What’s Cooking EP #01

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Hey, everyone. Connor here. Founder and CEO of Nori. And welcome to What's Cooking. The generational shift is happening in hospitality at the moment. Consumer preferences are moving faster than ever. Operational challenges are growing week over week, and technology is adapting and growing at a faster rate than we've ever seen before. In this podcast, we're going to meet guests from the hospitality industry who are pivoting, moving, shaking to stay ahead of the trends and make sure their businesses are not just surviving, but thriving. So starting with the operational traits, we're working with thousands of restaurants, you can clearly see what helps businesses make sure that they can thrive versus just survive. And the three key things that we see, tricky rates between these businesses, the number one is a relentless focus on guest experience. Hospitality is all about the guest experience. You need to deliver an awesome experience, whether it's the first person through the door or the last person to leave at night seven days a week. Everybody gets into this business to deliver awesome experiences, to make people feel good and make sure that they have the best time possible. Frequenting your venue. That means you need to be laser tight on guests experience metrics. What's the sentiment look like? What's your advocacy scores? If people are happy, unhappy, what parts of the business is performing well or not performing well? You need to be all over this. The guest comes first before anything else. There is no profit. Whatever the guest number two is empowering frontline teams with the treaty's tools, training and technology. As we said, the industry has never been moving faster before but never faced as many challenges as before. IT teams need to be empowered. They need to know exactly what's important to the business to be aligned on what's the most important thing for the business right now. They need to be trained in top level to make sure that they can deliver on the business goals. They need the technology to be able to manage the business, be able to manage the guest experience and manage the bottom line. You need to make sure your frontline teams are empowered if you want to be successful and last as focus. Every hospitality business wants to change everything all the time. Every quarter when you do your planning exercise, there's going to be a laundry list of things you think need to change. It's just too much you need to really narrow in and focus on what is the one thing or the one metric that matters most to your business for the next 12 weeks. Look to try and focus on improving that. I could be guest experience metrics that could be productivity or profitability metric. Get your team aligned behind one core focus. Make sure you make meaningful progress against that metric and meaningful success against us, and then you can move on to the next thing. The biggest failure we see is when people try to take on too much, too soon. At the same time, it seems that actually deliver again, like we said, an awesome guest experience. They need to focus on that. Everything else is secondary. But if you're going to introduce change, do it and bite sizes and make sure your teams are truly focused on delivering what's most important first before they move on to the next thing. I recently caught up with Tom James, the M.D. of Bills for fascinating conversation. Tom is a seasoned operator and you get a huge amount of insights and value from our conversation. Tom started his career tending bar has grown all the way to leading one of the nation's biggest brands and bills. You're going to get a huge amount of insight from our conversation, what metrics he looks at, what's important in the business, how focused they are on the guest experience, helps keep your team aligned. Tom covers all this and more, and I personally got a huge amount of value. I know you will to. Hi. Welcome to What's Cooking. Thanks very much. It's great to have you. Astrobee Sphere. We're going to run through a conversation on all things change and hospitality. It's never been a time for the industry that's been full of more change and more dynamism. But just to start us off, I suppose. How are things going this year for bills and for you, and how have you found the environment? I mean, look, we're coming off the back of two years, a fantastic trading. So it's it's always easier when you've got the wind in your sales. There's no question this year is more challenging. You know, really proud of the fact that we're staying ahead from a like for like basis and we're still in cover growth or something critical. But you have to work so much harder. You know, in our investment in digital marketing and getting the message out there and giving people a reason to come has never been more important. 100% consumer preferences have never changed as quickly or continue to change as much. Are you seeing that in bills as well? Yeah, totally. I mean, it's the most dynamic we speak about a lot. It's the most dynamic the market's ever been. But not just on a single front. It's not like guess, I guess behavior is changing. You know, the evolution and introduction of new technologies is is almost constant. I think I'm on top of it. And then you speak to someone, you know, and find out what they're doing, or you speak to one of the tech providers and you realize you're out of date already within sort of four weeks. And so I think it's it's certainly demanding of leaders and businesses and in the current environment. The flipside of that, it is also about it's never been more exciting in terms of the opportunities out there and and what you can do and how much you can push it. Get bored of the whys, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And when we were speaking for you mentioned that change management is one of the top skills or top three skills you need to have as a hospitality leader. And how do you see that? And could you give us an example of a big change about to undergo bills recently? I think it's I mean, it is critical in the modern world in terms of anyone who's a be astonished that we are going backwards and in the current environment and I apologize to them I actually size our pockets are up in the next next half an hour or so. But I think the biggest challenge was actually when I first started that role is we did a list of everything we wanted to change and everything where we felt we were behind the market. And after two days it was supposed to be a four hour meeting ended up lasting two days. We had a list of 187 things that we wanted to implement over 12 months. And, you know, Bills has been around for 20 years. It's a legacy brands. A lot of the team had been there for ten, 15 years. So trying to drive that change was was we knew was going to be the challenge and really really tough. And and I think the the winning formula, if you like was giving a really simple message to the teams that everyone could understand that they bought into. I think often with change, the problem is you explain the action or the how without without really getting into detail of the why. And so we came up with our goal, if you like, if everyone was happy. And that was it's something that people can understand. So we are doing all this change and it's going to be incredibly demanding of your time and your mental capacity, and you're going to have to do things differently because the operators don't like change. Normally good operators are metronomic in their approach to a shift a day, you know, Turkey on the line. And we were going to we were going to check that out. But I think when people bought into the reason why and he said this is all for the benefit of either you and your team or the guest and that's why we're doing and explain that that kind of gave us license to push that change. And it and it was bloody tough, but we were we were changing everything, you know, from the visual identity to the service steps, to the booking process, to the gas journey. And it was massive, but it was all needed. And the really nice thing, I think when you give people a reason for change and I sort of buy into it and they they fight for it. When the results started coming through, you kind of knew we were on to something because they saw change as a positive rather than as a negative. Super interesting. We always talk about focus internally. I'm in my own restaurants as well. Every quarter you have a laundry list of things you need to be better at and it's like, how do you narrow it down into from 187 to the top one or two things that will really make a difference? Do you talk about getting people onside as being huge get behind the way to to remove resistance? How did you narrow down into what was really going to be most important to business? I think just a really clear priority list in terms of what we did was present the whole year and what we were doing when and making sure that it was deliverable and it wasn't going to stretch or sort of too much pressure. I think that's the real challenge now is, you know, you can fight on 48 different fronts, but so much science. The guy really people can only focus on one thing or two things. And so how do you prioritize what's important? How do you make sure that it gets delivered? How do you look back around to make sure that it's, you know, it's actually deliver the result you want and then embedded into the culture. So you don't need to keep going back and revisiting it. And it's just another task. And so we were really transparent. We sort of said. These are the actions. And it wasn't 287 acts and actions that all impacted sites. You know, that was probably of those 40 or 50 affected sites. But it was having that clear what's the goal? How do we make it digestible? And then presenting it to the whole Titanic over the 12 months. And we now do that every year. We met in Birmingham on February and said this year, these are the goals, these are the milestones, this is why we're doing it. And that's really been really nice to see. You know, people look at traditional operators to go, Yeah, I'm on board with that and let's see what happens. It's a big thing for them to see results, those who are tracking in the right direction. I don't think if we hadn't got the results, I think I'd have been a few more questions asked and change would have been more difficult. So and it was, you know, some of that was it was a real risk. You know, we changed the bonus scheme was all about gas metrics, you know, which which there was there were some questions asked. You can imagine a grizzly after saying, well, hang on a minute. You know, does this mean they're not going to be focused on the finances? But it was really going back to the basics of what may be successful, but go back thousands of years. Why hospitality? This, you know, we're in the business of making people happy and making sure they have a good time. And throughout my whole career, I have probably never seen a business where it's a great team making sure guests are happy and they have a serious problem with their pay. Now, it's sort of my first job as a GM. I'm not sure I really understood panels, but I did understand service and teams and how to make sure I set up and then the numbers take care of themselves. The caveat is a very clever financial team behind the scenes who are actually doing a lot of the controls and hard work to get a license for that. And that was a big part of the strategy. It's very cool. And so some great successes rate late for like for Mr. Strong. Yeah, it's obviously a testament to the relentless focus on the guest experience and that gets the team rally behind a really compelling way. I think giving a great experience and want to be a real popular brand is a much more compelling way than just profitability. Totally. No one choice joins hospitality to make profit. They join because they want to have a fun job and they want to make people happy. And it's it's so rewarding. You know, as a waiter, you can influence 200 people a day and get, you know, if you love praise, which I think a lot of people in hospitality do, I can't think of another job where you can genuinely have 100 people a day saying thank you. That was amazing. I really enjoyed myself and gives you a buzz and that was the reason I joined. It fell in love with it and dropped out of uni and said, No, this is what I want to do and I'm not sure. There's as much focus on that now for the teams. You know, one of the things that's always upset me with the industry is, is the experience that I had and what converted me. I'm not sure exists. And now there are reasons for that. Obviously, there's huge cost implications compared to 1995, 96 when I started working in a bar. But but the fundamentals have got to stay the same. You've got to read. And the reason why people go to restaurants is for great service and to have an experience. So if you lose focus in that and there are so many examples over the last 15, 20 years why brands under cost pressure have, you know, diminished the guest experience and diminish the product. And you can see where that ends. Yeah. On a slippery slope, right? Yeah, it is an it's a test mark. So you've had some very successful execution. So kudos for this year. You look back at any you've run a couple of evolutions and format changes in the last three years. Anything you look back and go because they're not better or any mistakes. Yeah, I think when we were looking at a different service style, you know, there's, there's the sort of mechanical side of looking at how we can introduce tack and how would that impact the gas journey. And you know, when we did the cafe bars originally, we sort of said, listen, we're going to zone the areas. So some of the restaurants will be just order a table or order through the kiosk. And I was so passionate to make that work because you saw it working really well in other businesses. And it was a heck of a heck of a saving from a labor perspective, rather. And I sort of camped out in Newbury for four weeks, and that was a real lesson for me for just watching the guest. And what was really clear is that's not what the bill's guest wanted. And as I said earlier, when you're in the business of making people happy, it was kind of for four weeks. Listen, this isn't what Bill's guest, once it was actually was then a sweet spot, which still had savings and benefits for everyone was was the hybrid of that. So that would still be an option of of type of service. But if you're in a rush and that's really interesting with the current market, is that people, you know, if you're going in to Bill's fair, you've got a meeting in half an hour, you probably will want to use and pay and use the QR code because you want to be in charge of the time and the speed. Yeah. If you're going in with your family at the weekend, you want the full service experience because you've got more time and, and it's really interesting to kind of market and how you need to adapt to guests. And I think the lesson for me there was don't go quicker than your guest. You know, a guest will want that experience and some other brands. But in bills that didn't, they wanted the interaction which was make sense and I'm glad I learned that lesson early one true the exact same experience in in in in martech and casual dining format rollout QR codes same same reason speed of service obviously impact efficiency and rolled back and then went the hybrid approach I think like guests is right right and you can see that in how they speak with their fees and to speak with the wallet. Yeah. So you could see the impact of that 100%. And I think having that data and I mean also, you know, from when you do this change and it's a big part that we encourage for all the senior leaders is watch it like me and I like we implement it and Newbury and there's a lot of diary management from my point of view but but I want it to be there for three or four weeks because it has huge implications. If it had gone a certain way, we rolled out the whole group actually. We have rolled out the hybrids and and it was still it was an amazing, sweet what 60% of guests are paying at table. 30% of guests are using the audacity. They're using it to order extra drinks or sides. And so it's it was amazing to actually see it and look at the data coming through and say, for our brand, this is the best use and turn a negative into a positive. It's kind of two pieces to that. A lot of that front facing technology has been driven by changing consumer preferences. So you say the bigger share of the wallet is gen-z right now for a lot of dining. They're in their phones every day. Obviously, it's a staple of life. And how do you see that changing the rest of the business outside of situations like that? I mean, it's only going to grow. And I think that's what was really good about doing that whole piece of work is, you know, they look at it's lazy to say and I'm glad I was in front of me. But the people who were using the order at table where gen-z the people who weren't using it were the older generations. However, that percentage is going to go up. So we're sort of we're ready now. And as the market moves and and Gen Z become more and more of our dining percentage and the next generation coming through obviously of Gen Alpha coming through, then we're ready because you've got the infrastructure there as the market shifts. I find it interesting that you piloted in one site and rested to two. Instead of rolling it back, you found something that worked for you is it's consistent with how you approach change in the company to see to somewhere, see how it reacts and then look to deploy it totally. I think one of the things, you know, we've got 47 sites and two and a half thousand members of staff. You can't make quick anecdotal gut decisions anymore. And the starting point might be from that same level of passion or. I think this is right. But putting it through a rigorous testing process, seeing how your guest reacts, your team reacts, and then just being obsessed with the data and the insights because, you know, you learn the lessons. And I think the has changed ridiculously from ten years ago. You know, what worked ten years ago might not work now. And so this whole, you know, testing from from testing drinks, testing dishes to introductions, new technology, we always do this depending on on what the size of the project is 2 to 5 site trial and then scale up. So it will be a test trial. And then if that's been positive, he's got up to five sites and then it can go to great rollout because it has huge implications and you can't on a group level, you know, it's much more difficult to roll back on a mistake once you've done that and just the investment it takes. So that testing is we're lucky. We've got an amazing head of new projects and innovation in Sacha, who he feels that pay of doing all the testing. But it's great because the other thing that happens is, you know, turning out change management is where it works, those sites that your child and they end up becoming the ambassadors. So, you know that hearing if I was a general manager and you have some middle aged, am they saying this is the future and this is what we're going to do? You might roll your eyes. Where is hearing one of your peers say, actually, we had it and it was amazing. The team loved that. It is so much more invested and so it's kind of has a double benefit. Yeah, it's really nice because back to alignment and buying into the way. If you have internal champions you can almost sell it for you inside the organization 100%. How do you broadcast the results? So you're doing like we we we do it. So we do a big thing on Monday called the Monday memo which is a lot of and that's interesting how it's changed over the years. You know, two years ago it was a newsletter, three years. Now it's all nearly short form videos and you can get it through your phone on WhatsApp. So all all the staff get it and you can just click on the various boxes and we always update the teams through the Monday memo and that that works really, really well. That's funny, right? Because from the bulletin board to the E newsletter to the email to the short form video. Yeah, and yes. But the engagement levels, I mean, the minute we sort of switch to short form videos and you see that we to get all the data up saying how many times it's been open, you know, 10% of people will open the health and Safety Report, but you put a short form video on and you suddenly are up to 70, 80 or 90% of the teams are looking at it. So it's definitely the direction of travel seem very tech forward as an organization. And is that always been part of the culture? No, I don't. I think we were well behind the curve three or four years ago. I think there was a desire within the business. But. I think Bill's had a tough exit from from COVID as as everyone did from there. And then it sort of it just didn't progress this technology. A lot of things leap forward within sort of four or five years from from COVID onwards. And so we were definitely behind the curve. I think it's something I'm passionate about, probably our laziness. I think I always have in the back of my head. There must be a better way of doing this. From whatever I mean, I've got a whole shed full of ridiculous tools and gadgets that that made my life easier. And that's actually the joy of technology now is that, you know, the starting point for us with always that question of is there a better way of doing this? Who's doing it? Well, saying what they're doing, speaking to the app provider and then saying, does it fit with our brand? Because that's the other key thing is, you know, as I learned from doing that, the sort of change in service style, everything's got to go through a brand filter. You know, if you're one of the reasons why people come to your brand is they love that interaction with a friendly, kind, fun staff. You take that out. It's probably not the right piece of tech for you. However, if this is making the team's life easier, they can spend more time with the guests and spend more time on the floor. Then that is right for us and we'll do that. So I think it's always you've got to have that in the back of the head. I think I think cross the leadership team is who does it well and is there a better way of doing this? And then it's the discipline, which is the problem now is there's so much I mean, you can be like a kid in a toy shop with all that sort of great products. And tech companies got really good at selling and the sales teams are fantastic as well. So it's just working out, I think prioritizing what you need for your business, what can have the most impact and what's going to build your brand and then building that and meeting the right people. Yeah, it's definitely our what's the most important thing for the business versus what would be a nice thing that could be a distraction, right? Because you could turn around tomorrow on a 15 new technology products in your business that look really cool and kind of leads me to my next question would be has there been anything that you thought this is going to be a game changer on you deployed it and it just didn't work for the business? No, I don't think there's been anything that hasn't worked. I think there's been some pieces of technology where you've introduced it and actually you've learned a lesson. It was kind of a single lesson role in terms of where you could deploy people in shorter shifts and benefit from, you know, having the right people on the peak times. But you then sort of start learning. Actually, this technology has existed to fix a problem. Why don't we fix the problem and go from there? I think that's happened a few times. I think the other thing is what we're quite good at actually is is not jumping on hospitality. I used to have a problem and it's just bad now. It would have a problem and then it would go and seek tech solution and it would probably only use 10% of that tech solution because you build up brilliant. We fix the problem with communications or deployment or whatever, but not use the whole package suite. And as time has gone on, you then look at some of the tech stacks, especially in casual dining and you know, they've got 2630 products that all do one thing. That's a very relevant thing. What you're seeing now in the marketplace is a lot of keep. It's good tech companies actually do much more. And I think the underutilization of products is actually one of the big problems with tech in hospitality in terms of, you know, the the products and our constantly evolving, the good ones. And it's making sure that you have a kit, you're a Virginia Tech, that you're looking at what your business needs and then you're speaking to your tap providers to see what they can do as that underutilization from the provider side, do you feel like it's not been implemented correctly or from the business side that it's not clear what it can and can't do? I think it's down to offline and the relationship between the tech provider and the business in terms of I don't think necessarily we weren't very good at speaking to tech providers and saying these are all our challenges, you know, almost being open book and we're using it for this and that's really good. Who uses your product the best and why did you say that? And that's really interesting question because you're suddenly at three things where someone would say, Oh, well, actually we work with this brand and they do this and they've had a massive sales uplift. And you're sort of they're going, Oh, well, thanks for telling us to go. That happens a lot, actually. I think the other the other thing is, is having someone who understands technology, i got to watch what I say in terms of being worried about sort of i.t. Managers, but where we sweetspot is having someone leading, certainly the new tech and innovation who understands operations to actually understand the business needs and the site needs. So you're seeing far more clearly the benefit of the deployment of the technology. And that's cool. But again, it's all down to relationships. It's all down to having the right relationship with it, with a tech partner and working together to fulfill your businesses or your brand's ambitions, dreams, goals, whatever you want to call it. And it goes back to alignment 100%. It touches on something. There are deployments of labor and post code. It's obviously been a challenging period. For anyone in casual dining, full service dining from a labor productivity or deployment point of view. How do you balance needing to obviously face out with you have a huge focus on guest experience and obviously employee experience, it sounds like. So, yeah, I'd be interested to know how you balance that. It's a really tough one because you know, and there's a big decision, but budget time for obviously 2025 is back in October of last year. And, you know, it was the same time it was announced obviously about restaurant and wage. And and then I see thresholds. I see you were there going, okay, this is going to be a big impact for us. We actually took a lot of that cost and took a bit of a hit on that percentage because, you know, we've had two and a half years now of success, sales growth and great guess metrics that we went through had sacrifice. You know, the fundamental reasons for success was a great guest experience. Then there's efficiencies. And when we looked at where we can deploy better and actually a lot of it for us is an accuracy of forecasting, which was which was the major challenge. It was, you know, we ran a tight ship, but that the minor variables, you know, you get your forecast out by four or 500 quid and that is at a particular pinch point in the day. That has a huge impact on, you know, if you're overstaffed, then then your your numbers look dreadful. At the end of the day, if you're understaffed, that's just stress for the team and dreadful guest experience. So a lot of focus on forecast accuracy and then it's I think really clever deployment and that's our next big project over the next 18 months is things have come on so far in terms of deployment, having the link between team sentiment and guest experience and sales, in terms of being able to know the impact of a happy team on a shift. And you can do that now when they clock in and clock out, I sort of say, have they had a good shift or have they not had a good shift? The link between a happy team and a profitable side is is clear for all to say, but also skill based deployment. You know, I might be a talker, so I might be great on our Sunday and Monday nights where I've got time with the guests and do that. But actually on a Saturday I'm not turning the tables, I'm gas bagging, whereas you might be a machine. And actually we should be paying Connor on the front section on a Saturday because you're going to generate I mean, it's huge numbers do the right person you could generate an extra 600 quid over me who's a bit forgetful doesn't offer second drinks and talks for 2 hours about people's cats. And that's huge in terms of seeing those because you're getting the data and you get to be insights now to know actually the sweet spot of who should be where, doing what, at what time. That's really cool. So it's been a challenge historically with a closed loop on deployment by this feedback from mother to slacked was a stressful and was the gas feel oftentimes reviews can be lagged scores and to be really powerful to get your team the gas perception the operational metrics put them all together and there's too much I mean there's so many threads is why I got overexcited with this now in terms of, you know, it's almost self-generating performance reviews for the teams as well. And then you get into really exciting stuff like all week at a league table to go actually he can, you know, whether it's a sales incentive, he could do a waste of the month, you know. Right. But based on data and based on fact, not based on anecdote or, you know, whether that whether I'm the manager and you're my friend. And so I'm always that is the best way to go is amazing as matter. But with with nothing more than that sentiment. So you win three awards and then the rest of the team's upset. So being able to have all those insights and data now, and that's where I think technology is going to have a huge impact on productivity. So we sort of hold held on that. And, you know, we've tweaked our model slightly, but it's we never wanted to do sort of big, deep, hard cut at this stage of the business where we've had so much success based on the guest experience. Makes sense, right? I think, as you said, Arena for delivering awesome experiences and you have to stick to your guns. Yeah, but you know, and it's the point I made earlier, we've seen what happens when you do the other way and it's there are far more case studies of people who've cut costs, diminish the product, diminish the guest experience and trust the brand than than there is. And first, you seem, if you've a really deep operational background, obviously, you've come up from, like, as you mentioned, tending bar to turning bills. And how do you like do you see yourself as a operational leader? Do you see yourself as product lead? Customer laughs. Do you think it's a mix of everything? How would you define like your your approach to leadership? Always an operator, I think. One of the challenges, you know, if you take a single restaurant, it's relatively simple that there's a really hot place where there's a chef who creates great food. There's a front of house that's well designed where you've got someone who makes sure the guests are happy and the teams are doing what they should do. And it's it's not supposed to sound patronizing, but it's so easy to forget that the fundamentals are quite simple and they're based around operations, you know, these operations. The caveat is, I think I've always understood brand in terms of, you know, my job as an operator is to deliver the brand to the guest in the best way possible. And I represent the brand as an operator, and I've worked for some great brands and some great independents. And the understanding of the power paradigm, their brand is the umbrella under which we all deliver and operate and do that. And the job of an operator is to transition that. If you take someone like Bell's, it's quite easy because the brand work, if you like, has been done for you through Bell. You know, Bell's still in the business today. He totally represents the brand and is a kind, generous, lovely man with an eclectic sort of taste and will do everything you can to make sure people are happy. So alongside actually and that's been what's really interesting in sort of the last two and a half years is our brand director, S.J. We needed to become more relevant and reinvigorate the brand. So Bell and C.J. worked so closely together with sort of C.J. picking Bell's, you know, what's what's the ethos, what made Bell's what me feel special and really put that together? And then that went to rich caring who's back cited, knowing that the business needed to evolve and go from there. And so that kind of work, which we did right at the beginning on the brand, was the umbrella and then then sort of operates and kicks in, which is then the practical, logical steps to transition that brand vision to, to the guests. And that's that won't ever go away. It really upsets my wife, apparently, that you just you you are operator mode on everything which is what are what are the logical steps to get from our house to the airport on time apparent it's really frustrating to live with can you enjoy a meal in a in a restaurant without looking at the operational flow and there is genuinely not ever and it's it's a nightmare and because if people do things well then you start writing stuff down again. That's amazing. I need to go from there and I love eating out like I'm so passionate about food and eating out as well. But you're always looking over shoulders and seeing what's going on and seeing what works. And and you have that, you know, I say all this the I love talking to a GM where he's not really paying attention to me because it shows their true operator that they're constantly looking in over. GM says, Yeah, I'd love to have a catch up. Can we go out the sites? Amazing. Because because you should have that engine where you're always looking how to be better. Are they happy? Oh, that that table needs close. So and that won't ever, ever go away. Despite how frustrating it is for wife, it's very cool. It's talked about on brand positioning. Obviously the brand is like so well known nationally and mentioned Bill's influence and then you're able to take that from an operational execution point of view. And have you had to do any work on positioning over the last couple of years? I think one of the data points we got was a couple of years ago, for the first time, alcohol dropped out of your top 15 drinks. So it's obviously a different consumer behavior, which requires a different positioning. I mean, it's all linked. One of the things when we sort of went back to that to the start of bills was, you know, bills that it's at its inception was a cafe, popular for breakfast, popular brunch. Everyone I was speaking to was sort of saying that that's how they ease bills. So and we were at the time, we were really focused on dinner and drinks, but probably more sophisticated than what we we should have been. And we sort of bundled all that together to go. We've got to attract gen-z. So we need to be more fun. A food needs to be far more innovative and instagrammable to use that phrase, we need to double down on breakfast, brunch, lunch, the market changing, you know, less, less people drinking and certainly less of gen-z are drinking. So how do we change and adapt? Drinks range and far more low and no far more interesting. Soft drinks, far more health drinks and CBD drinks co-produces and it's all been part of that journey and. I think the key thing there was was really setting a goal far enough ahead to look at all the market trends back in 2023 and seeing what was happening and saying by 2025, 2026, this is the business we want to be because that then you can keep a track on that and you can keep following the trends and going is the market you know, the market is going to harder to know. I call them. We thought it would end in 2023. So when you have the six month many development meetings, it's quite easy then because you know the new trend data saying this, it was already on our radar. I think there's a lot of that where like we have at the technology is you've got to now operate far enough ahead. So you're setting the foundations and ready for change that you know is coming, but then also be dynamic because it can suddenly veer off. And you see that a lot with these trends, probably more so with food trends where you sort of, you know, we have ridiculous pancake days and the £5 pancakes, but then something comes on the market, like to buy chocolate where you go, right? This is now massive. We need to put on a chocolate praline pancake and all that stuff. So it's that mix of that long term view of where we think the market's going with being adaptable and dynamic. And it's you've got to be wired that way. I think that's the one thing that's changing massively in the industry is that if you're not up for change and being dynamic and you know, the days of sort of having a formula and replicating that again and again and again, that was pretty much the fundamentals for brand and consistency is still really important and you've got to work out ways of doing consistency with with so much change, but you've got to be more adaptable nowadays than ten years ago. It's crazy. You can kind of turn the ship at that scale to be that adaptable. Yeah, pretty impressive. It's testament to the change culture. I think that you've you've put into the business. I think it's good. It's but I think it's the underneath that it's the systems and the process that we have built to know, you know, you've got to give us a license to change. As you know, we change specials every six weeks. So so that's your license to kind of go something and there's not a long lead time on the creation of those or whatever. So that's why you go, right? We can drop stuff in straightaway that when you drink a new food product and that's almost a test bed to then go on to the core. So it's making sure your infrastructure is correct and making sure that the team will understand which areas can you have dynamic change and change quickly and which ones take a lot more time because that's one of the if you go quicker than your teams as well, you know the sites and don't have an understanding of the front line. And we've done that a couple of times where you, you know, you introduce two or three new things that are great for the business. But the reality is if you introduce them all at the same time, that's not fair on the operators, the GM teams and the site. And what will probably happen is you don't implement any of the three things that are probably all positive for your business. Well, and then you're you're ending up going, actually, that didn't work for us. No, it wasn't the fact that the product didn't work or that the idea didn't work. It was actually just the comms, the execution and the headspace. And so we we've learned that. And I think that the teams on the front line might disagree, but we're much better at that now in terms of that, making sure that the there's a clear we're focusing on this. This is what the important thing is. And, you know, I use delivery as a as a good example for us. We launched delivery four weeks ago, and it's performing amazingly for us. But we gave ourselves a eight month lead into that launch and we could attend on actually, it's happened in the past. You could attend on within four weeks and I'd stick some breakfast in and a burger and a coffee and a bag and send it to gas. But it's never going to be right. We want to tap the perfect, you know, trying to find the packaging for a filling breakfast is really, really hard. And the amount of times we drive that breakfast around car parks and all that stuff to see what it looks like. But the positive then is that when you do it correctly and have the team on board, the results come because it's good products. And so that that's another part of the change management in terms of really, really be clear and that's another role that we've been shifting into the business with out who really deals with all comms and projects shares the focus to sort of say and she'll pull me up because I quite like doing things quickly to go listen, look at this, this is a pinch point, this is a bottleneck. We should roll this back three weeks and then and that's when I really get that level of granularity and execution. I think the teams can have a lot of confidence in change. Like I can picture you driving around London or cycling on London right now. We're testing that with a fry up in my testing, in the heat, in the bag and the spoilage and how many how many miles it can go. So I think like to sweat the details at that level as part of your operators. Yeah. What we did a Bell's Burgers for about three weeks at home, which went down well for the first week, but I think by week three. But you need to be like that now because it's the risk of a guest having a bad experience is still should be the thing that keeps keeps anyone or hospitality up at night. Yeah. I mean, they're not in the building. I went to buy leaves to build. Your impact on the experience is starts to dilute. That's a scary place to be. Very cool. Look, I appreciate those insights and the openness. And I suppose for you, anything you want to cover, that's next for bills that people can keep an eye out for, for us this year. I think the big a lot of our projects are sort of internal. I mean, delivery. We've just launched and that's so exciting. You know, that has doubled our expectations already in terms of what that will do. So now we're looking at how far we can take that. You know, there's a big increase in the market for corporate dining. We've just started doing some quite cool like pancake parties where if you're having a brunch party for your kids, you can literally order a whole set up and do brunch. We send you a lot of different pancakes and toppings. So it's then looking at how far we can take that. We've got some new openings in the pipeline as well. And then we are also looking at this whole internally, the workforce management. You know, what we're speaking about with making life easier for the managers in terms of and the ops team in terms of insights and you know, where can they have a huge impact in having. I suppose that those data insights in the morning to say if you did these three things today, this would have the biggest impact on any reason. And it's there, it's coming. And I'm really excited about about that, those level of insights and really taking a lot of pressure off the guys. And that's where we're going to see the benefit of technology. As it often gets said, I don't like technology. I want to go back to a waiter just talking to people. Technology is enabler. You know, I still keep saying it. You know, the obsession is still with the guest and old school hospitality. But technology should give you more time, more space, more freedom to do that. And that's the exciting things coming up in the next couple of years. Feels like it's only catching up to where the industry needs it to be. Yeah, I hadn't met expectation for the last couple of years and it's accelerated so quickly in the last couple of years now to really meet where the industry needs it to be type exciting. I don't think the tech was ready. I mean, my understanding is that those is agenda guy. I really only got going that can be used sort of at the back end of we've been talking about it for two years, but we've often been talking about AI and we actually mean machine learning. But now it's really coming through and now that's coming onto the market and fab and you're seeing actual real time use of it. It's going to start getting very exciting and you've got but you've got to set yourself up ready for that. And that's, you know, our the big project is obviously organizing our data and making sure it's accessible because all these products, shiny new toys coming onto the market, they're going to need access to your data. Yeah, the data is not in order. You can guarantee the airports will be a bit messy. Exactly. Very cool. We're going to move on to a short segment called The Quick Turn. Just a few rapid fire questions. So, number one, what is the most important operational metric that you look at every day? Cover growth rate is the best indicator of popularity. What's one piece of tech that you would never rip out of? Bills and why? IPOs? Because I don't know how you run something on LinkedIn the other day I think someone put up so you know which piece of how you could run without any filesystem. Nowadays, this is impossible. If you went back to paper tickets and all that sort of stuff, very glamorous. But yeah, April, this might feed into the first one, but what's the biggest red flag you see when reviewing performance? When I look at an overview of the week, I do copyright first, but guest opinion score is massive and it's so obvious when we have a problem, it's like it's the first question you ask What's the guest advocacy? What's the guest opinion score? What's the most underrated skill for new hospitality leaders? I think I mean, we've kind of covered change management. I think the other thing is probably when I say leadership, I mean in terms of. It's a tough year. It's a different workforce. You have to be visible as a leader. Nowadays, I think in hospitality and a lot of great hospitality operators and leaders are. What's a recent customer insight that surprised you? Maybe not that recent, but when we did our first big pancake and Bill's has always done pancakes, but we went for it. And the first pancake day, I think we sold 44,000 pancakes in a day, which is 217. Tom Cruise is stacked on top of themselves by just randomly and then you kind of when people really want this product like like huge number pancake days big anyway and we from that point back in 2023, we've actually doubled down on it. It was sort of 2 to £5 pancakes and we've introduced four new flavors and pancake day last year was 66,000, but it's one of those it's much easier to overdrive, something that's popular. And I think where you see something working well, double down on it and double down on it quickly because that's it's it's like when you have challenges with sites, it's like it's much easier to grow Saturday by ground than get, you know, 500 quid a night Monday to Thursday. So if something's working well, make that better. And so that that was that that was the trigger for that and try and finish my sentence for me now. Right. So scaling smarts means scaling good. And what I mean by that is, is you've got to be good and have the foundations to grow again. Apologies. There should be actually like a cliche klaxon or whatever, but if you grow a crack, it becomes a chasm. And I think that's one of the things, again, you know, I've seen it in my career and learned it in my career. It's it's you've got to have the foundations. The challenge now is because the bar keeps rising or the landscape trying to change with need new tack. You've you've got to make sure you've got everything in place to grow because it's you just you just create problems. And last one, if you could wave a magic wand, what's one challenge or industry challenge you'd like to change overnight investment in people? I we have amazing people working for us genuinely, and that was the first thing before I worked for those is why I always kept saying because Lorraine asked people, I think as a hospitality and understand the reason why, you know, training people and investing time takes a lot of money and a lot of effort and all the resource. But I think one thing that genuinely makes me sad is you sort of see people, they're not it's not easy. You know, being into actually being a general manager now is harder than it's ever been, you know, much harder than the back when I was doing it. And. The skill set that you need to successfully run a four and a half, £5 million, £2 million a year business. You know, managing a team that's more demanding, managing I guess that's more demanding, managing 20 bits of technology, having to do everything sort of sort of perfectly. Every single shift has inspiring people. That requires a lot of leadership and a lot of scale, a lot of the delegation. And I think we're we're again, that's how big projects from a people perspective is really growing and coaching other teams, you know, because you need the reason why most people saying the reason why most people get promoted inside the industry is a lot of people in their careers, they can name the person who inspired them and made them a great manager and wanted to be better and invested in them. And I think we need to make sure that there's there's a whole army of those in our business of, you know, inspirational, great leaders who are well trained. And I think because of cost pressures, I think hospitality is letting itself down. And it's difficult. I understand and I get it. But that's sort of. A big investment over the next 18 months is is to really invest in the team and create leaders and make it easier for the guys because it's a different landscape. Very nice. You didn't know? I probably noticed. But one of our team members, I worked for Bills for ten years. I feel I really and is a huge testament to what you just says. Still talks about the vision, the leadership, the people focus. Amazing team. So am I. Can I can. Second what you just said is obviously a big priority for the business. As you know, I have been rebels for comments for years now and the team of people and that culture I just absolutely I coveted in that now I've fallen in love with that. So I'm glad you said that as well, I assume. All right. Thanks. Thanks very much. Great. Wow. What a conversation. Tom is a pro. Incredible insights from an operator who's seen it all undone, done all. Personally, I think the huge things operators can take from this conversation alignment for your teams. What's the big why? Why are you making changes? Why is this the most important thing for the business? Why does everyone need to pull together to make it happen? Create the space for clarity and create the space for focus. Tom's been able to show us how to do that. Adaptability. But over 40 restaurants, Tom still looks to move on a timepiece to make changes to trends that are happening in the industry to make sure bills can capture the value. He's examples. I pancake day how to stick and twist and what to buy chop it into it is small changes just show the flexibility of a big branch. Operators need to stay flexible, stay adaptive and stay close to the ground. In terms of what's happening in the industry, team experience and team education. Tom Final is our conversation where his worries around the lack of investments in team development and team education bills is renowned for its training programs and its development programs. And it's clear from speaking to Tom that they're going to invest a huge amount in their team to make sure they win during this next phase of hospitality. So for operators, what can we take away? Guests, experience is everything. Focus there first before anything else. If you can nail that, everything else can make sense afterwards. But that a great guest experience. Does it matter what your panel looks like today? It's going to erode in the future. Start there, create the space for focus and clarity for your team, and then invest in your team because they're the ones who are going to deliver in your mission. That's it for this week. And what's cooking? You covered all the ingredients to a successful change management program. Thanks for joining. See you next time.