#17: Restaurant Roundtable Discussion

#17- Restaurant Roundtable Discussion

Introduction:

Welcome to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast brought to you by stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management, from hospitality, to commercial, real estate, and everything in between. We'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast today, we have a unique show. We've got three guests on we have Chris Socrata, Kevin Pollak, and Joe sharp. And we are going to have a panel discussion on the impacts of COVID in the hospitality space, having three experts joining us again, appreciate all three of you guys joining in. Chris, we'll start out with you, why don’t you give an introduction on who you are and who you work for.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yeah, so my name is Chris Sockriter work for subtle concepts. We're Hospitality Group in lower Delaware. We've got 13 hard locations, restaurants, and then we have three sports facilities that we do the catering for. Yeah. We'll manage all the facilities here. And you were mentioned earlier about how we got into it. It's kind of roundabout story. Started out as a technician and then kind of worked my way into the facility side. So pretty standard.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and, Joe, why don’t you go from there.

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

Sure. I'm Joe sharp. I worked for Meadowbrook restaurants. We are a franchisee for both the Zach Spees brand and Dairy Queen, restaurant grill and chill. Historically, I'm an operations manager, by trade came out of the furniture industry and was just through a unique set of circumstances, brought into the restaurant field, then became a technique and did it in the opposite order as Chris did. And five and a half years later, here we are and very glad to be here.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, thank you. And Kevin, why don’t you wrap us up.

Speaker: Kevin Pollock 

Yeah, I currently work for a licensee of Zach's B's, called Dream big. We have stores in the Atlanta area. And prior to that, I've been in the restaurant industry for many, many years, dealing with both QSR family restaurant, fast casuals and so been with Zach's B brand here in Atlanta for about a year and a half.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, well, again, I want to thank you three for joining. I know last year, I don't really have to dive into too much detail on the challenges that not only a restaurant and hospitality industry face, but just in general. 2020 was rough on all of us. But in particular, hospitality really had it hard. A lot of shutdowns, a lot of new regulations and something that we no one was prepared for. And with that, Chris why don’t you kind of lead us off here and kind of taking your perspective on the impact of COVID on SoDel, on the different concepts that you guys have up there in Delaware.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yeah, so uniquely, we have 13 locations, we mainly operate out of one county of Delaware. So, you even though we have a lot of locations, we're not as spread out. And when we got hit, it was all the same regulations. So, I guess fortunately for us, we didn't have to really go back and forth to what Marilyn was doing, or Virginia or anything like that it was just what Delaware was doing. But we got shut down in March completely. And then within a couple of weeks, we were back up to takeout only. And our location specifically weren't geared towards that, that wasn't kind of our main thing we are typically sit down, more casual dining. It was a bit of a challenge to kind of revamp what we did and in some of our locations we had to go programs and things like that, but nothing to the extent of what we really needed to ramp up to, to make it successful. So, the first month was just spent trying to gear up all the locations and shift tables around and kind of make our own little spaces to do our to go orders and how the kitchens are going to run and what the menus are going to look like and all that stuff. So, I remember distinctly a lot of conversation regarding around, what we were going to do and how we're going to do it. But with a lot of the different locations that creates a lot of different You know, fun things that we had to work through, I remember the chef's talking about, how they were going to package the food and, finding and securing all the sanitizing equipment and the different, PPE that we had to find and all that kind of stuff, we were looking at one point at barrels of sanitizer, because you couldn't get them in the small thing. So, it was definitely interesting. From a facility side, we started immediately looking at, how do we sanitize the restaurants for our staff. And that led us on a whole crazy, thing of what we're going to do and how we're going to do it, we hired a couple outside contractors to come in and saw kind of what they were doing and, kind of tried to adapt that on a day to day basis on how we could do it a little more effectively and a little more cost effectively. But it was definitely a challenge for sure.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah. And what's interesting is, SoDel has, as you mentioned, several sit down concepts there. And Joe with you, managing operations and facilities for Zach Spees and Dairy Queen, you guys were built for... you had the infrastructure in place already for to go and take out. So how did that look for Zach Spees and Dairy Queen?

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

Well, for us, specifically, we're very blessed. There was obviously a huge assessment in growth, like how do we adapt to what's going on, but the reality is, we were already 65 plus percent, takeout and drive thru. So, what we saw was an immediate dip, obviously, Georgia, here, I'm about an hour north of Atlanta. I mean Kevin and I shared the same regulatory system. I don't want to say it was relaxed, but they didn't force you to shut down they just made it that you would choose to. So, we did end up closing our dining rooms for about two and a half months. Just because the staffing situation which we're all still dealing with, I'm sure became, non-tenable to say, well, if I have to do this every five minute, and I have to. So, when we closed our dining rooms, I was shocked to see that after a month, our sales literally caught back up to on par, so that we were running full day sales through the drive only which meant you were doing it with less people, which is fortunate because there were less people to pull from. So, from a crushing perspective COVID-19 did not throw huge wrenches into my personal situation here. In fact, I was able to use it to my benefit, because for those two and a half months, we painted the dining rooms, we redid the furniture we did the things I can't ever do, because we're always open. And, so yeah, that's personally, you know, staffing was the big thing, right, just the people. But as far as the operation of it goes, we're very blessed that from a regulatory standpoint. Chris hit all the big points, right, gloves, can we find gloves? Can we find sanitizer? Nope. So how do you address those, but that's not unique. I think everyone hears dealt with those.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and Kevin, would you say that? Even being a couple hours south did you guys have the same experience, having that very quick shutdown of, okay, this is something unique, whole world is turned upside down. And now it's going to take couple months to get ramped back up because we already have this infrastructure in place. 

Speaker: Kevin Pollock 

Yeah, I would say Joe's right on in our experience, we never closed being QSR. is right up to 70% of our businesses are already through the drive through, our challenges initially word as an ownership group, we decided we were not going to cut labor, we actually invested more labor into the drive through. So, at that point, we weren't struggling like we are today with the staffing situation. But we dedicated a lot of labor at the same time the company was on a major third-party delivery program. So, we got a few more third-party delivery. And so, some stores are doing weekly and just delivery and online what a normal QSR may do on the lower volume on a weekly basis. So it created a lot of evolutionary changes that we had to adapt to. Today, our lobby still have never reopened. And during that time, up until recently, during that time, we were up double digit in sales, we were decreasing our speed of service numbers. We're getting great service. We offered curbside delivery at that point too, where we run it out for you so to say but as a convenience to the guests. So, we adapt in ways like that. What Joe alluded to now is probably our biggest challenges. Now we're struggling with the staffing situation. And while we're able to open up our diamonds, we don't have the staffing to be able to do so. And Joe's absolutely right to I have relatives in New Jersey and I have a lot of partners that I talked to in the business and like New Jersey and New York, Georgia was very relaxed as far as the restrictions throughout the country.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and I mean, we look around, and I'm here in Atlanta, with you guys. And it has been very relaxed. And we are very fortunate from that standpoint where you guys have made the decision to keep it close. It's not like you've been forced to close down your restaurant there. And, Chris, throwing it back to you. What's the status in Delaware right now? Are you guys at 50% capacity? Or is it up to the restaurant? 

Speaker: Chris Sockriter  

Yeah. So, we're still at 75% capacity. It's weird, because a lot of the states around us are going to 100% capacity with the spacing requirements still in place. For some reason, we're not quite there yet, we've gotten some of the bar seating back, they've relaxed a little bit on the parties and how big the party size can be, and stuff like that. But it's been ever changing. I think that the last I looked, there was 30, we had a state of emergency order that came out from the Governor, I believe there was like 31, or 32, versions of that, that he kept changing things as we went. So, it's tough to keep up with, what is happening when and fortunately for us, our front office has kind of taken the brunt on that deal, our PR people and everybody who's in the operation side of the restaurants, they've been dealing with that much more intimately than I have. But, we're still not quite all the way back. And it's weird, because in our area, we call it down south, like Fenwick Island, more of a resort town and more, relaxed, then, maybe up in Lewis or [12:00] area, and even the towns had a little bit different way of dealing with things, not necessarily on the restaurant front, but just in general, so I felt like, when we first did this last summer, you can definitely tell a difference between Fenwick Island and how people were down there versus up in the north a little bit farther, and how people were kind of up here, and we're still kind of seeing that throughout all of our concepts. But yeah, the state of array now, I would say is just people ready to come back out. They're ready to get back into the restaurants. We're seeing a lot of people that we haven't seen for a year. So, I think they are slowly coming back, but we're not quite there all the way back yet.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, I think we could all say that we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, not to rub it in Chris. But then Kevin, Joe and myself have been seeing that for a couple months now. But hopefully, as a country, we're getting to that point. But Joe and Kevin mentioned that staffing has been the biggest issue. And they continue to see that issue. Now that's nothing new in the restaurant space. That's always going to be the case. But would you say that's your biggest issue up in Delaware, or would you say having to follow the 30 some odd regulations that have been thrown at you has been more challenging than that?

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yeah, I think that, I mean, throughout this whole thing, there's been challenge after challenge after challenge. I mean, for us, and you guys were definitely fortunate to have the drive thru business and the to go business kind of already set up. For us, it was trying to figure out, as these regulations came down, it was trying to figure out how to maximize what we were given. So obviously, you can fight all you want, but when the governor says you only get 50% capacity, that's what you got. So, I think for us, it was trying to figure out, how to reorganize our table settings and how to reorganize the restaurants and what we could and couldn't do to get that 50% safely in the restaurant. And that was really, for the first six, eight months of what we were doing was just trying to, build barriers and figure out how to put people back to back safely and  try to maximize what we were given and, staffing for sure we definitely have a little bit of a shortage I don't think it's nearly as bad here as it is. Maybe down there we've done kind of the same thing that Kevin talked about, we kind of double down on our staff and really push the kind of keep them in and keep them involved and the people that work with us and stayed working with us full time for years we really tried to make a place for them in our to go models and we definitely had our curbside carry out and things like that. So, as we kind of tweaked and revamp things, we made space for a lot of those people. So we don't have it quite as bad. And I haven't seen restaurants that like haven't opened yet, because they're having staffing shortages. But there's definitely a push to hire right now. And that's, for us being seasonal. That's kind of normal anyway. So, I wouldn't say it's our biggest challenge. I think the biggest challenge right now is just, we're in a waiting game with the government to see kind of when we can do when we can get back to 100%. But I don't think we're nearly as bad off staff as it sounds like you guys might be.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton 

Yeah. And you mentioned, all of you have hit on this as far as takeout and just how you guys had to adjust to the regulations in place, whether it's in here in Atlanta or up in Delaware. But regardless, the customer, their experience has changed and has probably been impacted. No ongoing. Do you foresee Kevin do that the habit, the customer habit of going into a restaurant changing after having a year of just takeout for the most part?

Speaker: Kevin Pollock 

I think it's very potential that we're going to be looking at a new norm. We are just now because of staffing. As we're trying to reopen our lobbies and eat ease back into it, where you're going to allow, we're going to discontinue the curbside and ask our third party delivery and anyone who uses the online app to come inside. Most of that's being driven by the fact that it's a staffing situation. So, we don't have to have a runner out there. We've tested it one week, so far, one of our stores and I thought we'd get a lot of customer complaints, we have not gotten one customer complaint, I think they're happy to come inside, we have had some issues where we've asked guests to have a mask as a requirement. And because we have such relaxed regulations here, we get a lot of folks coming in without a mask. And we try to do the right thing and take care of them. But we're really about protecting our employees more than anything at this point.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and Joe, you're sitting here shaking your head.

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

Yeah, so similarly, our dining rooms did open up right away. And I am in a very non masking area. It's not required, right. They're very optional. And we know how polarizing that conversation is. We, as Kevin said, we had to think long and hard when the regulations dropped, what do we want to do? What do we want to speak to our people, right? What do we want to know them to know what's important? And so we even still today, we're in masks unnecessarily from a legal perspective. But we had to weigh out what's the harm, right? Which one is more harmful? If our staff is not in masks, and the guests come in, and really think that's irresponsible, and we're putting these kids and their families at risk. That's tangibly harmful. The flip side was wearing masks and people who think masks are completely unnecessary are going to be in the diner and going, why are these fools in masks That's a lot less harmful. So, when it comes down to it, we chose to keep the masks on which, we all know, is a double challenge in the kitchen. But yeah, it was. We are the only ones masks in our buildings, our guests to 90% are not in masks, they were ready to get back out as soon as places started opening up. And, again, I understand for Kevin, we are actually approaching [inaudible 18:35] situation now to where we have to contemplate which restaurant do we close dining rooms, so we can distribute those employees to keep the other ones open? Because it is a critical employee issue right now. And again, we didn't lay anyone off, right? It was never much to what Chris said, from a maintenance perspective, I actually brought on a full time and part time facility person with me during COVID. And we struggle, putting pie in the sky ads out there saying, we'll pay you, $14 an hour if you can come and work 30 hours a week, and there's no traction. So that's when it became, very evident as I talk with you guys on other calls that wow, it's not just this area, this specific problem. This is a universal issue right now.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah. And you mentioned that the customers that are coming in right now. Are you seeing a pickup in that just to go in and sit down? And are you projecting that to be the case as well where it evens out or gets back to, you know, pre 2020 numbers where your ratio of to go and pick up and dine in are going to be back to normal?

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

I mean, and Kevin also said, our third party services went through the roof, the amount of GrubHub, UberEATS, DoorDash, you name them, you know, is flying out of our restaurants overcoming, again, there's no loss anyway. And this is in addition too. So, I think the people who aren't comfortable coming out, still want Zach Spees, still want their Dairy Queen still want what they want. And there are systems in place to help that. Who knows with your the economic climate of things, right? Are things going to settle down and people stop? Or are they just on this crazy spending spree out of we've been locked down for so long. Let's go and they go crazy. I mean, our dining rooms are.. for lunch, they're packed, dinner, large families like we've never seen, instead of just the two offset a table, it's which compounds the crushing employee problem, right? Plus 20%, sales, minus 10%, of labor, it just doesn't compute.

Speaker: Kevin Pollock  

I think it's definitely going to change the way people dinning in the future, I think there are other concepts out there larger QSR concepts that have noticed that and are willing to change the footprint of their design for buildings to go to possibly drive through only or much smaller dining areas, because I think the customers change, not to mention the cost of building these square footage buildings is quite costly. And I think the customers with the third party, especially they like the fact that they can have it come to them when they want it. So, in that respect, I do believe we're going to see the future change. I don't think we need the lobbies that we currently have to be successful. That being said, like Joe said, I do believe there's a portion of that people and my wife and I being one of them, I like to go in and I want to sit down and I want to enjoy a meal. I think we're at least two months away before we're even in a position to do that at our locations. And we want to do it strategically like Joe was talking about, we don't want to have a guest one day bill, use the lobby and the next day not be able to so we've been very strategic to how we're going to do and that's why I've seen we're easing into it right first with the third party delivery, let them come in and get their food. Because right now, when we look at our staffing, probably 99% of them were hired before lobby was everything, after lobby was closed, so they don't even know what that operation looks like when the operation is open. So, there would be a whole new training piece that needs to go into this.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and Chris, with the different concepts that you guys have the change that Kevin just brought up as far as having, concept, just based solely off of the drive thru or to go and having these very small, brick and mortar locations. What are you guys doing as you look ahead? How are you changing the strategy as you're looking at it from that standpoint?

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yes, I give our ownership a lot of credit on this. So, in the process of COVID, we've been designing another restaurant, something that we want to build, and we had these meetings where, we're talking about to go areas, and how we're going to incorporate that into our designs and things like that. So, we definitely, at least if nothing else, that it's caused us to kind of take a step back and look at the future and say, well, is it something that we need to consider long term or not? As far as the customers go, we've definitely seen people as the restaurants have opened back up inside, we've definitely seen the people forego getting their curbside delivery, and they've come in the restaurants to eat. So in our concepts, that's really where the experience lives. And that's really what, sets us apart in some ways from the other locations around here, is that dining experience inside, so we don't want to lose that. And so, we're not trying to push the business in that way. But at the same time, and I'm guilty of this as well, for a family of five, that would normally not go to a higher end because of trying to wrangle kids and get them all in seats and keep them there and all that stuff. It's nice to be able to pull up to a fairly nice restaurant and get a nice steak and some seafood to go and eat it with your kids run around like crazy. So, I think that it definitely has made us think harder about how we're going to operate moving forward and I think you guys touched on as well. We've had a couple of locations that really pushed all the chips into the to go, into the curbside carry out stuff. And we've seen it explode in certain places. Of course, some of restaurants, it just didn't translate. And it wasn't quite the same as the inside experience. So, it didn't work out. But some of our locations, it really went well. And now we're working on trying to figure out, making those areas more permanent. And now that the dining rooms are opening back up, some of those dining rooms were never meant to have, carry out areas. So, we're trying to fit those things in and make them look like part of the restaurant not an afterthought. So yeah, I think it's definitely changed our model, it's definitely changed how the conversations go, and especially moving forward into the new restaurant stuff, it's definitely caused us to take a step back and figure on having some of that stuff built in more.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and in looking at it from, Kim retrofitting what you just mentioned, as far as having to change the aesthetics, and the FM or operations management capacity, I mean, that's on your shoulders, right. And so, 3d had the position that I'm not envious of having to get creative and think of different solutions to this pandemic. So, what have you guys been doing to really adjust to this new norm that we've been living in?

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

I'll start man. So, we did a whole bunch of stuff. In trying to get the restaurants back up to that percentage stuff that we talked about and trying to make use of, you know, if we had, at one point, we had 25% capacity and it kind of level out at 50 for quite a while. But, you know, back to back booze, we were allowed to have the booze, but you had to have some sort of physical barrier between, the backs of each person. So, we retrofitted all of our restaurants, with specifically built pieces to go on those booths. That matched the themes iandn the feel of the restaurant. A lot of people in our area, especially, one of the funniest examples was an Outback down the road from us had these like cardboard printout. They look like wood, but they really weren't wood. And it just kind of looked like an afterthought. And we were trying to stay ahead of stuff like that and make it seem like we were at least putting some thought into it and trying to protect the guests and making sure that they felt comfortable. And at one point, when you walk into restaurants, and there were booths back, to back, to back, and it just looked like these little pods that people were sitting in. But we got rave reviews on them. So, we kind of listened to the customers as well. And even as crazy as we thought some of the stuff was, we would try it out and find out that they really, felt safe in there, they felt like they were taken care of. And the more we could do that, the better we felt like we were going to do long term. So that was a huge thing we have a lot of outside areas, some really big outside areas that we use in the summertime, we rented tents, did some creative things on trying to get them in place and heaters underneath of them and outdoor spaces with heaters, even into December and January, February, we still had people sitting outside with heat running. So, we had to solve problems with propane deliveries and, buying and assembling a bunch of heaters and keeping them running. So yeah, it was and still is a massive challenge, just trying to keep up with what our customers really wanted out of us. And being able to maximize the opportunities that were in front of us. And then like I said, we took the opportunity kind of like what Joe said, when you have the opportunity to do some things in the restaurant, you want to take them so we did the same thing. We started working on some renovation stuff and floors and some equipment that we wanted to get changed out stuff like that. So, we kind of double down on the inside of the facilities as well. So it's been a busy stretch pretty much from last summer, rolling through into now. it's been busy.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Now, were you relying or did you have anyone that you can fall back on and bounce ideas off of? Like, in your network or in your community.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yes. So, as far as from a facilities perspective know. I'm fortunate to work with really great people, and a lot of them on the restaurant operation side. We have our weekly meetings anyway, we meet Mondays and Fridays. So, we would use those meetings to kind of bounce these ideas back and forth. And somebody would say, well, we want to do some sort of barrier. And then I would say okay, well, this is what's possible, and this is what we can do. And here's who we can contract to do it. And here's roughly what I think the cost would be and then we kind of bounced back and forth on, yeah, that'll work or no it won't work or it's too expensive or no it looks crazy. And we also are fortunate enough to have a design team. So, we have two people whose job is to make sure that all of our restaurants are cohesive, and that they make sense. And it doesn't have some weird thing stuck in the middle of the dining room. So, as much of a pain as they are to me, we love them, and they and they do a great job. So, we were able to bounce ideas off of them. So really became very collaborative on, solving each of these little things as they came up. And each of us had to give a little bit on the end product. And it may be was deep or wasn't as fast as I wanted it to be. But it was the right look for the restaurant. So, I would say that our internal team was really, you know.. we worked quite a lot on making sure all that stuff came together.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Kevin, what did you guys do down here?

Speaker: Kevin Pollock 

Well, we didn't reopen the lobby. So, we didn't do any kind of design work, we did have things drawn up, we did get estimates and bids. And we didn't go that far, because it was quite costly. I feel for Chris having to do that. I'm sure it wasn't cheap, and your sales are down. So, we were kind of like, let's see, we were up double digit through drives thru only. But one of the things we did invest quite a bit of money in was we did have a third-party vendor come in and sanitize the buildings on a quarterly if not monthly basis, depending where we were. We invested some deep cleaning as well during this time. And so, we did put quite a bit of dollars out into maintaining the safety and sanitation of our facilities during this time.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

And Joe, you mentioned earlier that you guys invested in adding headcount. So, sounds like the three of you guys work for organizations that viewed this as an opportunity to okay, we're down in sales, but let's invest in facilities, let's make adjustments for short term, but also long term, and different headcount. As I just mentioned, Joe, so that that is quite unique, that you guys had that opportunity to take advantage of the circumstances there.

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

Well, in our case, specifically, all of the, again, those adaptations that Chris is talking about, our restaurants, specifically ours, Zach Spees restaurants, I mean, they're back-to-back boothing around the perimeter. So, when we opened, it was, just as simple as every other booth, right, that's what we did. We removed half of the tables, but we had some, I would say two or three weeks of, that critical what Chris was talking about where we said, okay, so I mean, our facility only allows for maybe four cars, right, between where you order and where they get the food. How do we elongate that? You know, we don't have someone outside. How do I run 100 foot of a cable to get equipment outside so we can help expedite the process, we found a natural problem of when the dining rooms were closed, was there a lot of commercial truck drivers in my area. And I had a friend of mine personally, who was like, I can't get food anywhere, because there's no dining rooms open. And, I shared that with our ownership. And we printed banners, we have empty parking lots. So, we printed banners with the store number and said big trucks give us a call. And that was wildly successful. But in those two or three weeks of us going, what are we going to do to survive? We got off the hook because we immediately were served up double digits through the drive thru and say, well, wait a minute, we're not going to have to fight to survive. Now we can invest to improve. And that's, what all these guys are talking about. Yeah, we just grew and invested in again, the extra maintenance hands were housekeeping, to what Kevin said, I didn't have to third party yet thankfully, I was able to invest in the right products when they were available. And we were able to just, maintenance, assault, our location on a given morning and just top to bottom it.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

And looking at... Chris, I don't know, were you about to say something?

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yeah, I was going to say so on the sanitizing stuff, we kind of did the same thing. From what Joe said, we brought in some dollars and definitely put it into getting the restaurant fog and stuff like that. But we learned from putting out those dollars, what exactly was the right method. And there really isn't any certifications or anything around here. We were able to do it in house. So that was a huge plus. And the other thing I was going to say Joe is in our area too, I kind of saw what you were seeing with the parking lots. We had a lot of restaurants around here that just had chains and snakes of cars going around the buildings using the parking lots as to go areas and stuff like that. So yeah, kudos to you guys.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

You Yeah, and I mean, on the note of the cleaning, and as we look forward beyond, COVID in this time period, is that Something that's here to stay. That type of investment in the deep cleaning because we all keep up the facilities, we try to stay as clean as possible. But I imagine that was a first for that thorough of a cleaning, using that type of equipment and chemical. Is that something that's going to be here to stay?

Speaker: Kevin Pollock  

I'm not sure we've talked about it. We're still in talks about should we continue that? So, the jury's still out. Unfortunately, I think it all for us, again, we don't have the inside help to be able to do it ourselves. I wish we did. I think that whole staffing piece will dictate that as we move along, I can tell you over the past three months with the staffing situation, I've been talking about having that company come back. And besides the sanitation just a real good deep cleaning piece, because we just haven't had the people to put that effort into like we used to a year ago or a year and a half ago.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Yeah, I think for us, I think having the internal team, we have a staff we call them asset management. But we were able to kind of utilize that staff to do some of the spraying and stuff like that, I think that we're kind of in the ramp down phase now. But we're letting the customers kind of dictate whether or not, that's something we're going to end up doing long term or not. And I think that we've got it figured out now on down to a science, we know how to do it, we know how much it costs, we know how long it takes. So, I'm kind of curious as we go into as, hopefully as COVID starts to progress and go away as an initial threat. I'm wondering, next year, when flu season comes around, and think that up in the Northeast here a little farther, that's the thing for us. And we usually lose staff for that, I don't know if some of the things that we learned from COVID will actually transfer over into normal everyday life. If COVID is still a thing, if we'll continue on, those are definitely conversations we're still having as well. But fortunately, I think we learned a lot of lessons. And our staff learned a lot of lessons too. So, I think that just training them on how to sanitize the handles, and sanitize all the high touch areas and stuff like that I think those kinds of things will live on for a while. And I think in some cases, I think they should. And in some cases, it's just a giant pain in the butt. But I think long term it you'll definitely see some things carry over from what we learned. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

And from a health inspector, or any sort of compliance related issues, has there been any official changes along those lines?

Speaker: Kevin Pollock 

Not that I've seen particularly from the state health agencies, nothing has changed.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

Not that I'm aware of, I mean, they have been there for a while. they, of course, everybody the state agencies weren’t coming around and checking like they used to, but when they did started coming back around, they were just really concerned with hand washing stations, making sure that soaps and everything was set up, right. And there were correct distances and stuff like that. But I mean, that’s all compliance stuff that we would normally do anyway, they just put a little bit more emphasis on it.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

So those deep cleanings those were essentially voluntary, on your end, making sure that you're doing everything you could.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter  

It was mostly for the staff. Really, I mean, when you're trying to put people at ease about coming to work, serving people and wearing masks, and gloves, if they were in the back of a house or something like that, it makes them feel better knowing that the restaurant is getting basically reset to zero at some point. And that they're not going to come in and pick it up, just walking around or if, there were potential cases or anything like that, I think it's more of just a peace of mind for them.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

And looking at, you guys hit on technology a little bit as we continue with the theme of looking forward, past COVID. You guys use third party delivery services quite a bit. What other role or what other technologies that you guys use? Whether it be communication, or just advertising, whatever, it may be how technology gets you guys through this as well?

 Kevin Pollock : Well, I think Zach Spees has done a big push on their online application as well as the use of it and getting more members to use online apps. And I think our guests at the store, realize or perceived anyway, that if they use the online app, they're going to get a better service, quicker service experience, real or perceived.  I think they've gotten a lot of participation.  So, that has changed as far as other technology. Joe alluded to the throughput at the drive thru, when 70% of your business, if we go back to normal at 80 you've got to be able to put more cars through. And when you have a four car stack or five car stack, they're experimenting with new technology, iPad ordering, so you can go way past the order board. We could argue whether it's really fast or if it gives the guests more of a perception, but it gives the kitchen more production time so that by the time they get to the window, it speeds up that window type very well. So there are a lot of investment being done by the licensees ourselves, including with the investment in iPads, and there's some Wi-Fi requirements and the ability to pay outside like card, and so a lot of people, I think Joe was alluding to the handmade and some pay stations outside, which I would never do for part of the reason of where we have businesses are not the best parts of town and I wouldn't even think about it. But there's technology that will allow us to do that. And we're looking to a lot of that right now. I'm assuming Joe, is doing that as well. But

Speaker: Joe Sharp  

Again, Zach Spees has done a very good job supporting us during this, with the ramp up of the third party, they have improved, in some areas that the ordering system and how it translates to the kitchen, what we see has become a different system, right? They go from right, I have eight people's orders in front of me now instead of four, how do we streamline that our system was built to look at four orders at a time. Well, we want to give the kitchen every chance to serve the guests as quickly as they can. The Zach Spees has rolled out a lot of improvements. And, we have Dairy Queen on the other side of ours, and they equally did the same.   So, it hasn't been anything on our part that we had to engage in. And I'm a technology head, I love to automate everything, but I was doing that, before COVID, and those things didn't really come into play or be helpful. But our, franchisors really reached out and saw the needs, and they provided what we needed. Like I said, we didn’t  actually  go to the building outside because we saw very quickly, we didn't have to, we were prepared to run 100 feet of cable and take orders there. And then we went okay, maybe not. But from a technology side, definitely a kudos to our current companies.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Chris, you didn't have that luxury.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

No, so on a different level, we definitely invested in our to go software, ramped it up, pushed it out to a couple other locations. So yes, there was a portion of that was directly related to food ordering and things like that. But for the most part, it just kind of changed how we did business in our front office, we’re very social groups, like I said, our Monday meetings were all in a room, we all sat around and talked about what was going to happen. Friday meetings were kind of similar. For us we obviously went to zoom for all that stuff. And there was a difference in communication and how I pushed out information to all the restaurants and how they pushed information to us. So it really changed kind of the way that we communicate within the company, to the point where those meetings actually changed formats dramatically in the last couple months, we've actually blown up our past, kind of how we did things and reworked it because it wasn't needed anymore. Because we were able to push out the information in a different way, we didn't have to sit and talk about it.  So we’re using those meetings for different things now. And it's changed a little bit of kind of how things flow around the company, which is interesting to watch. And then from a perspective of outside vendors, it made people more comfortable. It made me [break in audio 44:04]. So you can now zoom into a contractor and have a conversation that you normally would have in person or have to meet on a job site or something like that. And sometimes, you’d get there and have the conversation that lasted five minutes, but you had to meet so you had to drive a half an hour and sit in traffic the whole nine yards. And I think people now are more comfortable with the online platforms and facetimes and things like that. It’s kind of been a little bit of a blessing in disguise for us. I can operate a little bit higher level from an Office perspective and not have to be everywhere at one time and be able to get information in and out quickly.  It’s definitely been a change but I think a positive change for sure.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

A lot of people look at corporate as the industries that are realized they don't need office space. They don't need that, in person. Part of their job. And I mean, you've made a great point there where now people, they are forced to get comfortable with these platforms to have FaceTime, to zoom, whatever it may be. And to your point, I mean, that's getting the back tremendous amount of time and take away from the drive time, the gas there, so on and so forth. So that forced, I guess, adoption of technology, I'm sure you guys are going to continue to see the benefits of that moving forward. Well, again, this has been really great. Picking each one of your brains about kind of the impact that it had on each of your unique situations. I certainly appreciate the time. And we'll go around one more time, any parting words or any comments about this last year and the industry moving forward? And again, Chris, we'll start with you.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

So I think the two things that I want to kind of pull out of this whole thing is there's operators and, in my world subcontractors we use on a daily basis, and there were some that just never really picked up the ball and ran with it, they just kind of accepted defeat, and went about their business as usual. And I think you'll see a separation happened between the companies, that took what they were given and made the best of it and push forward and innovated and did things and it sounds like everybody on this call was in was in a good situation there. But you also see the ones that didn't, start to kind of really struggle. And I think that we're seeing that with a lot of subcontractors, we're seeing that with.. it's kind of [inaudible 46:38], when you think a little bit about, who we're getting to do business with, and how we're going to do business moving forward from a facility side. And I think he kind of touched on it, I think, it almost forced us to operate at 130%. So now I feel like that 130% is now the new 100%, you know, you're not going to be able to go and kind of give those excuses of, well, we can't get it done. Because of this, if we got it done in the pandemic, then we can get it done. And it's just for my guys. And for everybody we talked to [break in audio 47:16] a little eye opening, to see the potential and people come out. And some people rose to the occasion, and some people didn't. But I think it was a an interesting, if nothing else, it pointed to a lot of things in the restaurants that we could do better, that we could change for the better.  I kind of look at it as a blessing in disguise. I know, certainly the pandemic was not a blessing. But if you're going to take something from it, I felt like you could definitely look around and see who you were in with and who you weren't in with. So, I'm kind of utilizing that on the facility side to just to make some changes moving forward. And, pick the best people for the right positions.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah and Kevin we will go with you.

Speaker: Kevin Pollock   

I love what Chris just said, I tried to look at the glass half full and why nobody wanted this to happen. I think it just exposed how resilient as a team, we are. Not only internally, but externally as a group of fraternity of folks, so to speak, the successful ones. I think the teamwork that has come and the creativity that has come has been outstanding. But Chris hit it right on the head, the productivity that has come out of this. And maybe you don't want to go the guardrail we're at right now. But it clearly shows that when we put our minds to it we can be creative and efficient. And I think that's what we've all tried to do make the best out of what we had. And it's been very quite remarkable to see quite honestly and keeping positive attitudes. The one other piece that we didn't talk about that I'm seeing is this whole workforce issue is bigger than just us at this table. It's all our suppliers. It's the people who manufacture our source and then what have you. I mean, it's not unusual for me to have a truck delivery delayed by a day because they don't have truck drivers or you name it, we're out of source because the manufacturer didn't have enough people to make it.  So it goes much deeper than right here at this level. I just hope that our guests and people smarter than us at this table understand that and can educate the folks about it, because it's tough sometimes dealing with the general public when they don't understand, you know, they're always right. But the reality is they're not always right. But they need to understand that there's a lot on social media now about, giving praise to the restaurant workers for how hard they are working and understanding what they put up with. And so, it's a great industry, still is a great industry. And I have to believe that we will survive this and come out better.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton 

Yeah, and Chris, I think you mentioned that you had something else on that point.

Speaker: Chris Sockriter 

I think that's a huge point what Kevin said about it, going farther than this table. So one of the things that that has been kind of a, I'm not going to say a break, but kind of a something I take to the meetings is the excuses that people give about what they can, what they can't [inaudible 50:12] it has been shocking. Some of the stuff that we've come back with, from our equipment vendors, and freight companies and all the different places that we that we deal with has been super interesting. And I think that not only pandemic, but we also had, the Texas freeze, the Suez Canal, we've had all these crazy things happen in the year, and it's been piled on a little bit. But a man, ordering equipment and trying to get things in and, freight has been a huge challenge. And I look forward to the excuses, because it makes me work that much harder trying to find a way around it to prove that it is, in fact possible, and you can't just stop everything COVID are because Texas froze. And while I understand that's definitely a thing, and it's definitely affected a lot of the industries, man, it's just, it feels like people are just using it as a huge crutch to not be able to deliver when they say they are, what they say they are.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Yeah, and I mean, I kind of roll my eyes at some point where, it's we're all in this together. Well, we really are all in it together, and we are fighting it. And just because we are going through the craziest set of circumstances that anyone has ever seen, doesn't mean we can't do it. I mean, we've all hit it on the head earlier, as far as the resiliency that we've seen. And this is with different organizations and different parts of the company. And just by human nature, we have the ability to get creative and work around a solution. So, I'm right there with you, Chris, word. I'm interested whenever someone has that as an excuse, but it's not like they're the only ones going through it. And so, let's get our heads together, put our heads together and see what we can do to overcome this. And Joe, you're shaking your head earlier?

Speaker: Joe Sharp 

Oh, well, the, the equipment. Just the accessibility issue that Kevin brought up. And that was, what the tap on and just say, right. From a facility side, now we're dealing with, right, the excuse to every issue is what COVID? Sorry, well, what do you mean, there's six weeks? It used to take me a while COVID.  well, do I tell or so we're just not going to have chicken because you don't have a truck driver to deliver the food? Well, COVID it's like, the resiliency, Kevin used the word resiliency, it sounds like all of our operations are very similar. And it gave us an opportunity to serve our staff, and to really show you them, you valued the, right, the villainy of corporations, right is on display for everyone to see. And  so for organizations, to say, well, let me bring in a third party to clean everything, let me make sure you understand, we have a lot of, high school aged kids who work in our industry, and we're dealing with a lot of parents explaining to them, you know, we're doing everything we can to protect your children. And then, thank you, Georgia, and the South, because our fans and our guests here, I can say have been phenomenal. It also gave us an opportunity to really connect with our communities, again, there's no, hey, the bright side of COVID, right, it's been terrible, it's horrible, but the community that is here, right, the resiliency that it shows and the support we received back is very encouraging, there were people who did go out of their way to thank. The reason you're waiting so long isn't for the fault of the people who showed up to work today. They're the ones getting it done to people who aren't here. And most people in our [inaudible 54:06] he extended a lot of grace and a lot of love, and that's the culture, it sounds like that exists in all of our organization's here. And that was the best of anything reflection on what we can take from it. And that going forward, we just continue on the same with that valuation of our people and our guests. And the technology will change, the policies will change or they won't, but the culture stays the same.

 Speaker: Griffin Hamilton

Very well said. Well, gentlemen, once again, thank you for making the time. It's been a pleasure catching up with each one of you guys and appreciate your unique perspectives on this last year that we've all gone through. And I'm happy to hear that everyone here has had at least taking some positives out of the service circumstances and I'm excited to see where each one of us are here in the next 12 months. But I'll let each we get back to it. And we’ll talk soon. 

[cross talk 55:12] 

Outro:

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