The evolving landscape of customer data in hospitality

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) chat with Kevin Nemeth, Chief Digital Officer at Authentic Restaurant Brands, to discuss the evolving landscape of customer data in hospitality. Kevin, who previously spearheaded digital growth at Popeyes, emphasizes the critical role of data in shaping personalized customer experiences, optimizing menus, and driving strategic decisions.

Key Takeaways

• Data-driven decision making: Authentic Restaurant Brands prioritizes data in all aspects of their operations, using it to inform everything from menu engineering to LTO calendars. This data-driven approach helps ensure that all decisions are strategic and impactful.

• The power of personalization: Kevin discusses the concept of "passive personalization," using data to tailor customer interactions without being overtly intrusive. He highlights how personalization can enhance the customer journey across various touchpoints.

• Bridging the gap with third-party delivery platforms: Kevin identifies the limitations of data sharing with third-party delivery services, advocating for greater collaboration to enhance the customer experience on these platforms.

• Evolving strategies for social media engagement: Kevin acknowledges the shift in social media towards a pay-to-play model and discusses Authentic Restaurant Brands' approach to leveraging influencers while maintaining authenticity and credibility.

• The importance of operational alignment: Kevin stresses the importance of integrating operations, marketing, and analytics to create a cohesive customer experience. He explains how data helps to align these functions and ensure that all aspects of the business work together effectively.

Episode transcript

George Wetz:  Okay, so joining us today is Kevin Nemeth. He is the Chief Digital Officer at Authentic Restaurant Brands, which has got a portfolio of brands including Pollo Tropical, Primanti Brothers, PJ Whelihan's and Mambo Seafood. Now, before he spent time as Uh, in this role, he was the head of digital marketing for Popeyes, where he helped grow the digital sales from around 4 percent to nearly 20 percent in just two years. And he also launched their first ever loyalty program, Popeyes rewards. before even that he was actually working in other sectors. And so he's been advising brands in digital marketing and social media across a bunch of sectors, including banking, beauty, And sports, I think even spent time at AOL back in the early 2000s.

So it's suffice to say that Kevin's been at the forefront of how brands can engage with consumers digitally for many, many years. And that's why we are very excited to have him on the show today. So welcome to you, Kevin. 

Kevin Nemeth: so much, guys, and thank you for really aging me. I appreciate that by calling out AOL in the early 2000s. So, I, I, I greatly appreciate that.

Matt Holy: Kevin, great to have you on the show. We're super excited to have you here. And, as George highlighted, your, your experience is really extensive. you've worked in, in every realm of, of, uh, technology cross loyalty, CRM, CDP platforms. Uh, you kind of have your, your finger in everything.

So from a hospitality perspective, how would you describe the state of play with regards to customer data and hospitality and. How do you see this space evolving, in the next couple of years as well?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah, I mean, look, I think first and foremost, in probably the last 10, 15 years, probably the last 10 years, data has become so much more important than everything we do, right? Like, I think You look back at my early days at AOL. Thank you again, George, for that. Um, you know, you'll see data what didn't play as big of a part or it wasn't the data that we look at today.

When you look at personally, the ability to do personalization or the ability, to track a guest, you know, from a purchase of a certain item into an attachment rate into how you're going to, you're going to menu engineer, how you're going to follow them across platforms. So, I think the state of where we are in hospitality is really exciting. There are some gaps in what we have. There are frankly some gaps, I think, in hospitality where we're, you know, maybe a little bit older, or a little slower to get to market than some other to your point. I've worked in and beauty. I've worked in retail, I've worked banking. And so, you know, I've had the ability to look at these different verticals and, you know, some are more advanced, obviously the customer data is so rich in a financial services industry.

Um, But there's also a ton of regulation around what you could do. So while you have all this amazing data at your fingertips. really limited in what you can do with that data. I think the beauty of what we're doing in hospitality is we're enriching experiences, whether that be in a restaurant, whether that be in a drive thru, through a kiosk, through an ODMB, uh, through off premise.

So, you know, I think there's a lot of exciting things and, think we're at a really, really exciting part of, uh, of the journey of, of, of data and how that's going to be the key to success for so many brands in this vertical.

Matt Holy: Yeah, and you, you touched on a couple of the trendy buzzwords there around, uh, personalization, and just improving the customer experience , and hospitality specifically, what would you say are really the critical touch points in that customer journey where you could leverage personalization and your, your data as a whole?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah, the only buzzword I missed I feel like was digital transformation. So I'll just throw that randomly out there, right? Transformation, sure, why not?  Um, yeah, look, I think When you look at where we are in this day and age, like from the moment that a guest or a customer or a prospective customer is raising their hand, or there is an intent signal, right?

Like that is when personalization theoretically should come into play. Now, there's a bunch of variables that are going to play, right? Like look at this time, the last three years, we thought cookies were going to be deprecated for the last five years, right? And that would impact how we look at retargeting and media and things like that. CDPs have become A very buzzy word, but a CDP is just data, right? Like, and there's ability to maybe outreach it to a DSP or, you know, a CRM channel, but at the end of the day, like it's all, all shaped in this data. And so when you think about the customer journey and where personalization should begin, right?

Assuming somebody gives you their first piece of information, whether they sign up for an email program, they sign up for a loyalty program, if they're engaging with your media. That's when personalization begins, right? Like, what are they engaging with? What are they telling you about themselves? What does their, the data that you have on them tell you in your data warehouse or CDP, is it the items that they, uh, have ordered from you previously, is it, Hey, I'm engaging with a discount, uh, media item, or I'm engaging with, a brand awareness ad.

And so at that point, you can start to differentiate how you're speaking to guests, right? Like whether it be through dynamic, creative optimization, whether that be through. Uh, a CRM play where you're looking at your, your email database or whether that be through your loyalty program, right? There's all these intent signals.

So as soon as somebody raises their hand, as soon as that intent is clear, personalization quote unquote, right? At some level should be getting there. Otherwise we're just sort of bucketing, , guests, perspective guests all together. And I feel like that's probably where we start to lose people off the bat, right?

Not one size fits all.

Matt Holy: Yeah, there's, I guess right now in a few of the conversations that we've been having, uh, with operators, especially in this personalization realm, it feels like there's, they're really trying to strike that balance between. Personalization tech and digital forward journeys and that genuine human to human kind of hospitality.

can you talk about how those two concepts kind of bridge together and like the best ways to incorporate personalization on kind of both sides of the coin there?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. And look, I think that's even something that's evolved greatly over the. You know, call it the past five years is so many people were scared of what personalization meant. And I meant from the guest perspective, people were, you know, hesitant to give too much information. Like how much am I going to be tracked?

Where's my digital footprint, right? You, you hear some of this today, but I feel like that's subsided a lot more of what you see today is. I want people to know who I, I want a brand to know who I am. I don't want to just be spoken to like the three of us are the same person. We're not, we have different interests, right?

We have different, different things we're looking at. And so, you know, as we look at, channels and technology and data, , there's a level of, personalization where you're, you're using, drip personalization, like, Oh, Hey, Matt, you know, here's an email to you versus. Hey Matt, you spent 50 bucks with me last month and you know, I know the items you're looking to do.

So, here's an offer. Like the reality is we're, we're passively personalizing things, right? Like you can't go out and, alert a guest that you know what their household income is that they're in the market to shop for a new house. Maybe they like luxury cars. They're eating Chick fil A and McDonald's in addition to Pollo Tropical and sitting at a casual dining restaurant. There's limitations. So passive personality that is. At key beneficial to the guest is I think where we need, that's where we've gotten for the most part. I think that's sort of the lane we'll have to stay in for a little bit, right? Like we use technology to, to do a lot of the back end work on our side, right?

We're using a data warehouse, using CDPs you know, ESPs or, or loyalty programs to go out and actually get in front of the guests with these things, but the guest doesn't necessarily need to understand how the sausage is Right. That's for us. Sort of behind the scenes. I think the end output is what matters to a guest.

And that's where that passive piece comes in.

Matt Holy: term passive personalization. Um, yeah, that's really cool. And it's an alliteration, which, uh, I love good alliteration.

Kevin Nemeth: It's got me. Dr. Seuss.

Matt Holy: Um, I mean, on the personalization front, still that the industry is evolving fast, albeit not as fast as some other verticals for sure, but the hospitality industry is known as a little bit of a laggard compared to maybe some of the other, industry, CPG, that type of thing, who've really been kind of paving the way.

Is there anything that, you know, you can't personalize right now, or you can't use for personalization that you would love to see in, in the near future, as technology continues to evolve in the space? 

Kevin Nemeth: Mean, there's a million things we can't personalize, right? And there's, there's rationale for like the mass channels, right? You're never, you're never personalizing out of home or. Even, you know, digital radio or CTV, like there's personalization in the sense of, I know you like these things.

I have intense signals that I'm aware of, right? Like maybe I'm looking at, you know, my first party data and I'm using that to target lookalike on it. So I know there's a realm of personalization the place I think that this is a gap in our, in our industry. And I don't think this is a technical limitation. This is a walled garden limitation. And for me, this is really around. Off premise and working with our third party partners, right when we look at like a Doordash, you know, an uber eats a grubhub, et cetera, we are limited by what we're able to do to talk to guests and those companies have troves of customer data, but we as marketers and brands don't have any access to that, so I can't make that experience better and I'm relying on those third parties to To speak for me, right?

Whether, you know, it's in their advertising products or their promotional products. And I think that's a disservice to guests. And I think, look, that to take this in the full account, like if you think about it, Uber or DoorDash, these companies are less than 10 years old. Right. And so there's. There's limited advancement in what they've done, what they built with their sort of targeting capabilities and their, their media, uh, capabilities.

Right. They, they're building this product that started as fulfilling delivery orders, and now it's become something so much bigger because it needs to be. I think this is a gap is. know, if there was an ability to share the customer data, who's using, our brands on third party services, we can make it a much better experience. if you look at the mix of most restaurant brands, it's probably 80, 20, 70, 30 of what they're doing on a third party site versus your first party. And so we're not necessarily trying to steal the traffic away from, from the third parties because that's not how people shop. Like I bet the three of us, if we did not work in this industry. We would probably have one, maybe two apps that are food related. You'll have one of the aggregators and maybe you have a Starbucks or a Chipotle or a Pollo Tropical, whatever it is that you're, that's your go to. but without having that ability to, you know, talk to a guest, I think we're doing a disservice.

Like I know that we could get that data. We could run it through our systems. We can understand the menu mix. We can look at attachment rates. We can start to target them a little, you know, a little deeper, to, to make decisions, to shop for us on those platforms because they're not necessarily looking to download another app or join a loyalty program because that's not natural customer behavior.

So anyway, long story short, I think that gap there is at walled garden. If we come to some agreement to third parties, right. I will give you, uh, X amount of  dollars in guaranteed. that I'm willing to spend to tout your platform. If I can speak to that guest, I think goes a long way in driving both of our, our goals and objectives.

And, you know, I'm hoping we can get there now. That's not the case.

George Wetz: Yeah, it's really interesting because there's, it's that question of relevance for the end consumer. And I know if you take a different vertical, but online search, And that's always been with Google rankings. It's all about relevance, relevance, relevance to the end consumer. And it seems like that if you were to add some of the information that brands have about the consumer, as well as the platform and be able to use that in a. like in a smart way that wasn't creepy,

Kevin Nemeth: Yes. Yes.

George Wetz: to your point, , then ultimately you could create, better experiences for the end consumer. that's, that's really interesting point. You, you mentioned about, direct conversations with consumers and social media is a, is a massive part of how, their brands engage with their, consumer base.

So could you share any kind of trends or strategies that you've picked up more   recently with regards to how brands can directly engage with their consumers on social media?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. And I look, this is a space that's changed incredibly over the past. 10 years, call it what it looked like a couple of years ago is very different now in terms of the pay to play model. Right? And so, know, there's, talking to a guest through advertising and then there's engaging with guests directly via channels.

Right? So whether that be via Instagram and you're, you know, you're getting DMS from guests or, you know, what we've been leaning into more and more is Tick Tock. Right. And all of these platforms start here as an organic play for brands and guests. Right. It's like my feed is filled with and, and life moments and all these things.

And that quickly changes to food and whatever Instagram is serving me that I'm buying these days, right? Like shorts and clothes and all this shit I don't need at my house, but I keep buying it because it's targeted, like, that's not speaking to me directly as the brand. So I think, you know, what we've, what we've done is we leaned a little more into TikTok lately. Um, we still use our traditional sort of, you know, meta channels and things of that nature. But when I, when I think about speaking to a guest directly, , it's probably a little less of social media in the traditional sense, and it's more about, , Google. And Yelp and where I'm getting genuine feedback from guests about an experience they had or an experience they want. And I think through a plethora of tools and, you know, we have a couple, like I can speak to those guests directly. I can understand their pain points and I can a reward them. If they had a bad experience to try to get them back, I can win them back. Right. Or I can hear them out and have a GM reach out or do something nice for somebody.

Or if you're a loyal guest who has been with us for 20 years and you're just like, Hey, I just love how you guys operate. I love what you do. Like I have the ability to say thank you. I have the ability to send them a 5 off reward and say thank you. And so I think the customer touch points vary like social media. I can still use my traditional channels. I can answer DMs. I can, I can do customer appreciation things. I can speak to people in, in posts. you know, I think that we've just got more tools in our hands that are maybe less social. When you look at a Yelp or a, Google or review, a review platform versus, your traditional, you know, social media, social media is not what it used to be, or I think what it was essentially intended to be, which was social. And now with everything being the, pay to play the organic element of that has completely shifted. So it's not. Organic banter. It's not that communication. It's now moved to this pay model where, I think guests or customers, whether it's the hospitality vertical, if it's a CPG, if it's beauty, if it's banking, if it's hot, you know, whatever it is, like they're in tune with the fact they're being spoken to as a number. Right. I think there's benefits to that for us and there's benefits to the customer, but it takes away some of that authenticity.

George Wetz: Very interesting. And, is there any new types of content or messages that you've been looking to put out on social media that you might not have done with more traditional medias? You know, The rise of influences

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah.

George Wetz: about an experience or a product has been massive. It's a whole industry in and of itself now, whereas, you know, three or four years ago, hardly existed.

So are there ways that you're looking to leverage, you know, influences or, you know, have you created some different types of content?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. And we, we do, we use influencers. we use like a good example in, Pollo Tropical in Miami. Uh, in Florida, right? There's a Instagram account called holding and date over a million followers. It's a huge source of all things going on in South Florida. And so we'll partner with them on some content creation, you know, getting the word out about Pollo Tropical.

Maybe it's our late night campaign. Maybe it's some of the benefits of loyalty. Maybe it's just the brand and what it means to the Latin community or the South Florida community. And so we've done that. We use influencers other brands to highlight. know, what the vibe is in a Primanti Brothers or PJ Willihands, right?

Like it's hard to pick some of that up off a static meta ad or, you know, a six second Instagram story. And so we do partner with influencers. I think the key thing that you could've hit on George is like. the word of mouth. The word of mouth isn't new. Word of mouth has existed for years and years and years, but the content in the form of content that it's taken is what's changed, right? The original word of mouth was me saying, George, I just had this amazing experience at PJ. Well, as you got to have their wings. fricking amazing. That evolved to, I'm going to go on Yelp and say, holy shit, PJ Willihan's wings are amazing. Like Matt, so go check this out. And now that's sort of manifesting into, there are people who are recognized because they are bloggers or they're influencers in some way in the space.

And now that's become sort of the new way that people are getting word out about food, about things that are in the industry. The only thing that concerns me about that is credibility. And at what point does credibility lessen the more you take a paycheck? Right. And so I think what we've focused on is maybe what I would call more micro influencers for the most part. You know, there is the only dates, uh, to, to start, but. It's like, who are your core guests and what are they, you know, what do they look like in terms of what they're eating or, or what their demo makeup is, who are the people that, that we could speak to, to bring into our, our restaurants. we start to target those micro influencers in it because they actually a valid point of view. They're not just taking, you know, a paycheck and saying, great, this, this brand is amazing. Right. And so that credibility is something that we try to focus on. where it's not like they went out and touted, a direct competitor a day before they're touting us.

Right. And so I think that's something that we just, we keep an eye out. It's a promiscuous industry. You guys know that, right? Loyalty is an interesting term. Like, and it should be, it's, it's food. We should be able to experience different things. So, uh, you know, we, we keep a definite, like a lens on it and we use influencers. across all our brands. We're just a little selective in how we go about it. Absolutely.

George Wetz: I think that's a very interesting approach because, I mean, we've spoken on this podcast a few times now about generational trends when it comes to both work, but also buying and media habits. And if there's one word That kind of sums up what Gen Z is looking for. It's probably authenticity. And so the fact that you're using smaller, more localized influences. that must give you more of a reach into that generation and, because you're genuinely then, you know, communicating a message that's, that is more authentic, it's more transparent, to that kind of audience. That sounds like a really smart approach. 

Kevin Nemeth: so I worked in beauty, right? I worked at L'Oreal, just massive conglomerate. And like, you think about the space and how impactful influencers are in that space, right? Like celebrity, there's Instagram celebrities, YouTube celebrities, unboxing, all the try on stuff like that industry 100 percent wants authenticity and they also sort of off the energy of those big audiences, right?

And that makes sense for, for a beauty vertical. It is different for us, right? Gen Z is looking for authenticity. You know, it's, it's tough for us to go into market and say, we're going to pay for somebody to do this very transparently, like we're not giving cash to influencers when we're doing this, right.

We're working on either mutually beneficial partnerships. So we're saying like, here's a gift card, try our food. And if you don't like it and the content. Is that something you want to create that then don't go there or is like, Hey, are you familiar? Are you a patron of our places? That's where we really try to, to focus is like, are you already a patron of our place?

And maybe you're, know, not talking about it for some reason, but is this an opportunity? So like, there's, there's different ways to look at that and what we consider authentic. Cause I think that's a, it's an interesting word and probably something that can be A separate podcast on what we consider authentic.

, Think at the end of the day, if it's right for your brand and it feels like a natural fit, it doesn't feel forced. I'll lean in on that being authentic for at least right now.

George Wetz: Makes total sense. Matt, do you want to pick up on data, data, data?

Matt Holy: I would love to, so data driven decision making. Everyone talks about it. Everyone's trying to connect all their data sources together and make decisions using these data. There's that, and then there's true , data driven decision making. So I think in the true sense, what are some of the specific goals and initiatives that you have in that brands in general should be pursuing with their data for it to be.

You know, true data driven insights and decision making. 

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. I mean, if we're talking true, all intents and purposes, like   true data decision making, like we're thinking about using data as that source of truth, That doesn't mean. know, we did something 10 years ago and I had, and it worked out, we should, you know, fold that into the mix. It's like, we're listening to what the data tells us, which is what we all should be doing, right?

Like, and some, some instances of how we're using this engineer, right? Time offers, right? So with Pollo Tropical, you know, when we bought the brand in 2023, You know, working through what a, an LTO calendar looked like, yeah, sales were great and things look good. But when you boil down to what the data is telling you, you know, 55 LTOs, something like that , for a year calendar, are those all driving impact to your bottom line? Right. And so. You know, you do your, we do our analysis, we import, you know, we import all the, the POS data. We're looking at it, with other drivers, credit card data in our data warehouse, et cetera. And it's like, Oh, out of, 55 LTOs, five are driving the actual, you know,  largest percentage of what that sales looks like.

And so, that changes what our calendar looked like for 2024. We did, I think we'll do three to four LTOs this year, right? Significantly down. I'll just say Pollo Trapicale right now is, is , in a hell of a good spot. They're absolutely having a monster year. And part of that is going to be delivered, you know, driven by that. example of how we're using data to make decisions product mix and menu engineering. Right. So this, this isn't just like what items are specifically selling, but it's like, what items are selling? What days are they selling on? What day parts are they working in? What are they driving? What are the margins? You know, that's stuff we're looking at. Like, should we be removing X? If we remove X, is there an opportunity to replace it with Y, right? is it not only just, you know, looking at, you know, POS data to say what's selling, but then it's when you look at a menu, it's creative, like, okay, let's go out and test menu variations across different DMAs.

What is the lift, you know, net of control. And so we're using those things, you know, to drive menu engineering, to drive media decisions, to drive partner decisions, rarely anything that we will do at Authentic Restaurant Brands. That doesn't require us to go out and do a test and control, right?

Whether it's a DMA, whether it's a holdout of a couple of stores, whether it's a, you know, a data partner, whether it's a media channel, it's like, we're doing that with everything we do. And I think we've had a lot of success with our four brands. And I think we can attribute to that, to the fact that we are literally using data to drive all of our decisions. It doesn't leave it up to gut. It doesn't leave it up to past history. Data will drive that decision for us.

Matt Holy: I like that. Yeah. It sounds like a much more intentional approach, right? I mean, sometimes you see, especially now, menu innovation for menu innovation sake, just to try and keep things new, keep their customers engaged. But, it's a little too narrow in focus. Sometimes it doesn't take into account things like supply chain or cross utilization of ingredients or day parts, days of the week, that type of thing.

Like you said, so yeah, really interesting, approach there, uh, in terms of the LTOs specifically, it sounds like you've really narrowed it down from, did you say over 50 down to basically a handful? So

Kevin Nemeth: That is correct. Yes.

Matt Holy: what was, I guess, what was the core piece of insight that really stood out for you, to enable you to have confidence in that decision?

Because that's, that's a pretty big difference right there.

Kevin Nemeth: And I love this question because it's going to take me down a little bit of a rabbit hole and I apologize in advance, but like, is what I love about marketing and digital and technology is it doesn't have to fit into a marketing or martech box, right? Like, I think we talk about this a lot internally. I can go spend 30 million. I can spend 100 million. can run a campaign that is hitting brand awareness. It's driving conversions at the end of the day. If the operations are shit, I'm letting that money on fire. Right. And so weren't shit for the, for the record, but they weren't great. NPS was in a low place at Pollo.

Speed of service was really low. We are looking at customer review data points. We're looking at, survey data. We're looking at sales data. We're looking at, you know, the P mix items. Like you have all these LTOs. Are they selling? What is the impact of those items on shifts, on day parts, on speed of service?

Are we overwhelming , our teams, whether it be the servers, whether it be backup house, there's now they have to learn, learn. 55 new item configurations. They have to learn new recipes. Like that's ultimately going to be a problem, but for the guest, and that's the biggest issue, right? All of these things compound in the back of the house come to the front of the house that go to the drive through that hit a server. And at the end of the day, the person who's going to feel that the most is the guest, if we don't get that stuff, right, then the guest doesn't come back. Plain and simple. If the experience is bad. Right. People are gone, right? But if you have a good experience, you can maybe not have a plus plus food or not the best drinks, but if you lose that guest doesn't have that experience, they don't have great service.

They don't feel good coming into it, leaving an establishment, hard press to bring those people back. And so I think, you know, when we looked at. Speed of service. We looked at MPS scores. We looked at internal, um, internal surveys. Like how were cashiers, how were the back of house staff? Like, how are the cooks?

How are the drive to be, how are they feeling about this? Like the sheer, feeling of being overwhelmed or, not understanding items all took its toll that we saw in a bunch of different data points that was easy for us to go and eliminate, not only certain items, but just. The whole troves of LTOs that, that didn't really serve a purpose. So not to go down too much of a rabbit hole, but at the end of the day, like the intersection of ops and marketing is a marriage, right? Think about ops data and sort of, uh, ops marketing and analytics is like the Holy Trinity for us. Right.

And like those three things have to hum together or the output to a guest is not going to be what we want it to be. 

George Wetz: that's a great summary because you're, talking about like how the whole organization has to move in unison when you're making these

Kevin Nemeth: Absolutely.

George Wetz: that if one element can't deliver on that decision that's being made, then the whole thing falls down. And when you're, when you're making like a big decision, like this LTO decision, for example, And it's involving a lot of different functions in the team.

Kevin Nemeth: Absolutely.

George Wetz: do you think about, I think people would be interested to hear like, what's your process for that? How do you put any guardrails in place? Because it's got the potential that you could make a decision that's great for marketing, but terrible for the ops team in terms of delivering it or bad for the supply chain.

So talk through that, that kind of process and

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah, I think, but it goes back to the sort of what we're talking about. It all starts with the data. Like, I'm not going to argue with science and data and, and, you know, I think our partners at each of the brands, right? Like we don't look at this as like a owner, you know, an O and E relationship. This is a true partnership.

We are, we're very close. We're on the phone. We're on meetings like constantly. I am Zoom, whatever it is, uh, with all of our brands across every function, right? The chefs at, at each of the, uh, each of the brands, like what are they cooking up? You know, what is the executability? So we're testing things. You know, we're bringing in, service level staff from the restaurants to understand how things are, how they're moving through the system. we look at pressures on back in the house, but ultimately it all starts with data. bring it into sort of our internal ARB discussion, right? We're looking at We're looking at, you know, data based off of past decisions. We're looking at PMX data. We're looking at the menu. We're looking at day partying.

We're looking at service modes. We're looking at guest by guest data. We're looking at customer engagement. We're, you know, third, there's credit card. I think we're looking at so much data. We're able to synthesize this because one, we have a wonderful, strategy and analytics team. We've got, a data warehouse, which I would be hard pressed.

Like when we started from day one, we had the data warehouse was the first thing we built. Right. Like 80 restaurants, three brands off the bat. I'd be hard pressed to find many others who are building a data warehouse to ingest all this, not just for the sake of ingesting it, but to make these decisions.

Right. George. So it's, it's, we're adjusting it. speaking about it internally. We are looking at sort of all of the trends that we're bucketing together. Everything we need to building out presentations, sitting down with the leadership teams, right? The CEO of the CMO, the chefs, the chief restaurant officers, and then probably one or two levels below and sitting in a room together and talking about these decisions.

Like we're not making decisions in a silo. We're never pushing decisions to our brands. We have one like major rule here our, and it's do no harm.  And so that is rule number one is, know, don't break the brands, don't do any harm. So that's why we put so much care and effort into. The, these pre builds of what we want to do.

And we sit with the teams because they've got institutional knowledge, right? We sit at this level up here, they're in that restaurant day to day. They know how customers are feeling. They know how the staff is feeling. And so their inputs are invaluable. We lead with the data. It should be sort of how that goes.

We take in those valuable inputs and then we sort of end up coming to a conclusion. And that's exactly what happened, with the, the LTOs, like. we looked at this together, I think, you know, what happens is you, you get a groove and you just like, well, I've got a comp over last year and we knew something drove this mix last year.

Let's try to do it again the following year. I think when we sat down and we were like these are sort of out of control, they're pressuring the system too much. It's like, Oh, aha. You're right. Like, let's go and go see what we can do for reduction. that's panned out very well for us.

George Wetz: And you know, you talked about everyone like pulling everybody together to make those decisions. Thinking about, you know, more broadly with your corporate strategy and, and kind of where you guys are going, it would be great to hear how, you know, that group of people is helping to inform, you know, where you're going.

So can you share a bit about where Authentic is going as a group of brands

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah,

George Wetz: of years?

Kevin Nemeth: absolutely. Look, you know, I think we are extremely lucky to have amazing partners at our PE company, right? So who, who are actually here funding authentic restaurant brands and give us autonomy to work again with that same number one rule of mind, which is do no harm. You know, we'll sit in the room and board meetings.

The first thing that comes up is, sure we're doing no harm. Right. And so, you know, we're not changing core items and things like that. And so with that in mind, we have these great partners at the top. We have the great brands underneath us. Uh, we have a great system internally primed to grow. And so we are hell bent on growth, in the near future, in the immediate future.

And for the foreseeable future. So we've got four brands today. I'd love to say that by the end of 2024, we'll have five or six. And I'd love to say that, you know, our strategy going forward is, is at least one brand a year and ideally one to two brands here, right? We're well backed , we have equity, , and cash and, and, you know, we're looking for the right fit.

You know, I think at the. At the core of our ethos, the names, we are authentic restaurant brand. So our whole idea is like, we are a value creation platform slash holding company for restaurants. But what they are is they're not just restaurants, their hometown heroes, the regional fortress brands.

And I think, you know, when, when you see brands go national, that's not, that's not us, we're not taking per many brothers and going to LA because people like, you know, Sandwiches in LA, we're not taking Boyle Tropic Island, bringing it across. Uh, to other state lines because the Caribbean and Latin flavor is so good.

Like we know that our, ethos is to keep these brands true to what they are. Like they've got to 90 years of operating in existence because they've done things well, right? So we grow these brands and concentric circles. We use data to inform that, right? We're looking at real estate data. We're looking at site data.

We're looking at demo data to make sure that these moves make sense. so we grow in these concentric circles and, we keep that sort of authenticity and that local hometown hero alive for all the brands. And so, you know, our goal is to continue to acquire brands that fit that, that sort of that ethos and that persona.

And, you know, we've got four great ones today, I think that there'll be some news coming out in the future, months about us growing some more. And then, uh, we'll continue that trajectory for the foreseeable future.

George Wetz: Watch this space.

Kevin Nemeth: Exactly.

Matt Holy: that's, that's really exciting. And, uh, the growth strategy is really nice too. I mean, reigns true to literally the name of your group, right? Looking for those authentic restaurant brands and not forcing them kind of out of the   area that made them so successful in the first place, just, uh, building the infrastructure, giving them the support to just really.

Thrive and grow and scale in the right way.

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. And just real quick on that. I think just, just two things to note is, you know, we bought Puyo Tropical. They were a public company, right? Fiesta restaurant group. They had locations, you know, centralized in Florida. There were some in Texas, I think New York, New Jersey, and those closed. Right. Because. The core of the base to what that was, was here in Florida. And so, you know, 125 units in Florida. And just to give you some idea of what growth could look like for a Puyo, There's McDonald's roughly in the state of Florida, only 125 Puyos. Right. So there is. Tons of opportunities at white space to grow the brand here. That's the same with PJ. Well, it ends in the Philadelphia and Jersey area per mannion in the Western Pennsylvania, Maryland area. And then mambo seafood were now, you know, in the San Antonio market, Houston. massive opportunities to growth where people who are our core guests, they operate, they, they go to work, they go to school, they live.

And so I think, you know, That is core to what we do here. We're very intent on not doing harm and changing what that looks like.

Matt Holy: well, super smart. We're for to wrap things up here. we're actually gonna go outside the restaurant space a little bit and go into F1, another very data driven, kind of industry. so we know you're a big formula one fan. could you tell us a little bit about how you got into it? Favorite team driver and, kind of why, what got you really excited about the sport?

Kevin Nemeth: Yeah. I mean, so I'm so probably like most Americans, right? COVID drive to survive. of the best produced shows I've probably ever seen, especially on the reality side, right? And so I was enamored with the, the competitive nature of what it is. Like there's 20 of these drivers and that's it. There's 20 of them who are the best in the world.

Like I'm a massive fan of sports, right? Baseball, football, basketball, but there's hundreds and thousands of players and teams in those sports. There's 20 drivers and 10 teams. There are teammates who hate each other. They like loathe each other's existence. Um, and they all are trying for the best. And so that got competitive nature to do what? To watch these guys, like how they consume data, how it changes the angle of a car, you know, the speed, the tail of the wing of the car and how that impacts speed around a corner or slip or the tires, like when the tires start to heat too much, like the, the way the drivers have these. Like video game, remote controls to drive and operate these cars.

And the constant communication, that stuff is, is wildly, entertaining for me. And so I am, a Lewis and a Ricardo fan by nature. I mean, there are two great personalities. A McLaren fan and I say, I'm more of an Oscar piastri, the Glendo Norris fan. But I think most importantly, uh, I'm just not a fan of, of Red Bull and Max Verstappen or Christian Horner.

And that's really, so as long as anybody wins outside of, out of Red Bull, then I'm, I'm pretty pleased. And it's way more competitive. I know you guys watch, like this, these last six to eight races have like reinvigorated me. Last year was boring, right? Like when the same guy is winning every race, it's pretty boring.

And I've got an affluent fantasy team. All right. And so last year, everybody's just picking for staffing this year. There's a, there's a little bit of parody, so, it's a wonderful sport and, uh, I'm planning on going to Monza next year my, uh, inaugural race. So I'm really excited about it.

Matt Holy: Oh, wow. What, a location to choose for your first one. That's, uh, that's where it all started. So yeah, we, love F1, uh, here at Yumpingo as well. I actually have some ties to F1 a little bit, George, if you want to 

George Wetz: Yes, we do.

Well, we have a, yeah, Formula One investor. Ross Braun is an investor in our company, and I'm also a Lewis fan, so.

Kevin Nemeth: I love it.

George Wetz: you go.

Kevin Nemeth: Well, you kind of have to be George. You gotta be a Lando fan too, right? I,

George Wetz: Yeah.

Kevin Nemeth: I honestly like the patriotism is awesome too. So I love it, but yes,

George Wetz: well, that was a great answer. How you, you know, you pulled together both the competitive element, but the data. And that's been the real key from today. So I just want to thank you so much for being on the show today, Kevin. It was a really wide ranging discussion and , I've taken a lot away from what you said when we were talking about personalization and, and where things could be going in the future and how you make decisions, I think as is this really, really smart.

And I'm sure people watching would have taken a lot from this as well. So want to say, thank you very much for being here today. It's been great.

Kevin Nemeth: I appreciate both of you guys. It was a fun conversation and, uh, keep on a lookout for authentic restaurant brands. We're coming in hot in 24 and 25 and, uh, yeah, we'll see what's rolling, but I can tell you one thing  is, is data will be at the core of all we do, uh, on the go forward. So, uh, I appreciate you guys very much.​