A Holistic View on Restaurant Tech | with Skip Kimpel
GAIN Momentum episode #59: A Holistic View on Restaurant Tech | with Skip Kimpel
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in travel, hospitality, food service, and technology. I'm joined by my co host Michael Cohen. And today we have a very special episode because we are proud to introduce Gain's own global director of restaurant technology and innovation, Skip Kimpel.
How are you?
Skip Kimpel: Good, thank you for very much for having me on the show.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, it's a delight. And this has been a long time coming. I've really been looking forward to discussing with you about restaurant tech. And before we get into our four key questions that we use to structure each episode, I'm wondering if you could just unpack a little bit what your role is within GAIN and what it means to be a global director of restaurant technology and innovation.
Skip Kimpel: So, I'll give you a little background prior to getting into that. So, I grew up in the restaurant [00:01:00] industry as a CIO for multiple restaurant brands moved into consulting, uh, but I had some passion for some more innovative technology and I always push the food and beverage industry around. You know, let's make technology, let's, create some more innovation.
I don't wanna see another integration into another, uh, food delivery service and not having that be your big announcement. So I've always been pushing the envelope and anybody that knows me knows that I speak those words and I live those words. Um, bringing the technology innovation piece into gain.
Well, first of all, there's two sides that one, just the food and beverage side, which has never been a focus of gain in the past now opens the opportunity for gain advisors to really leverage F and B options with their current clients. And there's tons of opportunities here that I've learned from the food and beverage side that certainly can be leveraged in the hotels as well.
The innovation piece really is not only. [00:02:00] Uh, the efficiencies created with technology, but it also becomes some of these new cutting edge technologies. These disruptive technologies. AI being one of them, um, XR, which is an umbrella term for virtual reality, augmented reality, virtual reality training. I mean, there's so many new opportunities out there being leveraged in other industries.
I saw an opportunity to bring those technologies into the hospitality side and teaming up with gain, I think it gives me the opportunity and gives gain the opportunity to take what we're doing to a global scale.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, there's, there's really so many ways to tackle this in terms of the better integration of the hotel side and the restaurant side. And, you know, you mentioned the golden word of, virtual reality or XR as a zone. And I know I really want to touch base with that, with Michael, who is also an expert here on XR.
Uh, so with that, let's dive [00:03:00] into our first question. Then we can pick apart some of these, other conversations. So Skip. When it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give to entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in restaurant technology?
Skip Kimpel: Well, from the entrepreneurial level, you know, that means you want to grow more than likely. You're you've got a business. Uh, the goal is to have a successful business and to grow that business. I think I've seen and some of my experience has been to. Step number one, evaluate your tech stack. And can you do it internally?
Potentially. Is there bias internally or silos internally where you can get to the true answers? Potentially not, which is where an advisor or consultant comes into play because they can bring everybody to the table and really provide an unbiased opinion in regards to what could be improved. But if there are changes to be made through your growth, you need to rip that bandaid off.
Early on, because as you [00:04:00] grow, obviously, it's going to be a little more painful as you proceed along. So, evaluating the technology stack is important. But before you evaluate your technology stack, you need to figure out where you're going. You know, are you going to be growing? Through franchisees, are you going to be growing through corporate growth?
Are you going to be growing internationally? Because every single one of those aspects plays into how the technology stack, uh, will play out in the future and kind of the. The pieces and the parts that you need in order to bring everything together, looking, you know, as you're sitting down and whiteboarding your technology stack, you really need to look for, you know, what are some of the redundancies within your organization and don't look just at the I.
T. Department or the ops department. Take a global look across the organization to determine. Do we have redundant technologies out there or do we have technologies that actually could be integrated better? Into each other to provide more efficiencies. Uh, those are big areas that [00:05:00] restaurants often miss.
And really, as you're looking at your growth pattern, also be looking at your technology partners. I prefer to call them partners and not vendors, because they need to be part of your strategy moving forward. And they really need to work alongside of you in order to make sure that you're all successful.
The last thing you want is a contentious relationship with a vendor or a partner, uh, because it does nobody any good.
Michael Cohen: So, I have to follow up to that skip. So, a couple of things. So, you know, the 1st question is about. What would you recommend a company to focus on to grow and, to have a scale and, you know, logically, and we're in the business. So you focus in on technology, technology stack, you know, before potentially before the massive growth or before the projected growth, there's this process of evaluation, ideation, verification.
But many times, and we, we've all done this as leaders of [00:06:00] organizations, everything else, things happen quickly, scale happens quickly. And then it's a, it becomes catch up, right? It's, it's like following up. So to that point in the hotel side of our hospitality industry, it's changing. But for many years it's been challenging for organizations to be able to get out of their legacy systems and transition and, you know, and make that a priority focus.
So sometimes it's a bit of a character where people state that the hotel industry is like four or five years behind other industries. In the other side of our hospitality portfolio, Led by you, um, in the restaurant space. Is it similar? Is there, is there that lag in the restaurant industry as much, or is it more, uh, forward thinking than potentially what we've been working with in the hotel industry for years?
Skip Kimpel: honestly, I think restaurants are 3 to 5 years behind the hotels. Um, and that's a scary. we've, we've just put together data standards through the restaurant technology network. Um, there is a large group of thought leaders that got together with vendors [00:07:00] in order to put those standards in place and with the cooperation of the HLA to help us curate that process.
So, not having standards. in the past versus the hotel industry, which does have standards is kind of an indication of really how far behind we are.
Adam Mogelonsky: And do you think that it's so far behind because of how fragmented the restaurant industry is? That's my hunch, but feel free to offer.
Skip Kimpel: Yeah
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah
Skip Kimpel: especially now. I mean, goodness, we're seeing headlines every single day of restaurants closing for multiple reasons, whether it be labor costs, food costs, um, yeah. People's, uh, income shrinking that, you know, they're, they're downsizing, you know, with if they were at a fine dining restaurant once a week before, maybe they're now in a fast casual restaurant. you know, people are, are scaling down in their eating habits and labor a, we all know it's hard to come [00:08:00] by and B, it's expensive. So those are some areas that technology can really help an organization with the proper technology, um, become more efficient and more profitable.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, as one more follow up, you mentioned that the margins are the key issue and that it behooves restaurant owners slash executive slash management to go out and reach to external providers to get an outside view on the tech stack to really hone those efficiencies and really come up with a future plan.
But if the margins are so low, how would you justify the additional expense to find that outside support that they really need.
Skip Kimpel: Well, that's where it comes down to evaluating your tech stack up front, because through consulting, I have discovered countless times redundant technologies or even worse, you know, SAS products where they've, uh, signed up for a multitude of modules and they're only using a portion of them and they're not using [00:09:00] everything.
So there is a lot of wasted money that sits on the board. I recently ran a panel at a tech show and there was a. A gentleman on that panel that was talking about he has a friend that every year he basically cancels his credit card because, you know, you've got all those reoccurring charges that happen.
So he waits until people start calling him saying, Hey, something's wrong with your credit card. And he realizes. Okay, this is a service. I'm going to continue signing up with, or gosh, I've been paying for that for a year and I haven't used it 1 time. So, you know, keeping very close eye and what technology you have in your tech stack and how often you're actually utilizing it.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, that's incredible. The amount of hidden savings that you can find and, you know, not to advertise for you too much, but essentially you're paying for yourself once you uncover those. So it, it makes sense.
Skip Kimpel: Yeah, and really the way I look at things, it's it's all about finding those efficiencies to make. Quite honestly, [00:10:00] a consulting or an advisor engagement should be an opportunity for a company to find those savings and to find the R. O. Y. Um, if you do it right, technically consulting or advising, it should come at almost no cost.
At the end of the day, the R. O. Y. should be plentiful if it is done properly.
Michael Cohen: I think also that it's important from an advisory perspective that, um, you know, and I mean, this is self serving for us on this, on this podcast today is that, you know, when it's, it's a collective. Truly experienced people who have knowledge, who have product knowledge, technology, knowledge, industry, knowledge, executional knowledge, but we're not specifically a vendor per se with one portfolio of technology.
Um, you know, this is a blind example, obviously to some, but to maybe others, it's not, you know, all of us are, our organization is engaged with the restaurant organization or the hospitality organization, you know, [00:11:00] our job is to listen, is to learn first, and then is to get into the weeds and optimize and optimization could be financial optimization.
It could be process optimization. It could be optimization of, you know, squeezing more, more margin or profit out of a restaurant transaction or a hotel. Room, uh, you know, reservation and that's really, you know, sometimes people forget about those kind of core principles because it's not, you know, especially not.
And I'll be interesting for you. Skip is we're talking about innovation and we talk about XR and so on and we are all people who understand and believe and know that there's incredible impact and benefits of those. Emerging technology, spatial computing, et cetera, within the restaurant and hotel industry, but we also know where it fits and where it doesn't.
And it can't just be technology for technology sake, of course, which is a cliche, but it's important to say that. And that, What's wonderful about you joining gain in our conversation today [00:12:00] is that, you know, our whole principle has always been, and will always be, is that we are the technology diplomats, we are the advisory organization that is here to optimize, to help scale and grow.
And many times that's with. Technology assessments, sometimes it's with a commercial assessment, which is a different kind of conversation. But, I mean, I, I like that. Um, you know, we obviously that's why we're along this together. We have the same sort of energy flow, and it's important to communicate that to the industry as well.
Skip Kimpel: And when I sit down with a client, I usually sit down with the business leaders really to talk about what the business looks like. We don't jump into technology right away. It is, you know, what, where do you see your company X amount of years down the road? You know, and how do you see yourself getting there?
Um, those business decisions are critical. You know, if, if BC and their, goals to, uh, Sell, um, in 3 to 5 years. Okay. There's a specific strategy to put in place for that. Uh, some of the pitfalls that I've seen with [00:13:00] restaurants is when they're evaluating their tech stack or they're evaluating new products.
They consider some products not to be acceptable for them because it does not fit within their business practice or their processes and their procedures. And I'm 1 to challenge an organization about. Hey, listen, if 95 percent of the rest of the world out there is running, um, catering this way, what is it that is so unique about your business that you have to write custom code?
You've got to go out there and eliminate three quarters of the products. Take a look at how you do things and be willing to adjust your strategy as well because adjusting your strategy. You might be dealing with strategies that were created 10, 15 years ago, based upon the technology restrictions at that point in time.
So you created those business processes because of that. So, you know, everything's on the table as you start to look at, you know, [00:14:00] how can you make an organization more effective and more efficient? And it's not always technology.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, as you said, the technology is there to serve a and that has to be a business goal and the technology is just the tool. So we're looking holistically at everything. Uh, speaking of looking holistically, let's dive into our second question here, focusing on potentially where things holistically.
So Skip, what are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid? When scaling their business,
Skip Kimpel: Well, I think some of the biggest areas is really not looking at all of what the business requirements are as they're, you know, determining their growth path down the road. more organizations than you think are very siloed in their decision making process. Um, and I, like, to say a. You know, a technology project really isn't an I.
T. project at all. It is a company [00:15:00] project. If you're putting in a new point of sale P. M. S. system, it involves every single piece of the organization and every department and every department needs to be able to come to the table and have a say. In regards to, you know, as you're walking through requirements, or as you're determining, from a relationship value, who's a, who's a better partner for your organization.
You need to have buy in from all of your, your, players. And it's also important to bring in some of your largest franchisees into that decision making process, because if you can get their buy in, they're going to be your cheerleaders to everybody else in the marketplace. So, I think that's 1 of the things is really to concentrate on bringing everybody to the table, removing the silos.
Can every organization do it? Not always. That's why advisors are really, suggested because we remove that friction point and we, we level the playing field. to your point, Michael, throwing technology at something for the sake of throwing technology at it. I [00:16:00] mean, the biggest pitfall I'm seeing right now is around AI, especially on the restaurant side, the food and beverage side.
Um, there's certainly plenty of AI solutions that. Aren't really a I, I like to call it a wizard of Ozzie where it may appear to be a I up front, but when you start to dig down into the details of it, it's not really a I and what we're discovering is that people are are being approached by their sea level suites.
Directly to the I. T. department going, hey, what is our A. I. strategy just because it's a buzzword and they think that they need to leverage it. But nobody has an idea of really the best process to go about that. And there's so many isolated A. I. products out there. This goes back to into any technology.
You need to sit down, do the business requirements, figure out what the best solution is out there for your specific needs. What are you really trying to solve for? First of all, just don't throw AI at something just for no purpose at all. [00:17:00] But if you really sit down and talk about the needs of the organization, you might be able to find different data points that you can tie back in together into that AI product to help benefit the entire organization and not just one piece of it.
Michael Cohen: It's interesting. I had a, professor and university, uh, technology business professor. He said. Technology is simply the color of paint on a palette that you utilize to complete certain portions of a painting on a canvas. And he said that the colors will change in your lifetime. The technology will change, the tools will change, the environments will change, the, you know, the realities of what, what is required, what, what is optimization, whatever.
So I always think about that in the back of my mind because it's like, you know, We all know and everyone buzz, it's more than a buzzword. I'm not saying you're incorrect or the C suites are incorrect. Of course, it's a buzzword, but it is, we all know it's a paradigm shift, [00:18:00] monolithic, whatever, but it's still simply the change of the hues or the color palette. And now we have more tools to work with, collect either as advisors or internal organizations or entrepreneurs or founders or whatever, there's more choice and some things and some color sets, some legacy technologies get dropped off, right? And that's the ongoing cycle of technology life in some respects.
Skip Kimpel: Well, and it's interesting to see, too, because let's say 4 or 5 years ago, when you saw some of these AI companies coming out there, um, that were all smoke and mirrors, the technology has advanced so quickly that they are now able to supplement what they were faking on the back end and actually bring technology into the scenario.
So, While they may have created a bad reputation for themselves a while ago, just once the word got out about, hey, you're not really doing true A. I hear. Um, I think [00:19:00] there's some reputation recovery to do with some organizations. that comes back to, like, a go to market strategy of emphasizing really.
Okay, here's what we do. And this is really how we do it and being honest with the customer at that point as well.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but the biggest player in this sort of Wizard of Oz behind the scenes was Amazon's Mechanical Turk program, where they said it was automation to everyone on their end users, but then behind the scenes, they were hiring people to do the dev work for them and the actual.
Automation, you could say,
Skip Kimpel: I'm going to give you a really interesting restaurant example, um, just to hone in on that for a piece. And I won't mention names obviously, but there, there was 1 or 2 companies out there. That was doing voice AI to the drive through where you'd have a voice AI bot. However, when somebody would place an order, it was actually going to a call center overseas where they're actually.
You had a person punching in the order and then sending that order back to the P. O. S. system at [00:20:00] the restaurant. So what appeared to be completely automated process was not truly an automated process. You had people behind it, which is the wizard of Ozzie and piece of it, um, that would actually be doing the work and pushing it back into the P.
O. S.
Adam Mogelonsky: just to unpack that, uh, one example you have, does that actually work out like the, the people who are going to the drive thru, do they care if it's a voice bot or somebody, uh, in an overseas call center, so long as their order is fulfilled and it's fulfilled quickly?
Skip Kimpel: as long as it's transparent, I don't think the end user really cares. Uh, they want it to just to be, they want order accuracy. And I think that's potentially where you could run into problems is with order accuracy. Plus, if there's any technology glitch between their operation center, most of them are overseas and getting that order into the POS, it could speed down or slow down the speed of service.
And anybody who's got to drive through speed of service is the number one. [00:21:00] Key factor that they're looking at to get KPIs on, figure out how they can improve upon it.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, one other aspect to go back to the beginning of your answer. You're talking about getting buy in from across the entire, the entire value chain of all stakeholders. And one area that I've always been fascinated by in restaurant technology is the differing needs between management and people that are actually table side, the servers.
And a lot of times this comes down to the POS in terms of the actual UI that may be preferred by management versus the ones that preferred by servers. Have you ever encountered this problem and how do you bring both sides of the table to find a good compromise?
Skip Kimpel: And that that's a great question, because I've seen that happen many times where the, the head office starts to create. I know specific examples. Once again, won't name names, but specific examples where the, menu screens were created by people sitting in the office or by it departments [00:22:00] without getting the actual input from the operators.
So my suggestion, especially for restaurants is. Larger organizations already do this, but if you're a smaller organization, create a position that sits in between operations and have that person be heavy ops orientated to begin with and know your brand pretty well and have them sit right in the middle between ops and I.
T. And they are really your liaison to help. Um, get out in the field, make sure that the, you know, the screen is created properly for, um, you know, muscle memory of, of pushing buttons, make sure it makes sense, make sure it flows properly, make sure there's not 100 clicks to get to what you need to get to.
but then again, there is a dangerous aspect of if you are switching POS companies. There's this misnomer that it has to look exactly like your previous POS because that's how employees, navigate around the system. It's not always the case. Once again, sometimes these [00:23:00] screens were created, these order entry screens were created because of limitations of previous technology.
So, find more ways of being efficient. It doesn't take that long to train up a new employee, uh, with a new system. Especially if they're sitting side by side and utilizing a lot of the POS systems out there right now, really play into the younger generation. The Gen Zers where, you know, you're swiping like you would on a phone.
Um, there's very similar actions. So the, the adoption, the intuitiveness is much more natural for somebody that's learning on a new system.
Adam Mogelonsky: So Skip, let's look ahead to the future. Let's dive into our third key question here. What do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for restaurant technology companies in 2025 and beyond?
Skip Kimpel: So, um, the opportunities and challenges, you know, I was also looking for at this from the, Hotel tech F and B side in particular. So I, [00:24:00] I want to hone in on that because really that's kind of the focus of, what we're talking about here. So. if you have F and B offerings in your hotel, finding ways to better leverage technology for automation, for labor management, et cetera, I I'm hearing some rumors of some major hotel chains pulling out their food options just because it.
It doesn't make sense for them. They're losing huge amounts of revenue because of it. It's not a revenue gain It's more of a convenience to the guest at that point But I do believe there are opportunities to be a revenue center and not be a cost center for organization If it is done, right? If you do make that that rash decision of, you know, let's pull out our F and B options out of the hotel.
There's some pretty cool options out there as well. For instance, uh, some of the new vending machines and I use vending machines very lightly because we're all thinking like a soda machine, but there's very high end hot vending machines that. You [00:25:00] can get fresh pizza. You can get, bow. You can get pot stickers.
I mean, you can get some pretty cool stuff coming out of vending machines. Um, so that, that's an interesting option. I've, you know, I've often thought that a hotel might be able to leverage depending on the type of hotel and the style of client as well. Um, food lockers, third party delivery, um. If you're going to go down the route of offering, well, regardless if you offered or not, your guests are going to be ordering 3rd party delivery through Uber Eats or, or, uh, Grubhub or, whatever it is, uh, but having a food locker that's branded for your hotel, kind of out of sight, out of mind, uh, and then being able to notify the guest automatically when the food is dropped off from the delivery driver into that locker, And then that guest comes down, they scan the barcode and their door will open.
So the food stays secure. Um, you can even get, heated food lockers, for instance, which would provide a very interesting [00:26:00] opportunity for a hotel on that side. Better utilization of unused or underutilized areas of your kitchen. You could offer virtual brands. I know virtual brands, ghost kitchens have kind of gone through this phase of popularity, but I think, an option for hotels really to consider this as an especially during COVID.
I started to see this happen. How can we use the unused areas of a restaurant to. Push food out the back door, it becomes a completely different business model and it gives you additional revenue for for the organization as well. Last, but not least, I think the labor costs will have a severe impact. if you really want to streamline your efficiency, um, better AI driven labor management tools to help with predictive scheduling, uh, reassignment of staff.
you know, the AI engine is able to predict, you know, it's going to be slow this week because of the bookings that we have. So, let's reorganize how we staff our restaurants at that point in time.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, you've given [00:27:00] us a lot to chew on there, and, um,
Michael Cohen: I have a quick question, Adam, if you don't mind. I don't normally interrupt like that, but I have a quick one. Let's, let's go F& B even more. Let's go back to pure play restaurants for a second. Because, you know, we're talking about the future. Robotics, robotics, robotics. That was three years ago was the AI of three years ago. Correct?
Skip Kimpel: Yes,
Michael Cohen: How much, how far, how real?
Skip Kimpel: so there were a couple of interesting things in the robotics robotics is becoming a bigger play in the restaurant space. So, where we are seeing utilized more is in the back of house, um, in order to be able to perform, uh, duties, for instance, with The fryer machines, uh, being able to automate some of that stuff.
It removes the danger. It removes the need for that person that can be better utilized within the organization. the front of house robots that we first started to see that would deliver the food. I consider that a [00:28:00] complete phase that really isn't significant anymore.
Michael Cohen: Um frankly.
Skip Kimpel: completely unnecessary.
Correct. So using the robots on the, on the backside, they're full on. Full blown, pizza making robotic machinery that, it does everything for you. People place an order and it literally takes the, pocket squashes, the puck creates the crust, drops the toppings on it, puts the sauce on it, cooks it, pushes it out the other side and notifies the customer.
It's ready. So I am seeing robotics being used more and more in a hotel space. Absolutely. Certainly from a larger kitchen perspective, it could make sense to actually put in some more robotic equipment and robotic equipment. Companies have realized. That these operators don't want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install this thing, train it.
So they've created very low cost, entry models where you can basically it's hardware as a service. And [00:29:00] they're able to not only put that thing in place and be able to program it, but they can monitor every aspect of it. And they know if a part is about to fail, and they can either get a replacement part delivered or have that, you know, a technician out there next day in order to be able to fix that.
Adam Mogelonsky: so going right back to the point you made about the people that drive through coming through and it actually goes out to a call center overseas, really for the guest end, it still comes back to that hospitality element. Robots at the front, no, we want to keep servers because we want to keep that human touch.
But then in the back end, behind the scenes, you can have the Wizard of Oz Mechanical Turk or increasing degrees of automation and robotics because The guest essentially doesn't really care at a certain level of restaurant, whether it's the pizzas made by the robot or the, uh, or the, the line cook.
Michael Cohen: As long, as long as it's the same quality and delicious, if it
isn't, and that's a [00:30:00] challenge.
Skip Kimpel: and I'm, I'm going to push against the grain here a little bit too. I think there's a whole new generate generation of people that. Hospitality doesn't mean the same thing. There are people that don't want to be bothered by having a server come up and talk to them and ask them how their meal is. It sounds ridiculous because we all come from an era where that's where your, your value, you know, it's your food, the quality of your food and the, the hospitality touch point.
Now, you can't forget about those hospitality touch points. And if you're doing automated things, or you're doing third party delivery where there is less human interaction. Find additional ways that you can interact with that guest and have them make them feel important in the process. But once again, there, there is that generation that they would rather just order their food, put their head down, eat their food, and just don't bother me.
it's an interesting situation we're finding ourselves in with this new generation of consumers out there.
Adam Mogelonsky: I'm seeing this evolution, you know, in real time. And of course, [00:31:00] it's not unique to the restaurant industry or hospitality. Uh, for instance, I was just in Japan and you have the ramen stall shops where essentially you go in, you plug in exactly what you want in your ramen. It's made by a person, but then you're essentially in a cubicle eating by yourself.
And Japan also has the hot vending machines as well. So, essentially what you're talking about here is an evolution into a new category, a new restaurant category for people that want to go specifically just to have that pure no touch experience. They just want to eat good food and they don't, they don't want the hospitality element to it.
is that what you're talking about here?
Skip Kimpel: I am, and I think it comes down to a few years ago when we were talking about payments, you know, the talk in the industry was, you know, make it as frictionless for a guest as possible. Let them pay the way they want to pay regardless of what that is. I think the hospitality food service style is very similar.
Let them consume the [00:32:00] way they want to be, the way they want to consume. And I guess determining that factor up front really involves maybe a different level of training. For your front line people or for your front desk people, and they could make a note on your, you know, with the server to indicate, hey, this person indicated that they really don't want to be interacted with that much.
So don't go to their table 5 times and ask them how their dinner is. You see that with Uber, even like, I get Uber comfort, you know, what comfort level do you want? What engagement level with your driver? Do you want? So, once again, this is not unique to restaurants or hotels. We're seeing it across. Almost every vertical out there.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, essentially, what you're talking about is opening up an opportunity to better understand your customers, in this case, the restaurant patrons by saying, there should be some sort of database field where this person prefers not to be talked to. And that's a field that can be inserted. Therefore, you [00:33:00] modify the SOPs accordingly.
So that way, two minutes after delivering the food, and they have a mouthful, you're not coming up immediately and saying, how are the first few bites? Thanks. Or something like that, which is the standard, which is SOP, but at the same time, you're asking at the inappropriate time, according to some customers.
Skip Kimpel: Correct.
Adam Mogelonsky: you know, looking back here or looking forward, there's so much more to touch on. But if we look back to the idea of a hotel restaurant, a restaurant within a hotel, and some hotels giving up The food option because it doesn't make a good sense from a direct revenue point of view, this goes back to a statement that I've been trained on in hospitality, which is that no hotelier is willingly in the restaurant business.
And the whole idea of this was that you had to have an on site restaurant in order to generate the bookings, and you made your margins on the hotel, and the restaurant was a [00:34:00] lost leader simply because a lot of guests out there wanted to have the on site restaurant option. And you've raised a lot of new opportunities here.
In terms of ways to get around that, uh, ghost kitchens, the hot, the hot food lockers, and everything else you've touched on. How would you go about deciding what is that right option for a hotel based on the hotel segment, in terms of how to evolve their food service strategy? Mm
Skip Kimpel: A little bit of a loaded question there, um, because that really comes down to analyzing and understanding who your guest really is and, you know, do you have, I do believe the hotel industry has probably really good data and statistics on who their guest is, um, and what the, what their likes and dislikes are.
But, you know, I think it does take some experimentation, you have to look at historically what's worked, um, look around to other, uh, hotels within your, [00:35:00] your vertical and your customer profile to see what they're doing out there. Um, and then sit down and be creative, you know, think of the art of the possible and try something.
Uh, if you're gonna fail, do it fail fast. There's nothing wrong with failing. now to spin something up and then rip it down. Yeah, that can be a little painful. But, you decided to remove food and beverage options from your hotel, what about if you, I know of a company doing this right now, they're just getting off the ground where they're, they're putting QR codes in the room where people can order the food.
That company is actually teamed up with the hotel and they go out there and they find local restaurants when the food is ordered. It's actually, um, white labeled for that hotel delivered to the hotel and the hotel is actually making a profit on that as well. Um, the only piece they haven't been able to figure out yet, which they will is, you know, how do you then during that ordering process, put it as a room charge and put it on the folio, you know, so they, they're doing a prepayment at that point in [00:36:00] time, but.
This is all about being creative and really thinking outside the box and maybe even thinking outside of your industry. Um, see what everybody else out there is doing because you can learn a lot from other industries, especially from a technology perspective, but even an operational perspective. Just be curious.
Go around. I'm constantly going to other restaurants and. Even though it tells them just kind of observing to see how they do things and how they do things differently. What can you learn from that? So a lot of time in motion study really helps at that point in time and really doing your homework and Understanding who your customer is and really what their wants are is critical in that process.
Michael Cohen: I also think it's super important for us to mention here that food and beverage is a huge part of the experience of a guest at a hotel
to the point that if food and beverage can be the process organization execution of it can [00:37:00] be enhanced. Streamlined by technology, then hotelier brands, independent hotels, boutique hotels, luxury hotels will sign the check every time because food and beverage is intrinsically part of a human experience about what we feel, what we like, what are, what is our cultural experiences and as we, as we know, for the last 100 years, hoteliers want to keep the guests in the hotel as much as possible for these ancillary services and revenue.
The challenge has been Technology has made it easier for the guests to have more choice outside of the hotel. So now technology over time for the right hoteliers, right brands with the right intestinal fortitude and understanding that them having a great steakhouse, are they having a great. Uh, you know, upper scale restaurant or a family restaurant, whatever in their property next to the lobby, where they can get ancillary services and ancillary [00:38:00] revenues from around the city to bring people to the hotel and go, wow, this is a pretty nice hotel.
Maybe we should have the wedding gear here next year or wait. Well, when my uncle and aunt come in next year, we're going to make sure that we put them up in this place. Like getting the population that is not a guest into the bloody hotel is a huge part of what technology should be delivering for our FMB in the hotel industry.
Skip Kimpel: Sure. When I look at casinos too, casinos build Very specific restaurants for the sake of getting people to go to that restaurant. And then guess what? They're in the casino for the next 5 or 6 hours. Spending much more money than they would at the restaurant, but you know, as a hotel is looking at their food options, you know, don't once again, just like technology, don't throw food in there.
Just for the sake of throwing food in there. Really understand what your guest profile looks like. Understand what their needs are. Reengineer your menu, create some unique offerings, something that you just can't get any place else. I've seen enough hotels where you [00:39:00] I know what pretty much what's going to be on the menu before I even walk into that restaurant.
So, um, if you're a little more creative with it, you do create that buzz in the community and certainly a location that people are going to want to come back to.
Michael Cohen: and one quick thing about him before we go to the final question is that I think it's also important to understand and please correct me if I'm wrong. Skip because you are the expert and I'm merely an amateur. the ability to change the food offering, the ability to augment the food offering with technology.
So that it's not as heavy a lift or a reengineering of the kitchen or something like that. I'm sure there's technological advancements, either hardware, software, otherwise, that creates a more flexible kitchen in a hotel or in a restaurant makes it more optimized to you. To do what you said, like, you know, maybe there's a change in season.
There's a change in clientele. There's a big conference coming in with IBM to this hotel and they have a specific menu. So it makes it more, I understand this, but I'm not the expert in this. It makes the ability [00:40:00] to switch gears in the kitchen, potentially more cost effective and optimal.
Skip Kimpel: So, to that point, which kind of leads into, some of my closing points around the usage of technology, what I'm seeing right now is in the kitchen space. Ops departments taking digital twins of their kitchen. Reorganizing, potential placement of kitchen equipment or the make lines and then running simulations on top of that to figure out what's the best throughput.
how can you make your kitchen more efficient? And ironically, I'm finding out that most of these restaurants already have digital twins at some point in time during their life cycle. They've gotten 1 because they were told to get 1, but they have no idea what to do with it. So now layering on some of the.
The latest, greatest, newest technologies with the I engines that are out there. You can do some pretty amazing things to solve for your problem that you explained Michael. this is exactly the scenario of figuring out. We [00:41:00] have an event coming up, you know, if your kitchen equipment is portable, how can we make this the most efficient for this particular event?
Because as you start to get into larger scale events, like weddings and, conferences, it is a logistics nightmare. Most of those companies have figured it out, but if you could additionally leverage technology to make it even better, it's a win win for everybody.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. I think, uh, to add one final point here is the entire point of this discussion. We're talking about hotels, we're talking about restaurants, we're talking about technology, but it's, as Michael said, it's the experience. And we can never forget that as sort of the business goal, because when you deliver a great experience, more people are going to be talking about you.
More people are going to be coming through your doors and they're going to be spending more. It all adds up to the total revenue perspective
Michael Cohen: that point, just like, here's the thing, and I mean, Skip, we talk about all the time. That's why we, we were very proud to have you join GAIN and lead the restaurant and F& B [00:42:00] practice, innovation practice is because the guest passenger patron side of it, other than the, this is cool. I can scan this.
I can pay quickly. I get that's a huge boon and it was a huge challenge for years. They don't care how the sausage is made literally.
They don't care.
Adam Mogelonsky: yeah.
Michael Cohen: Literally not, not just a cliche. And, um, you know, again, quality experience it's the, our client base, it's the organizations, it's the, brands, it's the restaurant chains, et cetera, who are, as you said, dealing with, you know, limited margins.
Competitive environments want to future, future proof, which is also cliche, but I think it's totally applicable in what we do future proof their organizations, their offerings, their, how, how they roll out to franchisees, how they train, um, you know, staff and franchisees and the most cost effective, highly retentive, retentive, that's the word oriented space with, you know, VR and XR, as we talked about earlier, [00:43:00] like there is a method.
To the, I wouldn't call it madness. There's a method to the tsunami of change coming to the, that has come to the restaurant and f and b industry in the hotel side. navigating that is why we have jobs. Navigating that is why we have this practice is the ability to, you know, take, um, not a bird's eye view, but an external expert view on, on the internal na naval gazing of a CEO and a C-suite that is dealing with.
37 points of light every day or 150 or 3000 points of light every day. And sometimes it's challenging even for their technology executives to have that kind of, um, impartial, unemotional, non pressured view of how to actually slip stream, layer in the best. Optimist optimal technology and the right time and what version and where to plug it into the existing working machine.
Skip Kimpel: correct.
Michael Cohen: So, [00:44:00] anyway,
Skip Kimpel: we actually went down a path, but 1 of your 1st points that you made was, was about, uh, the, food quality and the experience. I would even venture to say that the experience at this point almost outweighs the food quality. You still have to deliver good food, but if your experience is mind blowing and it's memorable, that's the 1 thing you walk away with.
It really is
Adam Mogelonsky: And yeah, the, the experience, if you're optimizing for experience, you cannot remove the hospitality aspect. It still comes down to the people. That are serving the food that are nice, the patrons, you can have the glitzy, glamorous design and you know, the maximalist restaurant where there's all these fun things to look at, but still your servers, your managers, your, floor staff, they need to be empowered.
They need to be positive. They need to be true hospitality professionals.
Skip Kimpel: great.
Adam Mogelonsky: So Skip, let's dive into our fourth and final question. A [00:45:00] lot to go on here. What are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
Skip Kimpel: I think this is a combination of everything that we've talked about this for far more of a summarization of, you know, the number 1 concern for everybody is that labor and food costs be. So you need to figure out ways to use technology to get just in time deliveries. So you're not overstocked in a, and with your food, um, finding ways to use a, I, to better leverage your, uh, your labor costs.
Uh, we talked about reengineering your menu, not just for the sake of, uh, the enjoyment of your guests, but also for the sake of what is more efficient for your kitchen and what is most profitable for your food and beverage location on hotel property. Use as many tools out there, you know, do do a widespread viewpoint or view of, and gather information of, of the different technologies out there.
And obviously you have a full time job. [00:46:00] Anybody listening to this and you can't do it yourself. Shameless plug. I mean, that's really what this organization does is we help you get across the finish line and help you make those decisions because it is almost impossible to survey the entire landscape on your own.
All of us as gain advisors. We are we're in the field. We're going to all the conferences. We see all the technology. We're talking to all of the hoteliers. We're talking to everybody out there and creating connections and learning Throughout this process. So why not leverage all of that knowledge and bring that together.
And I think the power of gain advisors is having a bunch of advisors with different skill sets that really ties everything together. You know, if there's a payment services person I need, that's not my specialty. We have somebody within the organization. I can tap on their shoulder and say, hey, what do we do about this?
Um, and then we create this collaborative, you know, environment of, of advisory for an organization. you know, we [00:47:00] talked about possibly different options for food and beverage. You know, if you are looking at, uh, taking your food and beverage out, or if you're looking at maybe subsidizing your food and beverage, we talked about the.
Lockers, I think that's a very interesting option. being able to do some white labeling of with local restaurants and being able to get a cut of the food. If they're going to, if they're going to go out there and order food anyways, why not make it easy for them? And why not get a piece of it? And you just don't have to deal with all the headache of running a kitchen and employees.
Um, I think that's an interesting aspect
Michael Cohen: I can interject just a final thought on the, on what you just said, skip is there, there's an ecosystem that, that we're involved in as advisors. And 1 of them, I find very interesting. And again, we're going to explore this as an organization with you leading our restaurant technology. Innovation practice is hotels are hard. Hotel F and B is a, a maze,
[00:48:00] a restaurant technology company. Or a restaurant concept brand, or like an entity, we're also going to be helping them talk to what you just did, get into the F& B side, understand how they could be the supplier of choice for a particular brand or property ownership group that's looking to outsource their F& B.
And, you know, like that's a whole side of it too, from the restaurant tech in versus the hotelier out. Right, or, or, or the restaurant term restaurant chain out. because that, that delta between 1 and the other it's actually a chasm and, you know, and having the experience of how to align the, the 2, um, strategies, or visions and requirements, I think is where people like, uh, advisors like ourselves have value.
Skip Kimpel: Really, the last point I'd like to make is, while we're talking about hotel F and B options, really, the goal [00:49:00] here is also create a whole new division of gain where it concentrates on restaurants, whether or not you have a hotel or not. And also bringing in emerging technologies, which is 1 of my passions.
That's that's kind of why I've gone down the path. I have and partnered with gain advisors is because I, it's. I now have a global outreach and we are, you know, all the technology that we're looking at to help supplement the restaurant side as a physical restaurant, standalone restaurant can easily be brought over to the hotel side.
And once again, I know we don't have time to touch on everything today, future episode, I bet is, you know, the virtual reality training. Um, the augmented reality support for the engineering department in a hotel, for instance, there are so many great opportunities that, through XR that's being leveraged from other industries.
That the hospitality industry really needs to concentrate on, and it's not, it's no longer, uh, an act of fiction. It's in play, it's [00:50:00] happening, it's in real time and there's great around it.
Michael Cohen: Well, put.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah. That is the topic of a whole other episode, but of course these technologies, they're only going to keep ramping up and we're just in the elbow of the curve, as they say. So Skip, Michael, a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for coming on to really dive deep dive into restaurant technology and a lot of just the options that are available to different hotels and pure play restaurants.
Thank you both.
Skip Kimpel: Thank you. Adam.
