Owner.com的动态

Transcript

Today we're at Hummus Factory, one of the most popular Mediterranean restaurants in all of Los Angeles. And this is Mike, the owner. He's going to teach me his biggest lessons learned in going from 1:00 to now more than eight locations, as well as how to make some of his most popular dishes. At the end of the day, I have a surprise for you. We're going to have a challenge with the prize. I'm ready. Mike, I'm gonna take you down. So we're at the Hummus Factory. We should start by trying the most popular dish that we have, the hummus, which we make from scratch. And I want to show you how to serve it. It's going to look like that. Ohh, looks fancy. Mike, I'm excited to finally get some cooking experience. Let's put you to work. But while I make the hummus, I need you to tell me what you think the biggest keys to your success have been in being able to expand and not more than eight locations. Few things that leads to this priority, in my opinion, is the team. Seven people that started the business with us. We're talking 17 years ago. They're still with us. Wow. That's the one, the base of this company. And because of them, we were able to expand. To more stores, more concept. Because these people, you trust them, you treat them like family. That was one of the main success for our expansion. How How do you make them feel like family when you're working together day-to-day for 17 years? Remember their names, know their names, know their birthdays, asked about their families and care about them. Got it. See, I've gotten better while you've been talking. Absolutely. You're doing good. Squirrel is right now we're at 3 out of 10. You got 3 out of 10 before we add our favorite ingredients. So you can add any toppings you want. You can add some Pickles, some onions, whatever you like, some tomatoes with it, any vegetables. Anything goes with the hummus. I'm excited. I've never had onions with hummus, but today's the day. So we're gonna add a little onions and like sprinkle them in so that they don't get too overwhelming. There we go. We've got that nice onion influence in the hummus. Is that Baba ganoush? That's when I go crazy and mix them together. Is that crazy? My Lebanese grandmother gonna be ****** with me. We're doing this. OK, Baba ganoush it is. We're gonna add it like a layer on top. OK, This looks kind of disgusting. We might need to rollback the bomb. How about we start? We make another one for you. OK, another one it is. This baby does look good, though. So while I'm making another bowl of hummus, I need to learn more from you because you're one of the few restaurant owners that I've come across where to expand to additional locations. You don't just look for open commercial real estate, You look for restaurants. That are already open, that already have customer bases, but that have owners that haven't perfectly optimized their operations for sales and for profitability. Can you talk a little bit more about how you look to expand the multiple locations and how you find those restaurants that have potential to end up taking over and then making successful? We took the hummus factory to four locations. Then we thought about why we don't diversify. A lot of people that are afraid to try new cuisines or they they get so much into their business they forget that there is more. Opportunities than there they get too emotional to their product that they forgot there is a lot of opportunity out there. So we decided to diversify our portfolio and we started by acquiring companies that we see potential to grow and be successful with these concepts. Mike, how is it that you find those restaurants that are underperforming because they haven't adapted to online and then go through the process of taking them online? Like where do you even start that search process? There is a difference. Way to do it. Sometimes the word of mouth, because I've been doing this for so many years, my brother's been doing it for so many years. Then you can go online and look online for restaurants for sale and we look at the certain criteria before we do this, depending on the team and this restaurant, depending on their sales, depending on their rents, depending on a lot of factors. It's not a magic touch, but there's a lot of factors. We put it together based on our expertise. We look at these factors and we see what's good. For us and what's not good for us and those factors that you look for. I think you mentioned in a previous conversation that you're looking for restaurants that already have a very popular menu that have the cuisine nailed down. So you don't have to reinvent that. And then you build the infrastructure around that menu, the team, the technology and thought about the technology, more about the technology and shifting this business from a classic way of doing business as the typical restaurant to jump in and the tech part of it. And focus again on the online business and the delivery process. Hamas may not be your dish, Adam. Let's skip and go to the shawarma part and see how you can cut some shower O that's the shawarma and why it's rotating so it can cook from all the sides and we're going to carve some. I think it looks intense. It's like a chainsaw. Look at what's out. Chainsaw guy, don't **** me off. There you go. We dropped some. The harness was a little too intense for me, but I think you can do it. Yeah, the chainsaw gun looks much easier. Good job. 0 out of 10, but not actually. You're doing good. Looks so good. Absolutely. It is delicious. Can I grab a piece? Actually, yeah. Oh my God, my special. How is that? No, seriously. It's right. OK, Not joking. Hmm. Wow, Mike, this is. The best drama I think I've ever had. Hold your horses. This is nothing yet. Let me show you how we can make a shower. My plates. Ohh. OK, let's do it. We're going to assemble a full plate of shawarma. And you better make it right, because you're gonna eat it after. That hummus from scratch is so creamy. Remembered the technique that we did? Yes. It's gonna be harder for you. There you go. That's a fresh salad with some tomato on it and put some brown rice. I'm watching my diet go. We're going to put the shawarma on it. Kick of spice, as you know by now, and the olive oil make you a happy man. Ohh, that does look good. OK, Mike, it's my turn. You start with the hummus, scoop out the generous portion of it, but only in a corner of the plane, and then you spin the plate with the spoon in it to create some space in the middle for the spices. Now we're going to add in the salad. Portion control. Portion control, one scoop. I'm also adding in the. Brown rice and finally it's time for some meat so gonna add in two scoops it take it easy on the quantity come on we're gonna stay in business but Michael trying to bulk go for it we've got the meat the hummus the rice the lettuce yes yeah. This is the dish I'm most proud to have ever made in my life This is delicious and Mike I noticed on your menu that a lot of the dishes are using the same set of ingredients across them why is that this is majorly is for food cost so by having a smaller. Menu you're avoiding the food waste. Less food waste needs more money in your pockets and easier operation, easier for the team also for them to be trained to execute. Most of the ingredient goes in the plates and the ball on the wrap with some minor tweaks to it. We use the lettuce, the tomato, the hummus or the base for everything. And that's one of the main reasons why you can be more profitable than having a huge menu with a lot of ingredients. So your food costs will be higher. So Mike, I know you. What a challenge coming up. But I've gotten so hungry looking at your food. So let's go talk about some of the biggest lessons you've learned over the past 17 years and building your restaurants while we enjoy some hummus. I'm super hungry. OK, let's do it. You've been a very successful restaurant owner. If people look at you now with more than eight locations and all the great reviews you have, they probably think you look like an overnight success. But I know that there have been some challenges over the past 17 years that you've had to struggle through and that you've grown through. The most challenge we faced was during the pandemic. Like anyone else, how to keep your employees and how to push the sales because people stop coming to the restaurant. So we had to put a big, we have to shift our business to the online business. You were starting to see huge sales in Door Dash and Ubereats and Grubhub on the different delivery apps. But there was an issue with that, which was that you were losing all of the commissions to them and the customer relationships. Can you talk about how you were able to, during the pandemic, get your customers to order directly from you? And the business impact of that, yes. So we had to work with Uber, DoorDash and the third party company because of the situation for sure. But the Commission fees that they were charging were so high and the profit was not there. So basically we were doing it just to stay alive, but not to make money and not to be profitable. So the way that we were able, we operated eventually and converted some of these customers. I'm not gonna tell you all of the customers by a big chunk of these customers to order directly through us is. By revamping our website and create a reward program and the loyalty program for the customers. That was one of the main reasons that some of these customers shift and a good experience, easy to navigate websites that makes the customer experience more flexible and it will create this trust between you and the customer. He trusts your brand, so he goes to your website and orders from when you realize you needed to create that strong direct ordering experience. Imagine you looked at a lot of different solutions and thought of different ways to solve the problem. What led to you ultimately finding and signing U for owner and what was your thought process in that? We were working with different companies. We weren't happy with them. There was always something missing, maybe customer service, maybe no reward program. So we wanted a platform that provided all this good experience and good platform, easy to navigate with a good reward program and the loyalty program for the customers. We saw your advertisement, we connected. With you guys, we tested your product and one of the concept which is our pizza concept. And it did great was from the first week we had some loyal customers already, reward programs, we're working really good, customers were happy with it. Then we had to switch all our businesses to owner. Can you talk about some of the concerns that you had in evaluating our solution based on those other experiences and how it's compared to those concerns over the past four years? The concerns are always to question if this system works, if the website is gonna go down, if it's going to be live most of the time. There was some mistakes can happen, but again, we go back to the customer service, they're on top of it and they will fix it for you. That's my major point for me to sign up to a company to see how their customer service is. Can they fix the problem? Not just listening to the problem, there's a solution. They can fix it right away and that's what the owner does. They fix the problem if you have it. Last question is in your process of previously using a bunch of different solutions, you were using one solution for your website, one solution for online ordering. One solution for e-mail marketingowner.com comes with one package, the marketing package, the e-mail package, the SMS package, the text messages that you guys also sometimes sending it to the customer, a reminder and advertising. We're getting it all from owner.com. One solution for online ordering and marketing. All right, Adam, it's time for the challenge. All right, Mike, let's do it. So this is a hummus up. We have 60 seconds to make as many as hummus balls as we can. Season them with my favorite spices and making them look good. If it's a challenge. What's the prize? Well, if you win, then we're gonna name it Dish after your name and call it the Adam. I love it. It'll be your best seller. And if you win, Mike, we're gonna use our e-mail marketing and text message marketing to contact all of your guests and tell them that we're sponsoring $1000 worth of free delivery to order from you this weekend so that you can search sales using our promotions feature. Are you ready? I'm ready. M321 start. Yeah, you may beat me, huh? Damn right I'm gonna beat you, Oht. This is so much easier, I mean harder than it looks. Are you going to beat over there? Is this hummus you're making over there? I'm channeling my Lebanese grandpa. I feel the hummus flowing through my veins. Mike just got a penalty for throwing the hummus Bowl off the table. Maybe you're gonna beat me. Am I? I need $1000 and I need the item on your menu. That is all I need in my life. Later. Ohh, the seasonings I've been beating. OK, 10 seconds remaining. Gotta season them all. 10 seconds. No way. 10 seconds. Alright, mine is all of olive oil hummus. Ohh, done that 60 seconds. OK, let's count them. OK, it is 123456 against, yes, 123456 and a half off. So when then we go for the look. Yeah, you, you do beat me out of luck. This is the difference. There you go. Alright, I guess you're getting the $1000 free delivery for your customers this weekend. Fair and square. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for putting up with me. This has been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming, Adam, and hope you learned something today. So practice up. Maybe you'll have a chance next time. I was going easy today. You got it.