, you've, you know, the knowledge you got, uh, from testing these things, you're now applying it.

If we're looking forward to the next three to five years, what are you kind of testing now and looking at now, maybe in the AI space or outside of the AI space that really excites you in the next three to five years where you think that part of the market will just really mature and the solution will feel a little more full and robust.

Wade Allen: Yeah, I, the one that comes to mind right now that I've just been really, uh, you know, it's been been in my head is this idea to have, um,  um, just kind of sink the systems a little bit tighter. So if my computer, so I have a computer, we have a company in our organization or company in our, um, that services us that we have, um, cameras turned on so we can see what's happening both on the line and the dining room doors for security.

Okay. And then I also have a group that has guest feedback and sentiment, um, where they're getting feedback to us when a problem arises in a restaurant. And we have a metric called guests with a problem that we evaluate. We'd like to know what happens. And then I started to think, well, if you could get video footage of when the guest actually had that problem? And then I thought, well, what if I could get the audio as well? And then what if I didn't have to spend money on deploying a service that goes around and checks if your restaurants are doing what they're supposed to be doing or could augment our, our franchise business partners or our, uh, our district managers so that when they come in and we roll out the red carpet and everything looks pretty and then they leave the next day, you know, you don't really get a true picture.

So could you integrate? The computing with the, with the camera, the outbound or the, the, the solicitation of responses from the guest and get some kind of microphone component to sync up so that when a guest submitted a problem, I had their transaction ID, I could say, Hey, Matt had an issue.

Let's go back and pull the footage and see what happened. Was it a systemic issue or did the team member just struggle at that moment because of a busy restaurant or because of something happened? Or did we, you know, what, what caused that, right? Because today we don't have very good. understanding of why a guest may have a problem.

They tell us, but it's a little bit like telling us a symptom. We, we don't necessarily know was that because of a disease that's going on inside of a restaurant that we need to solve, right? From a team member problem or a management problem or a food problem, or, or is it more of a, Hey, it's just, it's just what happens in restaurants.

Sometimes you do everything you can to give the best experience and maybe you missed one time, right? So for me in the next. I'd say 18 months. Someone's going to put that whole package together and they're going to, they're going to, it's going to create this kind of really tight integration where when there's a problem, you can send the general manager an email link and they'll be able to see the footage.

They'll be able to hear the audio and they'll be able to see what the guests responded to to track down. Oh, okay. I know what's going on and I know how to go fix that. Um,

George Wetz: That's really interesting. This is speaking to how the technology is. allowing, yeah, allowing you as, as the leader and the various layers of management really, truly know what's actually been going on inside of your restaurant. See the experience through the eyes of your customers in a way that was never possible before. So that, so that whether it's a systemic issue, as you say, uh, An individual issue you'd be able to just with real accuracy, be able to help. Um, and I guess empathy as well, like the maximum amount of empathy you've almost seen and experienced it through their own eyes. very, that's very

Wade Allen: there is another one I've been playing with. Uh, thought a lot about, which is the number one problem in restaurants that are, uh, have an off premise presence is missing and incorrect. It's no, it's no, um, so shocked to anybody that that tends to be the number one issue with problems that can kind of, you know, in a dining room, you can solve that.

You can come back and say, I'm sorry, here's your drink. I'm sorry. I forgot your ranch. Sorry. Let me take that back and fix it. Once that goes out the window or the side door, there's no way to fix it. don't get the chance to make it right and it gets a lot harder if you do because it's another transaction or they come back to the restaurant and they're already upset. So if there was some AI vision AI in the future that could actually check and pressure check what's going into the bag. So if it knew the number of items that it was supposed to go into that bag based on the order. it knew the ultimate size of your packaging, your ramekins, your tins, your, your, your salad containers, whatever it is. So that the team member thinks they're doing it right. They're checking off the process, but it's super busy and it's, it's chaotic and they're getting people out the door and they're getting people in the drive thru, but the AI could flash something to them that says you're green. I, you put the right, you know, some kind of validation check to say, I also agree that what you put in that bag was the right number of items, the right size, Now, maybe you undercooked the chicken or maybe you overcooked the pork, but the issue tends to be you forgot the drink.

You forgot the ranch. You didn't get the ketchup. You know, you miss my french fries. So if, if computing AI could get to that level of sophistication with a compliment to our team member, holy cow, we're in a new world because the team member can kind of, kind of rely now on the AI for that. The precision and they can just worry about making sure that they're keeping pace, that the guest is taken care of as they're waiting for the order and they become the double checker.

The AI becomes the primary checker. Like I think there's something here that I've seen a few companies playing with this, but I don't know if anybody's actually gone to this level of detail at the packaging area more than are they putting in the right ingredients as they go down the line because that combination is a lot harder.

George Wetz: That sounds also really valuable. And, and it also speaks to with any new technology, this curve where it has to get beyond a minimum viability for it to be able to perform both the features, but also consistently enough for it to be more of a positive thing than a negative thing and a, and a hindrance.

And, and that's why technology is just so interesting is because we're always moving through that, you know, that curve, um, that we've talked about the future. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about how you got to where you are now? Because I think there's, you know, a lot of people who are in the industry know your name, that have seen your career growth, and some people be thinking, Oh, I'd love to be doing what Wade's doing one day.

You know, they'd like to see their track going there. So through your career, you've had to, at various times, take on a new portfolio, new responsibilities.  and find a way to figure out how to deal with that issue, problem, learn, upskill. you share a bit about your personal philosophy when it comes to each of these new times you've been thrown a new role or thrown a new set of responsibilities?

How do you think about unpacking that, understanding it, and then ultimately mastering it so you can move forward onto the, onto your next move in your career?

Wade Allen: I, I, um, I think I learned early on it was probably somewhere in my childhood that, um, I, I didn't really have any, um, doubt that I couldn't figure anything out. I just, I just had this belief that I believed, I think it was maybe there's a belief in myself that no matter how hard it was, no matter how difficult it was, I was going to find a way to accomplish it, whether it was physically, mentally, emotionally, I was going to find some way if somebody else could do it, I could do it.

That was kind of the mentality I had. And. that's been ingrained in me  from a young, young guy. And I think, so when we, when, when these new opportunities come up, the first and foremost, I don't really, and it's, it's probably a, it's probably, there's also a con to this just to, so we're clear as I talked to this, but I didn't ever really have confidence that she was like, I can't figure it out.

I'm like, okay, I'll, I'll put in the time, the effort. I will grind harder than anybody work every hour. I can, until I understand this. Um, because I don't have this belief that there's something I can't understand. And so I think with that mentality, that's the first step. I was never bashful or afraid of taking on something new, right?

I had the confidence to say, I'll figure it out. I'll go read, read everything I can on the web. I'll go read books about it. I'll, I'll figure it out. Case in point, when I was early on in my career and I was starting my first kind of startup, I You know, it's in the nineties, I just went to went to Barnes and Noble's at the end, bought a book called HTML for dummies and just read it cover to cover and I'm like, I can start creating web pages and then I read a JavaScript for dummies and I was like, I can use JavaScript, right?

This is easy, right? And so I just, I kind of had that mentality, I think when I get these roles now, my process I go through is, um, I try to dress for the role before I take it. And what I mean by that is. in almost every instance that I've been promoted or moved jobs or wanted to attain a different role. I started preparing myself before I got to the role and I say dress for the part. But, I, you know, when I came in to Brinker as the VP of digital marketing, I had been running with a digital agency for years. I knew what to do. I wasn't a VP yet, but I knew what to do. I knew how to manage teams. I knew what I liked and disliked about the managers who are managing me. I knew how to get the best out of the team and how I like to be managed. I just took that knowledge and with that confidence said, I can do this. And, you know, I, I, I was very clear with my managers of what is in and out of scope, because I plan on building a team and creating an environment that we can be successful.

And then it just learned everything I possibly could learn through that process. And I was very open with my, my team as well. have all the answers, but we will figure it out because the collective intelligence on this group that I'm hiring, we'll have more knowledge and understanding of topics than any one person could ever have.

And so if we work together. Um, we can rally. And what I found doing that is that, um, you get people who just team players. They love it. They want to be on a team that wins. And so they're willing to sacrifice their own individual desires, wants for the team. And ultimately, what that means is they get more as an individual, because when the team wins, everybody wins. so that's, that's kind of the mindset coming in, in those moments, like I'll talk about the transition from, it. At Costa to president. I was grooming myself. I was learning the PNL. I was looking and understanding, um, the, the financials of the, of the different models. I understood the AUVs. I dug into what the labor percentage needed to be.

I understood what cost of sales. We have what's called a central kitchen that does a lot of our fresh prep, that delivers it to the restaurants. I understood that central kitchen, the mechanics and the finances behind it. So that when I got to this role, wasn't, they didn't have to go through that learning curve. Um, but that was all on the side of my desk because I was running tech, marketing, analytics and off premise at the time. Um, but, but that's kind of how it's operated, right? Just learning, getting ahead of it. And then being ready to implement it when you actually get the title and the opportunity.

George Wetz: I mean, that is such good advice. I'm going to take some of that on for myself for sure. Because I think, and this is a message to, I think, just anybody out there. That old adage, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve it. And there's, there's just to information and knowledge and using your network and people around you to help you in that upskilling progress. Just being intentional. This is my goal. This is where I would like to get to. This is what I need to learn and going through that. And I think, you know, a lot of people who are younger in their careers might be surprised with themselves about where they can get to with that mentality. This is a, as a last question we were going to ask around, um, Gen Z. There's part of this series. We've. Um, we've been asking this generally because it's a topic that's coming up now as Gen Z's, you know, in their twenties and starting to move into management roles. And, and there's one of the trends I wanted to ask you about is it seems like, um, often sort of more lateral moving within an organization.

So rather than moving up, they want to try something new, but stay within the existing business. So obviously after a while at scale, if everybody did that. You'd have a massive hole in management in the business. So we need the next generation of leaders. So what would you kind of say? What advice would you maybe give to people who are earlier on in their career, who are thinking, do I, do I start moving up or do I just look, I say just, but do I look to move across instead of up?

Wade Allen: Yeah, I, I, that's an interesting question. I hadn't thought a lot about it, but just as you were talking to me, I think, um, I think sometimes we can get stuck in wanting to know everything before we become a leader. And I think what I have learned in the course of my life is I'm never going to know everything. I am good at and what I can do is motivate people, uh, help people, um, listen to people. And and create an environment where they can be successful. So sometimes your your vertical growth better than than your horizontal growth. Because if you have, if you can be a leader. don't have to be the subject matter expert.

I guarantee right now today in the four walls of Costa Vida, I am not the smartest person and that's okay. what is even better is I can take the smartest people, put them together in a room and get the best outcome. And because I was elevated as a leader. Yeah, I came out of the analytics and out of the data. And out of marketing, but supply chain, I I'm struggling trying to get my arms around supply chain. I'm struggling trying to get my arms around some of these other stuff. I'm learning as I go, but I have experts that love that space and know it. So for me, going vertical in my growth was actually the best thing I could do for the business because I didn't have to have, you know, four or five different broad understandings of everything.

Cause I, I could lead people in the right direction and get the best out of them. have to decide where you want to go. I do think some Um, you know, coming, coming to siloed, you don't have an appreciation. I think you have to understand that, that there is an appreciation across every discipline and the complexity that exists.

And if you have that knowledge and understanding that there is complexity and difficulty and intelligence in every discipline, when you do lead, when you do move up the vertical chain, gravitate towards you because you appreciate the That you don't just dismiss different departments. I've seen so many leaders just kind of say, well, anybody can do marketing, right?

Just grab somebody off the street or, um, it's just bean counting. It's just accounting. Just grab somebody does numbers. Uh, that's where it gets dangerous. So a healthy understanding of those departments and, and those different, um, you know, horizontal, um, growth is important, but vertically, it was always where I wanted to go.

I was great at a leader. I wanted to lead people. So if you have those leadership, uh, attributes. Don't shy away from it. You know, grow where you get the chance.

Matt Holy: That's really great advice. And I, it really resonated something you said a little earlier about, um, dressing for the role before you, uh, before you, you get it, uh, because yeah, you, you, you could never know everything that you need to know. And the next role that you're going to achieve, you could upskill your knowledge as best you can.

And then, like you just mentioned, uh, you know, surround yourself with the right people to fill in the gaps where maybe you're not the subject matter expert. And, uh, yeah, one, one team, one dream approach is always kind of what. What wins? So, um, yeah, that's really great advice. And just to wrap things up, um, for everyone.

This was Wade Allen, hospitality industry thought leader and president of Costa Vida. Fresh Mexican grill to learn more about Costa Vida. You could find them on instagram and X using at Costa Vida and on Tiktok using cost at Costa Vida. Fresh Mex. Uh, you could also follow Wade Allen on LinkedIn, where he regularly posts updates on the latest emerging trends in the industry, uh, Wade, it's been a really great conversation and thank you so much for joining the show.

It's been a pleasure having you here.

Wade Allen: Awesome. Matt, George, thanks, man. This is super fun. Always great to connect with you guys. And thanks for the opportunity.

George Wetz: It's been brilliant. Thanks, Wade. Nice one.