Episode 7
The Tech Driving ZSG's Expansion From 36 To 100 Restaurants

Armando:

Hi, and welcome to Supy Talks. And this is the first episode of Supy Talks in Australia. And here with me in the studio, we have a very special guest. We have Patrick De Pinho from Zeus Street Greek . Patrick, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Patrick, can you tell us a bit more about yourself? Who’s Patrick?

Patrick:

Who’s Patrick? That’s a good question. I am a hospo for all my life. I’ve been a chef by trade, cooking since I was 12 years old. Started my first real job during my school holidays in the Air Force headquarters in South Africa where my dad worked. I took a very early interest in hospitality from a very young age. I always knew I wanted to be a chef and that evolved over the years to working in all areas of hospitality. So I’ve worked in restaurants, I’ve worked in hotels, I’ve worked on yachts as a chef as well. I’ve been a restaurant manager, I’ve been a business owner, a small business owner. I’ve owned and worked in pretty much every position in the role within hospitality. A seasoned operator. A very seasoned operator, yes. In the trenches. In the trenches. Deep in the trenches, yeah. All my life.

Armando:

Great. I’m sure Zusri Greek must be appreciating all of this experience that you currently have.

Patrick:

Um, it’s interesting in my, my current role today was history greek. I now more than ever, I may not be on those tools anymore, but it’s those, those experiences that I understood and I grew through all these 25 plus years of being in the industry, um, that actually pays so much more. It counts so much more today in the work that I do today.

Armando:

Could you tell us a bit more about Zeus Street Greek? I mean, we’ve all seen it out on the street and here in Sydney and also in Melbourne and all of the other cities in Australia that you guys operate in, in terms of the food that you guys offer. But what is Zeus Street Greek about as a company?

Patrick:

Um, all things Greek street food. I think, uh, the brands now, we just turned 10 years old back in June, July. Um, which sounds like a long time in the business, but I think that, uh, we’re still relatively young as it, as it, as it goes to, uh, where we want to be in the future. The brand was started by a group of Greek family who love the brand. They’re very passionate about their heritage. They’re very much involved with growing the business from a day-to-day basis. They’re very experienced and seasoned operators as well, having built crust pizza originally as well. So, you know, they grew that brand to a very huge success before passing it on and starting Zeus Street Greek as a whole. You know, we have over the last 10 years grown to 36 locations and we have over the years shifted away from what was originally a strong, you know, fine dining or restaurant establishment into what we are now playing in the space of elevated QSR. We focus on four key pillars of growth within our business. Firstly, our retail space. Our bricks and mortar stores, as I mentioned, 36 stores. 11 of them are owned by the business owners themselves, and we own and operate them ourselves. And then we’ve got multiple franchises who own single or multiple sites as well. The next stage in which we’re looking at in this elevated QSR space is how we position ourselves in the market today as it goes to value and quality. They go super hand-in-hand and really, really important in our strategy in growing the business from where we are currently at 36 to get to the 100 stores in 2028 in which we aggressively and very much pushing hard to get to. That’s an ambitious goal. massively ambitious, but I think anybody who’s worked with us know very well that we are up for the task and we’re ready for it. You know, again, another way in which we’re pushing our brand in the third of the four pillars that we’re focused on as a business is the FMCG space. You know, we’re at 36 stores, not everybody in the country knows our brand. And in order to grow our brand and expose the rest of our brand, we’re reaching out and going into major retailers over the next year to sell our branded products as well as a way to grow our brand and our brand awareness and expose customers to us that may have never had the experience of eating at our restaurant before as well. And then lastly, the fourth pillar, and I think the most important one that we’re going to be talking about today is our IT strategy. and the way in which we use our technology to help us grow and what we’re going to be doing to get from 36 to 100 stores in 2028.

Armando:

Can’t wait to hear your insights, Patrick. And so before we talk about technology, could you tell us a bit more about generally what does it mean to manage Zustreek Greek? Because as you mentioned, you have 36 stores currently operating across all states in Australia except South Australia.

Patrick:

Correct. Yeah. All the major states.

Armando:

So how does that work to offer a standardized menu yet you’re operating a location that is so geographically spread? Like how does it work for you as a person from the headquarters to make sure that you’re offering a consistent quality and yet the people understand that this is one brand, but at the same time you’re working with franchisees who are operating their own business, just operating your brand. So what are like the main challenges and how do you ensure that consistency?

Patrick:

So great word, standardized. I think at the end of the day we are a franchise business and those businesses and franchises who want to work for us, we deliver standards to them. So we build, we create the menus at HQ, we manage the supply chain, we manage the systems in which we operate under. The challenges that we find can be, geographically speaking, we could be finding that even though we work with central supply chain, sometimes it can be variations in prices or availability in those states due to any number of factors, natural forces that are happening in the area. It could be simply that delivery charges are different. There’s a multitude of variations within our supply chain that impact the outcome of standardizing that product. On top of that, working with a lean team in HQ as well, we have our operations teams who go out and support our stores. But it’s not always practical or easy to be physically available in all 36 of our sites at any given time. So we’ve got to divide and conquer our time and we’ve got to come up with strategies and have well-timed and managed diaries to actually make sure that every single one of our restaurant managers in our corporate stores and all our franchisees feel supported or have got access to us as a brand.

Armando:

So when you started off with Zeus Street Greek, I assume most of what you were doing was managing things via emails and spreadsheets, etc. How did that work out as you started growing?

Patrick:

So I’ve been with the brand for about 18 months now. When I originally started, I was a state manager for New South Wales, for the corporate stores, but also part of my time was dealing with projects. Very quickly, about eight months ago, that role evolved into full-time project management because It was very obvious to us that we needed to resource more time and dedication into digging into and looking into all our systems that we use, all the supply chain partners we work with. to really identify any gaps we have currently. As I said, 36 stores, multitude, multiple people working under the brand. And when you work with email and Excel spreadsheets, that’s such an old system to use. And far, far, far too many businesses still rely on email and Excel spreadsheets to produce the results and manage their businesses. We found this to be quite challenging. And that’s where we stand today with what we’re doing to help grow our business.

Armando:

Great. So then since you joined, so what’s your approach or what’s ZeusStreetGreek’s approach to technology and finding the right technology?

Patrick:

It’s a really great question. I can tell you I’m not a technology expert. I’m not a qualified project manager, so to speak. But as I mentioned earlier, all my experiences in operating hospitality businesses has given me the perspective that I have in order to do my job. Because I’ve been there. Because I’ve been there. I understand the nuances of serving a customer or cooking the meals or having equipment or having the right systems in place in order to support serving our customers great food and giving them great service. So partnering with businesses, technology businesses in particular, who are built by hospitality operators and for operators, I think has been critical and key to the speed in which we’ve managed to make the volume of changes we’ve made over the very short period of time over this year in order to prepare us for the next phase of growth in the business.

Armando:

So when it comes to picking the right software vendor, what do you generally look out for?

Patrick:

There’s so many out there to choose from, right? I mean, it’s a vast industry. In 2023, the hospital tech industry was valued at $3.7 billion globally. That’s set to be nearly $40 billion by 2033. Happy days. It’s massive. It’s such a huge area of opportunity. And if we are not embracing that technology today and moving away from the traditional spreadsheets and emails, um then we’re vastly falling behind um a lot of what happens it comes along with it is change management you know a huge amount of change management required to bring everybody along for along for the journey and Zeus street greek made the decision to do that now at 36 stores not at 136 stores or 100 stores because purely the amount of people we require to adopt these technologies within our businesses that we do to support the growth. Overall, the way we’ve chosen our current partners with technology comes down to very much, again, that aspect that they have been or have used or employ operators within the hospitality industry and those who understand the quirks that come along with being in hospitality. First and foremost, the technology that we adopt today is not there only to support us as a brand, to deliver information and data to help us grow the brand. It’s also there and mainly there to support the people that use the technology to deliver our brand itself. The partners we work with today are very much while they’re technology driven, we’re also driven by the relationship we build with them to perform long term solutions focused approaches to the technology we use today.

Armando:

We like what you said about software being built by former operators, because this is something that just became more possible in the last few years and last decades. Before, building software was very expensive, and it was only certain big corporates that could afford to have a development team to build bigger softwares, mainly in the likes of ERP softwares, that obviously would have to then be reused for so many different purposes. Whereas today it became so easy and so cheap and so fast to build software on your own. There’s a lot of no-code tools, AI tools available that you can very simply build a very simple software. So we’re seeing a much bigger rise of very purpose-built softwares out there, which are used for very specific niches. And that’s something that we really see that’s in line with what ZeusStreetGeek wants to do. But then when it comes to managing a variety of software partners that you have, let’s say that you have a different vendor for your point of sale, different one for your inventory, different one for accounting, a different one for workforce management. How do you go about making sure that all of that stays well connected and there’s no discrepancies between these different systems and you’re able to basically still feel like you’re operating one system? So how do you go about that?

Patrick:

It’s tricky because, as I said earlier, there’s so many opportunities and differences out there. I think what I’ve managed to achieve with Zeus Street greek over the last six months in particular is to really dig deeper into not just selecting specific technologies. I think every technology, especially your bigger point-of-sale businesses, will always offer variations of those other opportunities, inventory management, labor management. I think those businesses that specialize in particular functionality and technology are the ones that tend to succeed the most, the ones that are open and real about the fact that they don’t necessarily focus on other areas of business management and control. A point-of-sale system needs to be a point-of-sale system. An inventory management system needs to be an inventory management system, and a labor management system needs to be so. But it doesn’t mean that they can’t work together. And we’ve found a way to connect the partners that we work with in a centralized system Because at the end of the day, they’re all different avenues of data. If they all feed into a centralized business intelligence tool or platform that we can then use to visualize that information and therefore make more informed decisions on a holistic point of view, we haven’t had that access to that technology before, or we haven’t found ways up until now to choose partners that will happily and actively connect and work together, whether that’s through an API integration, or whether that’s through a centralized data center, whichever way it might work. I think that’s vital to the success of what we’re doing today.

Armando:

Interesting. How important is the human interaction that you have with these different vendors?

Patrick:

I think it’s the most important thing. At the end of the day, as I mentioned earlier, I know as much about technology as the next person. We have a lot of technology around us today, and I don’t necessarily have the knowledge or skill set to understand how that technology is built or worked, but I’m an operator. And I know what problems we face. And so having that human interaction and the relationship building with those technology partners to be able to approach them and explain to them, this is the problem we face, this is the gap that we have, this is what we are trying to solve. And then them knowing their knowledge about how their technology works, able to come back to us with a solution, Also importantly, if there’s not a solution that exists, the willingness to help develop that for us, I think that’s been critical. At the end of the day, I think the adoption of technology is kind of like Buying a vehicle, really. Buying a car. When you go and buy a car, what do most people want to see in their cars today? It’s technology. Nobody’s going to go and buy a brand new vehicle that’s still got 10 or 20-year-old technology in it. It doesn’t solve the problem for them. It doesn’t connect their phone. People want to be connected all the time when they’re driving, when they’re moving. I think working with businesses that you can still pick up the phone and talk to somebody after they’ve sold you the pitch and after they’ve created this thing and after they’ve connected you in, it needs to be a much longer-term relationship because as much as the technology we’re adopting today is vital today, is it going to still be vital in a year’s time, two years’ time, ten years’ time? How are those companies evolving themselves to make themselves better? So that they can also scale with you. So they can scale with us. It’s all about scalability. We’re putting in the hard yards now. We’ve had a tremendous year of a lot of change and growth. We’ve adopted three major new technology platforms. Um you know it all of them all of them work together seamlessly um not to say that it doesn’t come with this product’s problems as most new systems will do it again it comes to that change management and change management is about relationships and people you know it’s the external people who are helping us develop and grow these technologies but it’s as much about us I’m helping our internal customer our people are team members who are using this technology into to to help drive our brand growth and strategy so. I think if you’re not able to pick up the phone to somebody on the other you know on the other end when there is an issue or when there’s not you know an ongoing relationship with the with the builders of the technology. It can become quite stale and static and we don’t want to we don’t want to partner with businesses who don’t have. people on the other end of the phone.

Armando:

You can also share feedback on how they can become even better.

Patrick:

I think feedback is pretty much important in any position or role that you have. Your ability to receive feedback, give feedback, and use that feedback to evolve what you’re trying to build. At the end of the day, if you remain as static as an email and an Excel spreadsheet, as opposed to being agile with your approaches to technology and getting that feedback or giving that feedback to the builders of your technology from the people using the technology. I think that’s super important.

Armando:

And you mentioned that it’s very important to provide for a good user experience for your employees. So why is that important for you?

Patrick:

It happens on two ends. I think, you know, as an employer ourselves across 11 corporate stores, it happens and matters because Everybody has technology in their hands today and we’re employing people in a generation where they’re born into technology. If we’re not giving them a working experience that supports technology and growth and easy access to information and their mobile phones, it’s very important. It also helps tremendously to attract franchisees. We want to get to 100 stores. That requires us to bring in a steady stream of good new franchise operators to help grow our business. How are we going to attract the right kind of franchisee to our business that are not only going to support our business from a business operator, but also going to want to work in the business and represent our brand because they’re proud to do so. You know if we’re giving them the platforms and abilities to have access to information and access to data and the ability to produce results from their business then we are in the end. If we’re not adopting those technologies, if we’re not using the ability to give feedback to the people building that technology from the people using it, then we’re not advancing and growing as a business.

Armando:

Couldn’t agree more. And you mentioned something very interesting about the franchisees that you work with, because franchise model, correct me if I’m wrong, means that they will basically work with you as a brand. They will pay royalties for you for using your brands, but they’re independently owned businesses. And of course, there will be some guidelines in terms of what marketing they’re allowed to use and what menu they can offer, which suppliers they can work with. But how does this relationship work when it comes to technology? Like when it comes to you as a corporate deciding that you’re going to be using a certain point of sale, certain inventory system, like how does that work when it comes to managing your relationship with the franchisees?

Patrick:

I think we’re very open with our franchisees. Our franchisee agreement includes the ability for us to manage, control, and make changes to the operating systems we choose to use. But we don’t just make changes for the sake of making changes. We take time to ask questions, think about, work through, test, and pilot any of these systems in our own corporate-owned stores first. We carry the risk first. I think that’s a very, very important piece for any future franchisees choosing to work with us and to be with our brand, that they understand that they’re involved in the process as well. We recently started a franchisee advisory board as well. And we have a group of franchisees who’ve been with our brand and our business from the beginning to some of the newer franchisees and operators. And we meet on a regular basis to discuss everything that it comes to with our business, whether it’s a marketing plan, whether it’s a pricing change, whether it’s the piece of technology we want to embrace. We give them the why. It’s not just that we are going to do this. It’s not just a top-down management process. We involve them in every step of the way. because we feel that their opinion is valued. At the end of the day, we are asking them to adopt these tools in order to help their businesses grow and be more profitable if we have more access to more of their data and we have the ability to manage and control a centralized perspective on their behalf. Not only do we have more power and more ability to negotiate better terms with our suppliers for better control and therefore protect their profitability and their expenses, but also we’re able to then have bigger visibility to some of the nuances and issues that we see in some of the stores when it comes to using that technology. And so we’re able to then help them and support them to grow and see the gaps in their own businesses. And that’s how we use our franchisees in that feedback system. It’s how we use those franchisees to drive decisions. But we 100% carry the risk first in our businesses, in our corporate stores, before sharing with them. And I think that’s a really positive strategy to take.

Armando:

Couldn’t agree more. It’s a beautiful strategy, indeed. And could you maybe give us a few specific examples about how technology has helped you improve your bottom line, for example? How has that helped you in the past?

Patrick:

So it’s no secret that two of the biggest expenses that you have in your business is your labor and your COGS. your cost of goods is really important and when you are seeing varying ways in this has been managed across multiple stores, when you’re seeing varying results from multiple stores because of the purchasing that they may do or whether they’re counting this stock, it’s very difficult to then make the driven changes that we need or to help them to make driving changes in their business. In adopting specific inventory management platforms or systems that work with us, a really good example of how we’ve managed to change losses in the business into better profitability, we did a test in one of our pilot stores for inventory management. We were there doing it for six weeks. We were doing some multiple stock counts, and we were seeing some inconsistencies in some of our bigger product lines. In particular, things like our proteins, our chips, our halloumi. Halloumi is a great example. In one store, we did a couple of stock counts. We found that they were significantly down in their product. We went to investigate. We found that Some of their training wasn’t updated, their cards weren’t updated, and they were over-portioning, almost by double in the original ways we changed the recipe. And so we very quickly changed that, turned that around. That was a $500 a week loss that we managed to turn around. And when you can quantify that over multiple stores, over multiple weeks, over multiple years, you’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. just been one product line because we had visibility to the understanding of where the losses were coming from.

Armando:

Because you were able to compare different stores and see what’s the standards and you can benchmark them. Absolutely.

Patrick:

Benchmarking 100%. So, you know, now that we’ve got all our stores on that program, we’re able to very quickly see straight away that certain businesses are having issues. And it could be a training issue. It could be simply a product line issue. It could be that they’re not counting stock. There’s a number of ways you can see it, but when you’ve got a much bigger holistic view of the whole network, you’re able to then drill down to your top three and your bottom three issues. And usually you’ll find when you focus on those top three or four items of missing items, it’s the 80-20 rule. 80% of your issues are coming from 20% of your main profit drivers. your main product items, your main products that you sell. And so if you’re not able to get visibility on that, you could miss it very quickly and very easily. And we did. And now we can turn that around and call that a success story. And it’s those decisions that help us to then decide on the partners we’re going to go with because we’re able to have visibility to that data in ways we haven’t been able to see before.

Armando:

Beautiful. And so besides the Halloumi case, any other notable examples

Patrick:

Well, that was one that we can definitely define as a training aspect. On the other end, we’ve also got to be questioning whether or not we are setting up our recipes properly. Using a product example there again, Chips, in the same store, we noticed that our chips, we were seeing significant amounts of chips losses. Two aspects, one, were there recording wastages? Obviously, chips is a big seller in any business. It also happens to be a core ingredient in the biggest selling product item that we sell in our business, the Zimmy Chicken Pitta, where it’s got the chips in there as well. So it’s a significant part of our menu. We were able to discover, actually, that we weren’t giving away too many chips because we were over-portioning, but that our recipe was set wrong. We discovered this by going to do a test one day in the store, and we actually filled up our chip scoop, our small portion of chips and our large portion of chips, and we weighed them. And we realized that we weren’t over-portioning, we were under-delivering in the recipe costing we were doing, almost by half. What we looked at, we showed the recipe itself, and it was almost a half a container of chips. Now, can you imagine walking into a store, ordering a small chips, and then the store following the recipe, and you getting a half-portion of chips? I would feel scammed. You’d feel completely scammed, wouldn’t you? You’d feel, you know, this is not value and this is not quality. Why am I getting this not value for money? It was such a small change. But in redefining our recipe, all of a sudden we were able to see nearly an 80 percent difference in the chips losses because we were giving them to the customers. We just weren’t accounting for it properly.

Armando:

So people are getting more chips now.

Patrick:

sometimes you know there are some businesses out there actually cost that into their business to throw a few extra chips in the bags and stuff as well which i think is kind of cool but equally it’s really important that we haven’t we’ve moved away from a static spreadsheet system where we before into a system that gives us live information you know it gives us live feed is actually exactly how our products are operating looking at our menu and seeing whether or not that is a, you know, is it a profitable item? Is it costing us more money? Can we find better ways to drive those results? Is this product selling better in one store than the other? Does this product sell better when it’s hot or when it’s, you know, when it’s rainy? And then we can make informed decisions around our marketing strategies for that product in specific spaces as well. So there’s that side too. It’s very, very fascinating to see how this data is giving us so much more access to tools to make decisions. It’s incredible.

Armando:

And do you have any other industry advice that you would like to share with the audience?

Patrick:

I don’t know whether this sticks for everybody, but I know what works for me is I’m always curious. Always stay curious. I think that’s a really important piece to remember. I always ask questions, sometimes annoyingly so, but not for the intent of questioning why things are doing things, but to seek to understand. Do your colleagues like you? I think so. Some might find me otherwise different. I think at the end of the day, I think people know that my intent for a reason. I always give a reason why. I’m asking the question as well. I don’t want anybody or any business or any of our suppliers or any of our technology partners. I’m always going to stay curious because I want to understand as much as I can. I’ve been given a unique opportunity in my role to drive major changes in our business and the way we are approaching this growth strategy, you know, to get to those hundred stores. It’s not befallen on me that I play a pivotal role in delivering information to the decision makers in our business at the end of the day. And so what questions I ask can influence the outcome of who we choose to work with in the future. And I think if you stay curious, it’s the most important piece. The other one I think and the second piece of advice I can give or sort of opinion I can share on is always make sure you have that human connection. At the end of the day, no piece of technology is going to replace any human being in our business anytime today. Technology serves a purpose for us to help support those humans in our business serving those humans who are our customers and it only serves sense to me that we always maintain a human connection with our business partners in order to maintain and always have the ability to connect on a human level. It’s really nice to be able to pick up the phone to somebody on the other end when you when you’re having a really difficult time when you have an issue. In those crucial times, we’re coming into the busiest period of our year on the calendar, you know, this festive season when, you know, everyone’s on holiday, nobody, no customer wants to sit around waiting for hours on end for a meal for it to be received cold. Equally we want our customers to have the same experience they would then if they’re sitting in front of us talking to human being although as to whether they choose to order online for example which is a huge sector of the market today so to always be able to have that human connection and give people. a reason to keep coming back to us as opposed to any other business as well. It’s vitally important. And I think if you don’t take those two things into account, then you’re very quickly going to stagnate and you’re going to fall behind. Because like everything in the technology world and in the human world today, we evolve so quickly, so much. And that’s what I would say.

Armando:

Patrick, you mentioned that when you’re working with a technology vendor, you found it very important to have good human interaction with them and to actually work very closely with them. But why is that so important to you?

Patrick:

I think when you’re looking at a piece of software, a piece of software is not something tangible that you buy. It’s not the T-shirt you purchase. It serves a purpose. You wear a shirt, you know exactly what you’re getting for your T-shirt. Partnering with a vendor that doesn’t just sell you the software but also sells you the understanding of what that software is going to help you to do to achieve the outcome you want is really important. When you’re having the conversation, when you’re looking at what this piece of technology will do for you compared to any other one that you use, The human interaction comes from them also being honest and real about the things that they know their technology cannot deliver for you and therefore helping you to find ways in which to use their technology to find a similar if not a better outcome than the one you thought you were wanting to look for in the first place. So software is not just a hard tangible product in the end of the day. We use and we buy and we interact with technology in different ways. I suppose you’ve got to treat your employees right. They’re the people who are going to be using your technology. The franchisees who you’re trying to attract, they’re the people who are going to be using this technology. We want to be able to track the best kind of people we have, the best people in the business. And so we need to be able to give them tools and provide them with tools that are going to make their jobs easier, not to add complication to their roles. And I think when we are taking the human approach to technology, it’s really important to always take that into consideration.

Armando:

How does that help you as a corporate as well to, like, let’s say, what are the benefits that you will get from having employees that have easy to use software that helps them in their everyday life?

Patrick:

If we’re giving them a piece of technology that is, say, accessible on their mobile phone, that they can do their jobs of the admin jobs, you know, we ask our managers, our store managers, for example, or our franchisees to do any number of pieces of admin, you know, no longer are we wanting them to really be Stuck in an office you know we don’t we don’t build restaurants with offices in the background you know we don’t have this whole. Computer set up you know yes it be a laptop could be mobile you know i pay to be mobile. Generally speaking anything that we use we want to be able to give them access to them in the palm of their hands in their phones. You know, if they were able to place an order really fast, you know, within a minute, or receive an order really fast in a minute, or, you know, go and reconcile their daily income, you know, or do a cash up, or give feedback, or talk to a customer about any number of things, a catering order, or a special order, or taking a booking, or whatever it may be, if we can give them the ability to do so in the palm of their hands, that attracts the right kind of people to our business as well. if we’re not embracing the fact that they’re going to be on their phones and that we can’t, you know, we’ve got this amazing piece of technology that we that we use for our training, you know, and it’s it’s all a metabase. It’s an AI based program. Not only we can deliver this to them in the most natural way that our team and our people are most naturally used to using through a WhatsApp program, but also When we’re when they’re trying to learn what we know something you know we got an AI chat bot that connects with with our central source of data and information. I can ask you the question today and it doesn’t know it we can give them the answer that they need to know to learn that next time and it will just continue to learn and continue to grow. That’s fascinating technology. That’s cutting edge technology. And if we’re not putting our people first and remembering that we’re wanting to give our team more ability to get back to what we’re asking them to do in delivering our brand, great food, great service, Systems count. They all manage. They all have to be playing their part and their role in giving our teams the best step forward in doing their jobs and offering our customers the best experiences as well.

Armando:

Does that bring in your results?

Patrick:

Massively. Massively. The timing that it used to take us to do a stock count was three and a half hours, four hours, two people counting at the same time. We’ve been able to change the way we do that by delivering that in less than two hours or under an hour sometimes because it’s that much easier. The way we’ve set it up, the way we’ve designed it and built it is that you can simply walk into the store, go left, right, top to bottom, input the information into the system that’s at hand. we can place an order, I can walk into a call room, and it doesn’t matter if I’m working on, you know, if I have to go place an order with this supplier or this supplier, I just simply walk in and say, I need tomatoes, I need cucumbers, I need pork, I need chicken, I need whatever it may be that I need for that item, and the system will just send it off to us. It’s instant interaction, instant information, straight away. We know that if there’s a system change and something’s not available, I can make the change in the back office, and they don’t even need to know the difference. They won’t need to know what’s going on in the background. They don’t need to be bothering themselves about calling a supplier and saying, is this available or not, or getting on the phone back and forth. It’s already done in the background for us. It’s fascinating. We’re able to take control at an HQ level and make HQ level changes to any price item or price item availability, and that’s just inventory management. Think about labor management as well. Connecting our labor management and our point-of-sale system together in a centralized system that helps us to forecast and create information and save information and look on previous years’ information and being able to take that same piece of technology and then turn it into a training material or a tool. All right, so that we can offer it on a phone, on a mobile phone or a team member. When a team member starts with us, you know, they sign up, we can have all the information stored in one central place. So we’re not looking and chasing pieces of paper. We can take temperature controls and manage our food safety in a piece of technology. Everything counts, all of it does, and all of those tools make our people’s jobs easier, because there’s a lot to do in a hospitality business. We’ve got to make sure that we’re always maintaining our training levels, that we’re always staying within regulations of health and safety, that we’re paying them properly, are we paying them the right rate, are they able to clock in and clock out, do they get paid for every moment that they work. Do we do we give them access to information how do we communicate to our team you know is it through email do we send them a letter no it’s all centralized in this technology platform that we use. Every single piece of technology that we use is being thought thought out and thoughtfully applied. to make our team’s lives easier. So again, and I say this repetitively, and I’ve said it multiple times, but I’ll say it again, we want to deliver great food, great service, great quality, great value in an elevated QSR experience. How do we differentiate that? By giving our teams a place that they want to come to work, giving them tools and, you know, They wear this logo on their chest and they want them to be proud to wear so and do that. We want them to know and say, hey, my job is so easy. I can just do this. You tell it what it took me less than five minutes to place my orders for the week. It took me less than five minutes to reconcile my labor. What are you talking about? It’s done. It’s instant.

Armando:

You know, you have any job openings.

Patrick:

All the time, we’re always hiring. You get free food? Absolutely, absolutely, yes we do. Everyone needs to love and taste the food. When we roll out new menus, how do we train somebody on a new menu item? A really exciting thing we’ve just gone through is a summer menu update. How do we promote that? How do we get them to be our promoters? You know, technology, it’s all there. We create great video content, great training content and access to that information at any moment’s notice that they have at any given time. It’s truly fascinating the ability that we have right now to be able to share content with our team and for them to share feedback. You know, we mentioned feedback earlier. The same piece of technology. If somebody, any one of our team members, anybody, any single person who works at Zeus Street greek can give feedback and we collect that information and we look at that and we use that information to drive change. That’s fascinating. That’s truly instant data. Instant access for us on an HQ level has never been clearer for us because when we give our teams the ability to feel part of the organization and the change that goes along with it, and the fact that we are constantly evolving, we do that through our people. And if we give them the ability to have the tools to make the changes and to make decisions and have access to instant information, it’s a game changer for us.

Armando:

How do you ensure that the right data goes into your system? Because obviously, your dashboards are only as useful as the quality of the data that goes into it. So how do you ensure that the right data goes into it?

Patrick:

That’s a really tricky one. At the end of the day, it goes back to what we said earlier about partnering with business partners or technology partners that are able to connect with each other. API integrations, sharing of data and information. I think the most important one is your sales data. It’s the core for everything. If your sales revenue data is incorrect and you’re forecasting against an incorrect number, you’re going to spit out a bad result. Garbage in, garbage out. If you look at your cost of goods, again, another one of your major expenses, you’re sitting there against a sales figure, a revenue figure. If those businesses and those technologies don’t talk to each other and they don’t connect with each other properly, you end up with a very terrible result, you know? And that piece of technology is only as good as the information you feed it. So, at the end of the day, it’s up to us to make sure that the integrity of the data is always there. We use business partners who are always monitoring and checking and ensuring that those results are accurate, and then always questioning, always going back, always going and reviewing, always evolving. Making sure that when you’re seeing a certain problem, you go back and you fix it. And you’re able to do that at a moment’s notice. And we can with the technology partners we do today and we use today.

Armando:

Amazing. Patrick, thank you so much for coming to the studio today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Same. Shall we grab some lunch? Yeah, absolutely. Great. Cheers.