This week we have a special two-segment episode in the first and major part of the show. We are joined by Tommy Unolis, the founder and managing director of Ops Analytica, an operations management platform designed for the service industry. It's a platform that allows you to standardize operations by digitizing processes and procedures and ensures the outconsistent operations on a daily basis. It's a fascinating platform and Tommy goes into great detail explaining how it works, providing some real world examples.
Tommy's had an interesting career. He started working in the hospitality industry at a young age and even spent a number of years working as a stand-up comedian. Make sure you check out the site at opsanalytica.co or you can also contact Tommy Unlinkton and all those links are on the show notes as well. On the second segment of the show, which is around the 45-minute mark of this episode, you'll enter a return to the podcast for a short recurring segment that will happen every few weeks.
On this first installment, you'll enter talks about some of the creeps she encountered while working on the Vegas Strip, plus a few additional funny stories that she has to share from earlier in her career. Make sure you check out Yelena at her website, Cocktail.Vision, and enjoy the show. Okay, we are back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip, with me is Dan.
What's happening, buddy? Oh, how much you going? Joining us is the start of week three for back in the office or back-to-prison camp is like calling us. So, you know, join that drive guy.
I've got a couple hours of my day for... No, I'm not. Yeah, my boss is in Europe, so it makes sense to me. So now I can come from the office in the cramped room as opposed to comfort of my home, so...
First world problems aside? All good. Sounds amazing. Thank you.
And today you've got the fucking drive through a snowstorm in April. Yeah, that's right. That's great. That's better.
I can go with you. Things are good. Things are picking up again at the end of our industry. People are coming back out again.
So it's good. And we should mention that if you want to come visit me and sometimes Dan at one of these bars in Kitchener, it's Babylon Sisters in Uptown Waterloo, Wine Bar, and then the Speakeasy Sugar Run Downtown Kitchener. So you can follow us on Sugar Run Bar at Instagram, Babylon Sisters Bar, as well on Instagram to find out what's going on, and where you can get the password for the Speakeasy, etc. There are no further links.
There's always in the show notes to everything we talk about. So we have a great guest that's always coming up. We have actually we're trying on a new thing on this episode. We have Tom, you know, who's coming up very shortly to talk to us a little bit about Optownelics.co.
And after that, we have an old favorite coming back who's going to be doing some spots appearances for us. Every four episodes or so, Yelena, and her will be joining us in a little bit as well. So that's something to look forward to. If you like the show, the best way you can help us out is to subscribe, rate, and review, as well.
If you want to be a guest on the show, then you can email us at info at theindustrypodcast.club or you can DM us directly at the industry podcast on Instagram. We had a lot of good episodes in the archives. You should probably check out who we had recently. Time Miners, Malice.
Jules O'Rouvis was on fire. That's one. I really. Oh, that's right.
Yeah, Jose Mariano. For Nanda Cardoso. And yeah, you went to answer it was 103. And then Matt Pacile and of course Justin Vale and then episode 100 Matt Houston and your wife, Janine Saunders.
Right. So check out all those episodes on the archives. Rate, review, subscribe. The artwork for our show is done by Zack Hanna at Zack Hanna.co.
You should check out all his work on, you can follow him on Instagram as well. So a big shout out is always to him. And we got a big show, so we'll get to it. Tom, you know, thanks for joining us on the industry podcast.
Thanks guys. I'm looking forward to it. So you got a snowstorm today? Yeah.
Yeah. Welcome to Canada. Yeah, I was like, actually quite warm last week. We were hitting around 17, 18, 19 Celsius, which is about 68 Fahrenheit or so around there.
And then today it's snowing. Well, I live in Colorado and same thing, you know, we get snow all the way through. We'll have three more major snows before it stops and then they may. Yeah.
Well, I think we all just need to move to Florida. There's no rules there. Yeah. That was the best.
We got more city sucks and cigars. Yeah. So let's just jump right into this. Basically, we want to spend a lot of time talking about your company or the founder of ops analytics.
And I'm sorry. I already fucked it up. I'll say, I know, I'm going to let it go. It's just because I don't have everything else's on.
But let's talk a little bit about what ops analytics does, what you provide for the service industry. Sure. So actually, I'm going to let it go as an operations management platform. And what we do is we help take the guesswork out of running the business.
Mainly, what we do is all those paper checklists and procedures and all those things that we all have take to the wall in our buildings that everybody likes to ignore. What we try to do is get those things off of the wall into the tablet and then get them scheduled and try to help the restaurant do a better job of running consistent operations by kind of holding that accountable to doing all of those procedures, sort of every shift, right? With the hope that if we just control what we can control better and do a little bit better job of being consistent in our execution, we can get out of our own way and we can ultimately take better care of the customer. And so that's kind of the premise behind it.
I will be honest with you, multi-location operators seem to do better on the platform than single unit operators, especially if it's like owner operator type situation, because, you know, if you're an owner operator, you're usually on the the mindset that I'm already here by when I had paperwork to my life. But, you know, when you start to have multiple units, then all of a sudden you can't be in every unit every day. And you want to make sure your team's actually doing the things that they need to do to be safe and mostly clean and ready for guests. Right.
So does this expand into like inventory as well, or is it mostly just temperature control and like sort of the side duties policies? Yeah. It doesn't do inventory per se. You could, but it would be clunky either.
You'll get an inventory system if you really want to do image. I said, well, hey, doing an item, I'm not receding doing inventory. But it's more about operations, procedures on at the daily rest at the restaurant level. It's about ops procedures.
But like it's more than just a couple of checklists. Like it ends up being like you can do you can have your cash out logs in there. You can have slip fall reports in there. Like it's any like either repeatable process or data that you need to capture and report off of or do something with.
But then when you get to some of the bigger chains, then they start using it as a way that they manage all of their locations. So they're looking at it more from the perspective of, Hey, I've got some stupid scheduling rule in Vancouver, right? That I got to deal with. So like, so now I got to like make sure that they don't change the schedule within two weeks or I'm gonna get fine.
So then they start going, okay, I need to put in a procedure in place to make sure that we're not messing that thing up or, Hey, we have this big LTO going on and we're going to have people coming into the restaurant and we're doing advertising. I want to make sure all the table tents are up all the signages correct people program their registers. So it just all the sudden it kind of morphs once people get a hold of it from just those daily checklist into this is how I manage all of my stores, all of my operations across my entire chain. And that's what's exciting to see.
You know, we've started with a couple guys after your four tech list and now they have over hundreds of them. And the data, how's it viewed on the end user side is it like the dashboard or is it like a raw data dump is some sort or. We have a dashboards that really aggregate together all of the data you can kind of look at see where your problems are and what's happening and what's also what's doing really well. And then we also have a bunch of reports that are more like data grid reports that you've done to join Excel if you wanted to continue to do advanced analysis on its upcoming or whatever.
So getting a little bit more granular like how like let's talk a little bit about like specifically what you'd be monitoring in these situations like run through some of the specific things that you can do on your platform. So, okay, first of all, if you're talking about like I guess we would be loosely grouped into like checklist platforms, right. So the way you get data in is through a digital form and then all the analytics and everything happens on the back. So what I would say is that for like our clients in the hospitality business, typical checklist that we're going to see from those guys are going to be some sort of opening procedure, both in the front of the house and an opening procedure in the kitchen, which could also include prep law prep lists could also include just line checks as well as food safety checks as well.
And then you'll typically see those kind of opening checklists that are kind of going up to the shift, right. So those are what we call pre checklists. Those are your typical setup checklist. Those are the typical checks that you would be doing to make sure that you're ready for the rush.
That's going to happen, you know, from 11 30 to two or whatever it is. And then once the shift begins occasionally people will do some flying checks during the shift but it's not very often that people want to do that because they don't want to pull people off the rush to be like, you know, checking times. If everything was checked up until the time should be good through the meal period, then you'll see some typical post checks, make sure, you know, that we kind of like start flipping from dinner to lunch in that gate, you say, and then you'll see some again food safety readiness checks going up into the dinner time. And then at the end of the day, you'll see your typical closing checklists as well, where people are sort of just running the restaurant down closing things down for the night and prepping for the next morning.
So that's a kind of a check list we go in the system. You can capture any kind of data, right. You can capture numbers for temperatures so we can analyze temps to make sure that they're safe or not safe. We can have the digital thermometers in that use case.
We can analyze, you know, true false is a typical checklist question. Did this happen? Yes or no. And then we can capture free text like logs like how is the weather today shift logs, you know, all those kinds of things capture dates and times photos, pretty much, you know, all of that kind of information.
And so you can build a checklist that contains all those different aspects. But what makes our platform unique is we have an amazing business logic engine. And so we can do things that no other checklist app can do from a logic perspective. So we can analyze temperatures and then we can take you down in an entire path to follow up questions like, did you?
Okay, did you reheat this properly? Did you put it on ice? You know, we can step you through all these different attributes. And then, and then you guys might mainly talk to single unit operators or big change.
I should ask that. Well, we talked to all sorts of different people, but I, but generally it's, we haven't talked to too many, even just owner operators yet. But I mean, I am obviously one. So I'm owner operator for two spots.
And we have talked to a couple people who own their own businesses in like Brazil, Costa Rica. Yeah, but generally, but we haven't talked to too many people who have owned like chains. So, yeah, but I am sort of interested in that. Like, if I was going to look at that, it's like, I mean, like, whoever GM of operations for a chain who's probably going to be dealing with his dad and rather than like the ownership group, which is probably a number of different people.
Like you're looking at this data. So I can see, say, like, just to bring this into our area of the world, like you were mentioning that one of your restaurants that uses your product is Jackassers. That's very familiar to listen to this show. Let's say you're the GM of operations for us chain of Jackassers in Ontario.
So I'm looking at the data that you provided to me on my end that I can see like, Oh, on Thursday, the April 24th, the location in Brampton, let's say, did not meet the temp requirements of a certain dish or food or like a fridge or yeah. Absolutely. And so what we try to do is this because we're doing daily checklist, right? You know, food safety is not something we can like wait on, right?
If you identify that the ranch dressing is 87 degrees, which is not generally good temperature, ranch dressing, then like, you don't like, you don't have the option in a restaurant to get back deal with that after the rush, right? I'm going to do it with it, but then, you know, I'll be able to later. So what we are system is built in such a way with the rules where if you identify something bad, we take you through some sort of immediate remediation step. And so we want you to either like the bare minimum would be, tell us what you did to solve this.
That might be the remediation. Give us a comment. Let us know what you did to solve it. In some cases, it might be hey, take a photo, but they think it more advanced than that based on, you know, if this based on if this was, you know, made today, then you can just try to temp it, just ice back it down.
But maybe if it was made several days ago, you might have to toss it and get a new one because we don't know how long it's been in the danger zone. So we try to rectify all issues immediately in the checklist. We don't let them off the checklist until we kind of solve the problems. But then once you get done and submit the thing, if it was a critical violation, like a temperature violation, if you had signed up for this, you could get notified immediately that there was a temperature violation and then you'd be able to click on that alert and at least see what the person did, you know, did they follow the follow up steps to solve it.
Most people don't manage that tightly though, the velocity above store people don't generally manage, you know, getting critical on everything. That's more the GM or the kitchen manager's job would be to take those criticals and confirm that we did it correctly at the location level. But yes, and all that data flows into dashboards and you can get reports emailed to you and so you can follow it. And generally what people are focusing on isn't so much that the individual food safety things.
It's more about is the restaurant doing the checklist that they're supposed to do when they're supposed to do them. And so we built in this whole schedule, right? And we have sort of anti pencil with measures in there too. Like you can't do your PM line check until three o'clock, the 3 30 in the afternoon, you can even start it type of stuff.
We really, we just want to get people doing the checklists. And really when we're also like when we're coaching and we're rewarding people, it's more about did you do the checklist? You're going to have 87 degree ranch dressing. What I don't care about is that you had 87 degree ranch dressing.
What I care about is that you handled it correctly when you figured it out, right? So we don't want to punish people for, we don't want to punish people for not finding problems. We want to coach them on the importance of doing the checklist. So yeah, we really want to reward people for just doing the checklist and reporting back, honestly, and all incentives and everything we want to do are based around that aspect because we are relying on the team at the store to do this.
So like I said, I don't want to yell at you for having a 70-grants ranch. I want to praise you for dealing with it correctly. Right. So I have a couple of follow up questions on that.
So like when you were mentioning earlier, you get an alert. So obviously the app is probably solved by all management at the specific stores as well. So like you're saying, essentially, like let's keep your ranch, I'm going to be easy, the 87 degree ranch, the kitchen manager gets alert on that and they know they got to do something that's going to be done about it. And then you want to go to deal with the situation, then log how you dealt with it.
Yes, exactly. And so what will happen is when they type an 87 degree ranch, a little red box is like a little red sentence. It's going to pop up in the box. It's going to change color basically and say, hey, this is out of our standard.
Whatever language we want to put in our sign. This does not meet our standard. Please tell us what you're doing to fix it. So then right there, the person on the line who took that temperature has to go, oh, I'm putting this on an ice bath or hey, I'm going to go in the freezer or whatever they're going to do or whatever they did to fix it.
Hey, I'm crossing this in the trash. We want them to record that sentence right there. Now, the one thing that we give to people can be whatever it is that you're a procedure is. So one of the biggest mistakes I see restaurant companies in general making when it comes to these checklist is they're relying on the kitchen manager to do it by itself.
One of the cool things about our platform is that multiple people can be working the same checklist simultaneously, just like a Google Doc or a Google spreadsheet. So the best thing because here's what happens right just in general and this is my little diatribe, but people don't like if you come to me with a 45 minute line checking on the kitchen manager and I have to go between 10, 30 and 11, 30, when we open. In that time period, I'm going to ask him, I key 65 times, I'm going to get 50 questions, you know, and I'm just going to get inundated with like deliveries and there's going to be a repair and a food with an idiot new food sales and I'm going to show up and try to sell me food at 30 in the morning, you know, and I'm going to be like, I'll never get it done. And so, and that's the biggest mistake the industry makes as a whole is the managers feel like they're the only ones who can do this and that's not right.
Like we built in this ability collaborations will be called multiple people can be doing this checklist. What should be happening is that I should be having the company tablet, I should hand it to my guy on saute and I should say do your station. Here's the thermometer. I'm going to the walk ins in the storage room and the dish pit and I'd be on my phone doing it on that on the company Wi-Fi right.
And then when you're done so, then saute you handed the pantry and have him go to his station and then four of us can take five minutes each and do our stations and cloud sources thing together as a team and get the whole thing done in 15 minutes total versus one guy trying to do it in 45 minutes. And that's a huge mistake that we make as a whole in the industry, but that's also dependent on what's happening. So like the message in that use case, I would have the message say, Hey, this ranch dressing is, you know, not in standard. Grab the kitchen manager real quick and let him know and then he can come over and go, Oh, we can ice back up or we should toss it.
And they have him make a decision. Then write the common name. Hey, I made the decision to toss it and then you know, move on and then just go get me ranch dressing and keep moving. So you can also kind of like track wasted in a way for this as well, right?
Because if the fucking solution for this guy every time is toss it, then you're going to start to be like, well, maybe we can come up with maybe we can problems all a little bit. No, and exactly. And like, the cool thing about this platform is this is that even you're an operator, right? So you're either in the kitchen or you're in the front of the house or you're in the office or you're running between two of your locations.
So you're not in one all the time. So you're paying people to look out for your interests, right? And throwing away the court of ranch dressing every time is not looking out for your interests. No, like it's actually just and it's one of those things that because you're not in the kitchen, when does it, you don't know that it happened until you're looking at your food costs at the end of the week or the end of the month and you're like, man, why can we never get under 37% or whatever that number is right.
Like you start to get frustrated and you can't figure it out. And it's because people are doing stuff like that. And what our platform does is it just tells you what's actually happening in your business. And what's cool about it is that from your perspective, you just train the managers to use the platform when they're supposed to use it.
And then you control the checklist, you and your executive team control the checklist. And then if you want to change a procedure, you just change a checklist, right? Hey, now the new procedure is, did you throw this away? Yes.
Okay, wait first, or take a picture of it in the trash. Like in some cases, the picture in the trash is important, you know, of being shown that it was actually thrown away, right? But it's not just walking out the back door. It was something that you had the pool because it was bad.
I want to see in the trash to make sure we didn't serve it. Right. So, you know, but you can control what you guys want them to do. And the nice thing is, is that all that data is already in a platform.
So like, for instance, if you wanted to just add up all the waste for the week, then you can just go pull it down into a spreadsheet and it's already in there, you know, and you can just put it some function on it and move on with your day, you know. I think I would like an organic thing and it can develop. So it's like, once you've sort of targeted an issue that keeps recurring, then you can just add that to the checklist as a way of dealing. Like, that's not the great feature of it.
Yeah. And it's easy. You can do it in three seconds. Hey, this is a problem now.
We've identified this as a problem. So let's just add a couple of extra steps in this section. And then maybe we only have those on temporary, you know. And I mean, the other cool thing about it too, like, yeah, it is, it's like, you know, so much of the record keeping, no one keeps record keeping, like, you know, it's all invoices like this other stuff, like preventative maintenance stuff like you guys are coming into summer up again.
You got like three weeks of summer coming. You got to get ready. So it's like, but you know, like one of the things that you should be doing every year, like around April, right, or May is you should have a checklist that just runs, like, Hey, get the HVAC service. And then you're going to do the same thing again, probably in October when it starts getting cold.
Let's get the HVAC service, make sure to keep working good. That's the kind of thing where you can create a checklist like that. Get the HVAC service. Okay.
And then the checklist only is what data HVAC service get done, upload a picture of the receipt, where there are any major issues, type them up for me, you know, whatever. What was the cost? And you can literally just turn that thing on April 1, April 30th and October 1st, October 31st, you build it one time and then you forget about it. And so you're not sitting there recreating the wheel every time you get a new thing you need to go do, you literally build it once schedule it's two months a year.
And then it's in there. And then next April 1st, without anyone having to remember 23, your manager at your restaurant is going to go get your HVAC service. You have until the end of the month. And then that guy can schedule it and just get the data put it in there.
And then then when you're thing busts, you're not looking for the receipt. Where did the invoice go? What did the guy tell us the problem was? The guy took a picture of it and put it in the app.
You can go pull every HVAC service you've ever had on that one HVAC system, but that one location and both the receipts I looked at them, you know. That's amazing. It's like those kinds of things. We're all dying of decision fatigue.
Like my kids do this constantly. They just hammer me with questions and questions. My brain doesn't work anymore. I'm like, yeah, I still play with the gun in the back.
I don't care. Nobody told you they have kids coming. My wife did. Oh, you're one person.
No, I really think that's fantastic. And I love how you can just keep adding things to it. And it just sucks up all this info for you. It's a great tool.
I've got a couple other questions for you about it, though. One, like, obviously, I would be stunned if not you didn't get unbelievable positive feedback from owner operators from management level. But I also am very familiar with the industry. I've been working for 30 plus years.
And I'm just wondering what kind of feedback you seem to get or if you even hear it from the people on the ground level. Because I know sort of staff are just going to be like, why do I have to fill out this fucking checklist every day? Just let me do my job and go home. I know how to do so.
And what's the sort of feedback you're getting from that level? So the reality is, is that the industry, so checklists have such a bad reputation in the industry, right? And I'm not going to like, I'm not going to bullshit anyone. Like, I hate it.
Don't check this too. But I hate it. But the reason they have a bad reputation in the industry is because they've always been done on paper. No one ever looks at them.
And no one's paying attention to see if they're done at all. So essentially what they are is wasted busy work. It's just like your commute to the office. It's nonsense waste of time for people because no one ever looks at the data.
No one ever compliments me for doing it. And that's the failings of paper and especially in any kind of chain. Like you're just too busy doing stuff, right? But with the platform, now the data is usable, right?
Because we can see it and use it to make better decisions. And that's really the benefit of this whole thing. Number two, millennials in general, they don't want to do anything that's repeatable and they want to have a voice in the company, right? So they actually want to know that they're being heard.
So, like in that respect, like, you know, you can at least go to them and try to explain the why behind this, right? Is the why is we want the data to make better decisions to we want to make sure that we are taking care of what we need to take care of. Like the thing that we have to remember in the business is this probably in your 30 years in the business, you've had one server, a bunch of customers, maybe two, it's occupied or something. But like, most of the problems you're having in your restaurants today, when you piss off a customer, right?
They're not because someone was sitting in their face or trying to choke them out or punch them or calling their wife was ugly. And it was because you just did you miss doing something that you probably already identified with something you needed to do, but people can't keep up with the amount of details that they need to be doing today are brave to have been destroyed by our phones. And like, we just, we don't have the same level of professional that we had in 1990. It was a professional bartender or professional server, we're rotating people through here constantly.
And I'm part of the problem too, all these new apps, all the new things you have to check for your, your reservation system, your inventory system, your orders, your door dash, your Uber, each, whatever you have, you know, all these other apps that added, all these initial tasks that people have to check. And so it's just too much for human beings to keep track of, right? Too much for the manager, too much for the employees. And we're missing the little things, the things that just irritate people, like, you know, you get an I see and it's the first I see the shift and there's no ice in the glass because it seems so hot because no one made it early enough.
You know what I mean? It's just those are little things that like, they don't, they don't break that one little thing isn't going to rep your experience. But when you get 20 of them, because people just weren't focused or paying attention or the manager was stressed because the dishwasher was busted. They were trying to get a repairman out there ASAP.
Then they missed 10 different little things. And all of a sudden, you know, you just have a lesser experience. And then you have three lesser experiences in a row because people aren't organized. And guess what you have?
Now I'm altering my decision to return, right? I'm not going to come back on once a month. Now I'm going to take a month off. You know what I mean?
And heaven forbid in that month, I go find your competitor. That's doing a great job. And now I might start going there more often, you know, and so it's a step 5000 cuts. That's the hospitality industry.
And so, and so there's just too many little details. So we just got to get, we got to get people to understand that why would you try to remember any of this? You don't need to. It's a super waste of your time.
It's like, you don't remember anyone's phone number anymore. Use a tablet, use a phone, go just follow the little list and just confirm that the bathroom's clean, but there's toilet paper that, you know, you cut the carrots correctly, that you got a backup of, you know, lettuce under your burger station. So we don't have to like run to the back and chop lettuce on the line while the burger's getting over cooked. You know what I mean?
Like, let's just control what we can control so we can deliver great experiences because, let's be honest, the general public are a bunch of babies right now. And they're going to like, they're going to get online and complain about how the lettuce wasn't cut correctly and the burgers dry. So, basically, the app at a nutshell just takes a shitload of stress and concern off your plate and just makes it very easy. Like, it's just in there, it's very simple, you follow a list and then all the data's available to you, which is amazing.
I do want to sort of talk a little bit more about your personal situation, but if you have any questions about the app, before we move on, it's hard to realize a lot of human input. Do people sometimes just go through the list and just check it off just for the same stuff? That's a little bit of shit out of that thing. But that's okay because we track that.
Right? I look at all the data that we collect as there's no bad data in here. It's all just the reality of what is happening at our store right now. And instead of, like, and so now it gives the GM or you the owner operator of both restaurants, it gives you something to actually coach somebody on that's real.
You know, so many times, like, especially like in big, bigger change situations too. The guys out in the restaurant once every month, right? So it becomes anything wrong and it starts on that for the next three hours. Like, oh, you had the poster, right?
And the person's like, I do, it's like the TPS reports in office space. I've already fixed it. It's not a problem. But they just keep harping on it.
Whereas this provides you with actual data that you can look at and coach people out and coach them in a timely manner and coach them from that, your opinion. But like, look, you did that line check in 38 seconds, man. There's no, you know, you can't tell me those are real temperatures, right? Like, you just, so why did you do that?
Well, then you find out the dishwasher, no-called no-show to not guys been back to in pets and he knew he was going to get in trouble. He didn't do the checklist. So he just went and did it incorrectly. But then you go, okay.
So I understand why you did that. You just needed to like, you could have as a better manager given it to your team or whatever, do it correctly. And then we would have to save time, right? Because, you know, but you just have an ability to coach now.
Because you have actual data and you can reward the people that are doing great. You can coach the people that aren't doing great. And you can get everybody on the same page, you know, because everyone's going to do the path of least resistance. And the path of least resistance, once you're following up in a timely manner, is to do stuff correctly, you know.
Well, let's talk a little bit about it. I mean, it's obviously you're a data-driven person. Like, and this all makes a whole lot of sense. And I can see the massive benefit of you running a chain of restaurants.
Like, that sounds amazing. So how do you do get a couple of this idea? How did you get into it? What's your background?
How do we get to where we are with your company today? Sure. So I'm a hotel restaurant, guys. I started at 14.
My mom took me to the Columbia Mom Maryland and I got a job making cheesesteaks at like a cheesesteak place. And I just always was going to, I'm a hospitality guy. I'm Puerto Rican and Greek, right? So like, I used to have a joke that like, you know, I was conceived in the dish kit of a restaurant.
Because I think, you know, it's a fire diner or something. But my parents were both tech people. So my grandparents were both immigrants who owned restaurants, both my Puerto Rican grandfather from New York and my Greek grandfather from North Carolina were both immigrants of the country, started their families here and did restaurants. And then my parents saw how hard restaurants were to run, so they went into tech and had nothing to do with restaurants.
And then, you know, at 14, I wanted to cook. I just wanted to go get a job and just started my hospitality career. Then I have a hotel restaurant to greet from the University of Denver with my sweatshirt as on there. And then I got out.
I was doing country clubs. It was really in the country clubs at the time. And then like two months into that gig, I was like, this sucks. I should do stand-up comedy.
And my friend was like, you should. You don't have any 40 with kids and a wife and a mortgage and a suburbs and then regret you didn't do stand-up and you had a chance. And I was like, you know what, I should. And so like three weeks later, I went on stage, did stand up, fell in love with that immediately.
Like on that stage, the first one was like, I don't need to stand up. And so I said, like the next 10 years just doing stand-up the whole time. But then I worked in hospitality. That's what you do, right?
That tables, I mean, you know, I work like one of the busiest P. There's a Chinese chain down here. But I also like weighted tables at like a Dixx-as resort, which is a Chicago where, you know, you get to yell at the people and make fun of them and like, just be crazy. Yeah, I did a little bit of everything.
I worked in comedy clubs. I did stand-up. And then like in 2005, I was really tired of being broke. I was getting older and I was having a couch and health insurance, you know.
Like I got a business change, and so I went back and got an MBA. And then I got a job at Quiznos, which I think there's still some Quiznos in Canada. And yeah, so I got a job there. running the franchise assistance program, which was the worst job ever in 2008, the US economy collapsed.
And that was also the start of the Quiznet's implosion. And so I got that job, which was brutal. I was in my second MBA. And then I got promoted.
And I had to build, I was in ops services for the S3,000 restaurants, roughly a little bit less. And so they wanted me to figure out a way to report on all the audits we were doing on the restaurants. So I tried to get IT to get us a software platform and they wouldn't do anything any money. So I ended up building my own version of this, early version of this 2008 web phone where you could do like an inspection.
And that was the beginning of the idea for Ops Analytica. I left Quiznet, got a tech job and then had an opportunity to try to build this thing out of that job. And I did. And then in 2015, we started Ops Analytica and then rebuilt everything.
So that's how we got here. So I'm an operator, who is in software experience. Yeah. So it's kind of the perfect story for doing what you did, sort of the hospitality and the tech background, which makes a lot of sense to how you developed this program.
So what's in regards to reaching, I mean, I know you're doing a podcast, you're probably doing a bunch of podcasts, but like what's your marketing strategy of sort of reaching more franchises or restaurants or anyone you're interested in doing business with? What's your strategy there? I need some ideas. You know what, we have tried in the position of hopefully being thought leaders.
And so we are kind of a content driven marketing company. I've written like 300 plus like original blogs. I've recorded, I think I'm on like episode 89 of my own podcast where I interview operators and watch out about that after we wrap this up. And then, but we've really gone with a content strategy from a marketing perspective of just trying to like unpack all of this stuff, right?
Because like nobody's really thinking about like it's really it's the hospitality industry is so interesting because we've never had the ability to really easily manage the actual operations, especially when you have multiple units. One unit is different. So I have a single unit operator has been with me for years. They're commander's house in New Orleans.
I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they probably need 10 million a year, you know, so like they're huge family owned operation. They have four dining rooms, white tablecloth service, you know, weddings, that kind of thing, like they're huge. For them, they're almost like a multi unit operator because they're so big. And they're going on.
Yeah. But I have a couple of diners here and there, you know, some smaller operations, but like, so we just try to take this leadership role with around content and try to unpack why this is important because everybody is so comfortable not having backing into what's actually happening, right? And like, but you go to the great restaurant companies like the top 20% restaurant companies, and they have a culture of excellence, right? And the systems end of excellence.
And that's all they does company shift over time. It's someone's half for a while and they're not or whatever happens, right? But there's always that 20% that are the most successful. They make 80% of the profits in the space.
And they are systems driven, process driven operators who pay attention to detail and then seemingly do it effortlessly, right? And we've all seen those conversations that are never not busy and they never miss anything, you know, you go there once a year, once every three months, and you go in every time, it's just great. Well, it's because they're doing, they're controlling what they need to control, right? They're not getting bogged down with everything else that's happening in the world.
They're just focusing on is the bathroom clean. Did we prep this correctly? Is this case, right? Can we cook it properly?
You know what I mean? It's just amazing to watch those guys operate. And that's what my background is trying to make accessible to all restaurant operators, because you're not always, you know, there's only so many amazing managers, right? We got to take, but we can make up for the deficiencies and talent with better systems and processes.
And the biggest pet peeve I have in the world is that people just like, they don't control what they're supposed to control in their own environment. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, it just drives me nuts. Well, the one thing I was saying that in my years in the business have taught me more than anything is that the app, like you can create the best vibe in the world of the best playlist, you can have the best hamburgers, you can have the best cocktails.
But the thing that matters, the best app, but the thing that matters the most is consistency. It has to be the same every time you get to come there. And it seems like this is an amazing tool to make that a lot easier for you. Yeah, and I know that even actually answered your last question.
It's a free flow of Joe. Okay, we'll talk to this like, we're getting owner operators find your app, how much does it cost to sign up? Give us an any gritty. Sure.
So if you were to buy the rack rate one location, it's going to be 34 US a month, like a bucket a day, basically. Yeah, there's an implementation package that we highly recommend you do, but you don't have to, but where we will take all of your checklists and set everything up for you perfectly and this hand you over a like ready to go, you're done, take it and go and be successful with it like implementation. And then it goes on for 90 days. So we build in plenty of time for you to iterate through and figure out, okay, you know, I don't like how this checklist works, let's change this and this and get some feedback from your customers or from your, you know, your employees.
And what I recommend to just as a side note of anyone who's interested listening to this, you know, you're going to be tempted to now that you're getting finally going to get some control and visibility and data to go overboard on day one. And what we'll do is we try to build everything on day one, but then what we want to do is just kind of turn it all off and let people make actual change management decision, you know, and get people comfortable using the platform and then start turning things on like on week two and three, here's what happens, right? And this is just something that everyone should be aware of. Nobody's doing your paper checklist correctly today.
So like they get them done in a minute, but now you're coming in and saying, not only can you not do this in a minute, but you have to do it between this timeframe that you're probably not used to doing it at. So it requires your team to kind of like reorganize their shift in a way where they can now fit this thing in at the time we're saying we need to do it. Because part of the whole process, right, is that doing a line check where you're tasting food and something, things, it only makes sense right before you go to like the rush, right? Right before you open for service.
You like I don't want someone to come in at nine a.m. and bang out like check us all day. And then some of you sit right and drink some coffee. And then, you know, I wanted to do it actually at 10, 30 when it impacts my business and I can correct my mistakes, you know, so, so I would just put that out there.
And so you can get it, you can just add an ops analytic and taco it's OBS, A N A L I T I C A dot CO. Well, it's a funny about that. That's stupid. So we have ops analytics and logo, but then linked in, like at the time, it was, you know, it's a rectangle and LinkedIn does a swear.
And so it would center the logo on the swear and it would say anal. All my posts for a year before we figured out. But it's actually a little data on when you got, whether you got more or less actually during that time. But we had a lot of wasted demos.
I think the product sounds great. Tommy, we appreciate you coming on the show. Is there any one to promote on social media for our guests? Where they can find you personally or the ops and look up?
Check out, come and check me out on LinkedIn and just reach out and say hi, ask any questions. And I'm just like my role is like very blessing. As we continue to grow, my role is really evolving into I'm trying to find new use cases for the platform. So even if you're not in the hospitality space, you got some other company, but you have a lot of repeatable processes, you got a lot of people doing a lot of things, and you just want to button it up and get some data, reach out to me.
I would love to chat with you and figure stuff out. And if you just have some restaurant questions like how this could work in your restaurant, I'll show you a demo. Like we truly just want to take care of people because like it's so hard to sell, like just in general, something, anything, getting people to move and take action for their business is so hard that we just want to do such a good job for you guys. Because once you're in, you just love the product and it just it is more with your business and you know, you'll be happy and you won't go anywhere and then we all win.
Well, thanks, Tommy. It's interesting and you're you're fascinating, guys. Thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it.
I really appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Thanks very much. All right.
We hope you enjoyed that interview with Tommy and as mentioned, check out the show notes for all the links to contact Tommy on LinkedIn and ops at elitica.co and stay tuned for our next segment with Yelena. Okay. And so for the second part of our episode this week, we are starting our now a monthly visit with our old friend, Yelena. How are you, Elena?
Hey guys, it's great to be back. Yeah, this is exciting. This is the new thing. So every four weeks now we'll be joined by Yelena.
We're going to talk about some funny stuff and during her career in ours, the other thing that we'd like to announce is that if you guys have questions for any of us, myself, Dan or Yelena, you should email us at info at industrypodcast.club and we'll be doing periodic mailbag episodes with Yelena. This is the most fascinating person you're ever going to talk to. So welcome to this new partnership, Yelena. Thanks for being a part of the industry podcast.
We're good now. Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be a part of this. Really fucked yourself over.
So the other thing that we're going to we were just talking about before we start recording is Yelena and I will also be at Tales of the Cocktail and we are reaching out to anyone who is also going to be there. Well, we'll get the dates to the specific dates that I'm going to be there at least when we have confirmed them. But essentially we're going to be doing little pop-up interviews with people from the industry at Tales of the Cocktail, just short little interviews. Yelena and I are going to be walking around drinking and talking to people.
Correcting people. Yeah, so if you are a listener and you're in the industry and you're going to be at the Tales of the Cocktail DM us at the industry podcast on Instagram and let us know you're going to be there and we'll arrange a time to meet you. But let's get to our episode here. And so what was one thing we were thought would be funny to talk about with you in our first little Return of the Alayna episode?
Because you had worked with Casino and Hooters and stuff, we thought that would be funny to talk to you about maybe about some of the stories of some creepy dudes trying to hit on you. And then maybe what kind of advice you would give to people who listen to our show about how to fend them off? Or not if they don't want to. Oh, not if they're creepy dude, it happens to be hot and rich.
What's the problem? What's the problem? Oh, man. So you know, I had to like, my brain automatically erases all the scary stories, but I had to think back and figure out what was the most interesting ones.
And I guess I have quite a few. So I guess let's start with Hooters, right? Let's start with Hooters. And that was my first job in the industry as a server though.
I got hired on the literally just had an interview and they're like, okay, try this, the uniform. And they hired me, which I never been in the service industry before I barely turned 21 at the time. And the first creepy dude was the the manager. Of course.
Who hired me who was trying to hit on me? But so it's all good. I was there for just a hot second. So that environment wasn't necessarily the necessarily the best for me.
But I guess the story from that that environment was the this father and son team. Who was trying to pick me up? And so the the two, you know, two guys having lunch and the younger guy like super, super young, like I don't know if he was it was well, Hooters, you don't have to be 21 to die in there, right? But he's like definitely Florian with me.
And he's definitely a lot younger than me. And I think I said something to the fact like, I mean, don't you think he like I'm a little too old for you? And he's like, no, I'm actually actually like trying to hook you up with my dad. That was an interesting interesting pick up line.
And so how many years were you married to his dad? No, that was funny, actually. That was kind of cute. Yeah, that's sort of an adorable story.
When you were at the casino, though, because I remember when anyone who hasn't checked out your latest full episode, that's the first thing you should be doing. You're probably just stop listening right now. Go into the archives. Listen to that whole episode.
Get caught up a little bit. That's episode 103. There you go. I like a number.
When you when you were at the casino and you were doing in that sort of more high rollers room and you were, I'm gonna get the costume a little bit around, but you had to wear like a sort of almost like a bikini and a headdress. Oh, yeah, it all. Yeah. Okay.
So that was, okay, you think you talking about the the delectainer? Yeah, it's basically a G string, a little like sparkly bra, I'll send you guys a photo for your eyes, for your eyes only in the headdress, like kind of like typical typical show girl, Vegas show girl, but like a lot less leverage. So yeah, and so we're going on stage like every, every hour. So I say, something you're trained for or then you also have to go around and serve drinks to the people gambling, correct?
So there's got to be some crazy stories from that period like of dudes trying to head on you. Dudes? You want to be interested in dudes? Oh, the women too.
Sorry. That was very misogynistic of me. Of course. Equal opportunity flutter.
Actually, that was the kind of creepy story. And I was very, I was young. I was probably 21, 22, 23. And very naive again, back to the episode 103 coming from basically a farm in Russia where everybody knows everyone, very, very nice.
So I have, I got this like really like an interesting couple, a girl and a guy and you can tell the girl is probably hired. She was she's probably like a like an escort girl. And they, you know, they're fun. They give me money.
They've been really well. And they, you know, they kind of like being flirty and I'm very flirty as well. So maybe I just gave them the wrong idea to begin with. Right.
Yeah, I just proved actually looking back. I think I provoked a lot of that behavior a lot. I'm very friendly, very flirty. So, and I don't even remember how it all went down, but basically the girl asked me if I wanted to play unicorn.
And I had no idea whatsoever. Okay, good. What the hack she was talking about. I had no idea.
And I literally like, you know, I was just trying to just to be friendly and happy and gay, like whatever customer wants. And I'm like, sure, how do you do that? You guys know where the dress first, right? No.
Oh, man. I just opened the kind of warm. No, you're down this rabbit hole now. You got to finish it.
I don't know. You know where this might be gone with the big unicorn on the top of the head there. Oh, I totally stepped into this one. Let me take a sip of my.
Anyway, not that I really know a lot about that industry, but I guess it's just this couple they were looking for another girl to play with. And that's the way they were looking for unicorn, a single girl who would play with a couple. Oh, okay. That's as I thought it was going to be.
No, I didn't have to. Well, I did not participate in the super game. We'll disclosure. You want to creep your stories?
Yeah, that was it. Okay, so what do you do in that situation? Like, oh, like, and this is some advice for people. So let's make this educational for our.
Let's do that. What do you do? Like, what do you do to fend them off? That's part of your job as a server.
It is to be friendly with the guests. It's a time old tale that like creepy old guys and women as well, I guess we'll take that the wrong way and they go just like the guy who thinks the strippers in love with them. That happens to be a lot. But they all are.
So what do you do? Like, then like without offending them, just make it clear that you're not interested and you're just there to serve them. You run. Okay, so that's what I would imagine me with this super heavy accent.
Like, didn't know what was going on. First of all, didn't know what they were proposing. So luckily I was a hospital waitress. So I wasn't standing behind the bar.
I was making my rounds. I was moving around a lot. That's my saving grace, I guess. And I went behind the bar and I asked my bartender, well, this here's a situation.
This couple, this is what they asked me. What does it mean? So luckily somebody knew what it meant. And they explained it to me.
And then I said, I'm taking a break, a 30 minute break. Somebody cover my station. Yeah. So I literally like, I run away from that particular one.
Yeah, no good advice. But if you're stuck behind a bar, what do you do? Oh, man, I don't know. Don't you usually have like a bartender or a bartender or somebody to rescue you?
That's pretty much all you got. Yeah, Kelsey, would you have hired for this job? Does management say anything about like the situations you might come into or do they just kind of say, I've been you're hired? Oh, hell no.
No, you know, I mean, if you remember my story, they hired me, they're like, try this outfit on. And okay, you're going to be a bartender. We're going to pay you this much. But don't tell anybody how much would pay you.
And that's me turning 21 without a knowledge of even what goes in Roman Coke. Like, I think it was Roman Coke. I go to the Roman Coke. But don't lie, you you nailed it.
So that was I nailed the Roman Coke. So that's that's the management back in the day. At the place that I used to work at, like at the place I used to work at, we didn't have champagne, for example. So we served white like draft wine with a splash of club soda.
That's my delicate wine sense. That's not like something I could sell to you, but I have a lot of sisters. No, we're probably ever since it back. I did it.
Right. Right. Right. They had the right time.
Yeah, if they didn't like champagne, we have some we have some French chubbly short. I think I told you I date in myself, but that was literally 20, 21 years, 20 years ago. And that's back in the day where wine was on the on top on the gun. On the gun.
On the gun. Yeah, we had the white wine on the gun and like red one white on the gun and they mixed them together. They wanted Rosie. A flash of club soda to the white wine to make it champagne.
See, this is why we have this is why you're ever a recurring yes now. And not even a guest anymore, part of the show. But these are the stories we need, Elena. That's the best thing ever.
I'm going to totally get those guns installed. It's my white bar. The newest, the newest invention, right? Now that I know that's not easy.
Oh, that's perfect. Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about cocktail vision before we let you go. This is how we're going to do these things short little spots once a month with Elena. Funny stories.
And then we're going to talk a little cocktail vision because you've always got new shit coming down the pipe. So I know you mentioned last time we spoke, I don't know if you're ready to like break this stuff on an episode yet about any product you have coming out yet or the lookable rim. Yeah, let's save it for the next month. Okay, save it for a minute.
So you're a little bit of a drinkable rim that you're looking all night long. We haven't got an name for it yet. So that's yeah. But you can see for it to be delicious.
There you go. I should have been fucking around with some of the products that Elena sent to me. They're pretty awesome. We've been using the glitter and the glue for the the rim glue.
The rim glue. Yeah, it's all awesome stuff. And so as always we'll plug this at the end of your visit with us. Where does everyone find your products?
You can definitely find it on cocktail.vision Instagram and shop cocktail.vision as well as Chef Robert. Okay, Chef Robert.com perfect. All right, thanks as always. And we'll see you in four weeks.
Sounds good you guys.