So, uh, that was four years ago. You know, it's, it's, we're chipping away, man. But it was a great conversation. Uh, it's, it's a conversation of starting young, uh, really achieving, uh, I think you won all these awards in culinary school.
You went to go work for the greatest and then you just had this idea, you found a pain point, like you lost your, your, your little notebook with all of your ingredients. And you just thought to yourself, I want this to be digitized. I need something to be digitized. I think what you did is so amazing. You found a pain point, you couldn't find a solution [00:02:00] and you created a solution.
And I think that is such a great life lesson. Right, man. So that's where we were, um, in 2021. Uh, you were one part Evernote for chefs, one part costing tool, and one part E-Learning. Uh, I can't wait to find out what meez is today, but before we get into it, let's get that motivational, inspirational ball rolling with a success quote or mantra, what he offers.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Well, uh, I thought about it because you reminded me that I already had said something in the last podcast, but I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say a question. Okay. That I often ask myself, which is, how are you complicit in the conditions you say you don't want?
Eric Cacciatore: How are you comp complicit in the conditions you say you don't want?
Unpack that.
Josh Sharkey: So very often we, uh, find ourselves, uh, whether, I mean, complaining is one way to say it, or, uh, upset or frustrated with the situation that we're in. It could be the, uh, the way that, uh, our team is performing. It might [00:03:00] be the way that, um, you know, an event transpired or something that happened, good or bad.
Um, and oftentimes we, we get frustrated forgetting, um, the most important thing is what part of that can we control? Even if, let's just say you have a team member and, uh, they executed poorly or they, they really screwed something up. Right? Uh, the first thing is, ugh. I can't believe they did that. What's, what's wrong with them?
You know? But I always find that if you start with how am I complicit? What part did I have in this? Number one, it's a bit of a weight off your shoulders, right? Yeah. Because then, uh, you, you get to figure out, okay, what can I control? Right? So they did something wrong, but what environment did I create where that mistake could happen?
And it's a, it's a great question that I, I literally ask myself daily. Um, and a number of times throughout the day with things that are going on is, how am I complicit in this, you know, especially as a, as a CEO there's a lot of things that you don't do in the [00:04:00] company that other people do. Yeah. And it's the same thing if you're, if you're a chef, you don't cook everything, right?
You have, you know, have a whole team that cooks. So if you're a restaurant owner, there's a lot of people that do a lot of things right. Uh, and things will go wrong. And it is a. It sometimes can be easier to jump to. Why did they do that wrong? What the heck? You know, what are they thinking? You know, why did they come in late?
Why didn't they get their station set up? Why? And it might be easier, but it actually is far more effective. If you think about, um, how you are complicit in that. What part did I play in this? Did I create the right, uh, structure for people? Be able to get set up on time to know how to do things the right way, um, to understand or learn the way that they need to learn.
And it makes you better, and it will ultimately make your your business better.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah, it kind of reminds me, is it Jocko Willink or Jocko Williams? Do you know what I'm talking about? Like stream ownership? Oh, yeah. Jocko, uh, and that, that's the mindset. It's like take con like take ownership of everything that happens in your [00:05:00] restaurant.
If this is happening, why is it happening? What could I be doing differently to, to prevent that from happening? And what goes to my mind is like, mes is this e-learning platform. Like, oh, the, the food isn't coming out. Consistency, this idiot. Well, what did you do to empower your team to give them the resources and the tools to make sure things are consistent?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think we, we, we oftentimes, I mean, look, as chefs, we do this all the time and just, but. In general, not even just in the, in the kitchen, we oftentimes are far more, uh, implicit than we think we are. Um, and we need to be way more explicit, not only because, um,
Eric Cacciatore: define implicit. Like what is that in, in, in your, well, if you refer
Josh Sharkey: to, if you refer to, uh, a recipe, it's the same way that you would refer to a procedure or a way you want things done, or a way you, you want people to think, right?
You might assume that people understand, um, how you want it done, right? Let's just say it's a salsa verde, right? And you, um, and you have all the ingredients [00:06:00] listed, right? You have the amounts and then you just say blended until it's smooth, right?
Eric Cacciatore: Well, smooth is relative.
Josh Sharkey: Well, smooth is relative, but also, um, there's, there's probably things that you're doing before that, right?
Of course, you're gonna wash, you're gonna wash the, uh, the, um. You gonna watch the herbs beforehand, right? Right. Did you tell 'em that? Right. You might actually want to take the little, uh, green, uh, interior of the garlic out, right? 'cause that could be a little bit more bitter. Right. Did you tell them that?
Right. You might want to, um, you know, make sure that you are, um, if you're using, I don't know, like onions, right? That you're taking the little interior of that, right? Yeah. Um, there's these little things that you don't think about that you do. Right. That you, that you don't realize are, um, if not explained, um, will, will not happen every single time.
And the more explicit you can be about, um, the, from everything from the way that you want a recipe to be executed, to the way that you want people to think about how to cook food in your kitchen or the way that you want people to [00:07:00] think about the service in your restaurant, the more explicit you can be, the better.
Yeah. Right? That's how you scale your vision. These are like, what are the, what are the sort of first principles that you use to, to make decisions? Does your team know that, right? Yeah. Do they know how to think about that? And, and we're often far more, uh, implicit as just as operators. Then we realize we are,
Eric Cacciatore: yeah.
And you gotta be explicit. You gotta really like spell it out. Like, no, no chance for interpretation. Like this is how it's done. And with a, I mean, a great opening quote with a tool like meez behind you, like that's what it's all about is really like. Leaving, taking out all the question marks, like, this is how we do it.
Right?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. And I think sometimes it can be misconstrued as, you know, uh, as only referring to every single ingredient to the gram. You know, when you're, when you're writing a recipe, which is, which isn't really important, but we know if we're making a most starter, let's say, and, and it's a peach most start, right?
That peach is gonna have a different sugar content, different bricks level. Like you, you, you, you want to be explicit about that, right? Try the peaches, [00:08:00] right? How sweet are they? Right? You might need a little less or a little more sugar depending on that. And that's also being explicit, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, all these things, you know, uh, result in you potentially being unhappy with the end result of the product and be like, Hey, why isn't this right?
Right. Yeah. And it's easier to, uh, to say, Hey, you didn't make this right, as opposed to, what else could I do to make, to help you make this right.
Eric Cacciatore: Well, you know, what blows my mind, and I won't mention names, but in our first conversation you gave examples of your previous like. Job, employment. Right? And like how you're working for some amazing chefs, super talented chefs, mic Michelin star chefs.
Um, and even in those restaurants, you didn't know what the recipe was like. You didn't know, like there wasn't any standardization in these restaurants. Uh, you also went on to say that a lot of these restaurants who worked in weren't really making any money either. You know? And I, I feel like it's this, like, this almost like, like, like what's wrong with the industry where they're we're just so disjointed from like what it means [00:09:00] to be like a res, like to be like responsible and like fiscally responsible.
Like how do we treat this like a business first and like reverse engineer it to make money and. And that's where things like recipe costing inventory, like all these disciplines, the parts of the job that aren't fun, that just have to happen, that, you know, you need to put tools in place, systems in place to make sure these things happen day to day.
Uh, just blows my mind that like, at that Michelin star level, I feel like we all aspire. So many young people aspire for the stars and for the awards. And it's, it's amazing to me, after speaking to a lot of these people, how many of them aren't making money, but we're still holding that up on the pedestal.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. I mean, look, it's, it's tough because there's, I mean, this is why we exist at meez right? Is to try to help bridge the gap between creativity and profitability. Right. And both should exist, right? Yeah. There should be a balance for sure. You, you don't wanna get to a place where, um, I mean, it's great if you can scale to a hundred locations of something you, that's amazing.
It's great. You can
Eric Cacciatore: scale to 15 or [00:10:00] 20.
Josh Sharkey: Yes. The, the, uh. What is difficult is when you make compromises every step of the way in order to, um, to make it, uh, more and more executable, but less and less what your original vision was. Right. And this is part of the, I mean, look, this is just a challenge of the business that we're in because we are both art and commerce, no matter how we look at it.
There are, there are, um, obviously like very, very sort of opposite end of the spectrum of Right. How far you are towards art versus commerce. Right. Like McDonald's is, is almost all commerce. Commerce. Right, right. Whereas, you know, 11 medicine park maybe is all art. Right. But, um, it becomes difficult to, uh, to see where, uh, the commerce piece needs to be involved no matter, no matter where you are because you're running a business regardless.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. I think that's where we could be better as an industry is recognizing that. There isn't enough marketplace for all of us to be doing art [00:11:00] in our restaurants. There's only a small amount of consumer that can support the, the amount of labor and the cost of goods to, to do food at that level, in my opinion.
I think that there, we, there's like this middle marketplace, uh, like middle to high class people or like, like middle of the low class people who still need the convenience of like getting food 'cause they have busy lives. But I feel like so many people are just, are targeting like that food as art demographic of people that can even afford to go out and eat like that on a regular basis.
I don't know if there's enough market, like top 1% of people can afford to go out until like 11 Madison Park. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Well
Josh Sharkey: I think, you know, I think that's, that's, that's definitely an extreme, you know, the, the, the, the three Michelin star, you know, type, type restaurants. But there's, there's a lot of really great sort of, uh, I don't even wanna say in between, but restaurants that, that, that don't need to be three mils to the start.
That are amazing and others that really can be amazing and profitable [00:12:00] at the same time. I don't, food does not have to be, um, uh, you know, a three ULA star restaurant to be incredible. Right. And innovative and, and special. Uh, you know, but it, you know, you, you do need to be able to execute that, you know, consistently over time no matter what, no matter where you're at.
And just because you, uh, just because something doesn't require, you know, 17 steps to plate doesn't mean it can't be amazing. And actually, most of the times it's the opposite. Right? Right. Like the most delicious food is, is not always the things that you're sitting down for, you know, um, for that three Michelin star restaurant for, so, so I think it, the.
Uh, the, the pressure is really I is how do we make sure that we still feel like we are, uh, creating something special, but understanding that there's also this responsibility to, uh, embrace the commerce piece of what we do. And that's, it's just responsibility. Yeah. Like, yeah. And it's not that they're not responsible, it's just that, um, you know, you [00:13:00] tend to, one, one can tend to overshadow the other and it can make it feel like if you're focusing too much on commerce, that it's jeopardizing your art.
And I don't think that needs to be true. Um, if you, you know, if you have the right, you know, if you have the right tools and you, and, and you approach the right way.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. I hear you. So in, in 2021, uh, like I mentioned, you were one part e-learning, one part Evernote for, uh, chefs and one part, uh, like costing, like that's where meez was in 2021.
Uh, paint the picture. Where is meez today? I know you guys added inventory, you added nutrition. Like what else?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of. We, we look to where, you know, where the customer, you know, needs more, more, more help. So that's, we certainly started as, um, you know, recipe management at its core, and it still is, you know, to this day, res, you know, we are, um, maniacally focused on being the best recipe tool in the world, and it still is, you know, used, you know, primarily for storing, [00:14:00] organizing, sharing, training, your recipes.
Um. I think where we have evolved, obviously we've added things on like nutrition because people needed that, right? We started to see, you know, restaurants at scale. They needed to have nutrition, they needed allergens, things like that. So we wanted to do that in, in, in our way and, and, and try to automate that as much as possible.
We had a lot of customers that, um, that were asking to be able to count their recipes and inventory and we're not able to do that. And so we built a way for them to do that, even if they're using another ERP system, like a Restaurant 365 or a Restaurant System Pro or something like that. Um, and I think where, where we have evolved, uh, more so on the, on the data side is it's very, it's, it's very clear that it, that one of the most challenging things in every, um, in, in every sort of, uh, level of, of, of restaurant, whether you are a mom and pop or you are a thousand unit chain, that it's incredibly difficult.
To [00:15:00] ascertain your theoretical food cost because it requires you to have all of the recipe data of all of your menu items, all the yields, all the conversions, um, really dialed in so that you can tie that to your sales and get a theoretical food cost. And if you don't know your theoretical food cost, then um, you have no benchmark of how well you're doing, right?
So you might have a 25% food cost in your restaurant. But if, if it turns out that actually your theoretical food cost is 20%, you're wasting 5%. Yeah. Where's that going? Yeah. Where's that going? So it, it might seem good that you have a 25% food cost, but turns out you're actually way off. Right. Uh, like a 2% delta is, is, is, is, is, is somewhat average.
And, and of course you wanna be as, as, as low as possible. Um,
Eric Cacciatore: yeah. There's always gonna be some, some miscount, there's always gonna be some barriers, whether it's over portioning. Yeah. Or somebody pulling a fry from the, you know, like a, somebody got a little snack, something fell on the ground. The ground, you didn't account for it.
That's right. You know it's gonna happen.
Josh Sharkey: Right. But if you don't know your benchmark, then you, then you can't, um, you really can't, uh, improve 'cause you don't know what to [00:16:00] um, you know, where you can improve. And that's where we're helping a lot more these days. Right. Is we, we, because we've made it so easy to get all of your recipes into, um.
Into meez very quickly and, and, and to structure all that recipe data, even if it's in some sort of word format or PDF or something where you can quickly, um, you know, import that into meez and, and all the yields, all the conversions are obviously like, built out for you right away. So, because we, we launched, uh, this menu product, so, so I think since we've, since we last talked about a year or so ago, maybe, maybe a year and a half ago, we launched a menu engineering tool.
Um, you can now, uh, you know, understand your theoretical food cost, which is, uh, again, something that I, I even underestimated. Um. How difficult it is for everyone to, um, to get this. So it's been a big help and we're, we're working on allowing folks to, to take this theoretical menu cost data and actually send it to their, to their other [00:17:00] systems.
Uh, so if you're using another, uh, an accounting platform or, or a reporting tool or another, another ERP or back office, that you can actually send this data there as well, um, so that you can, you, you can use it for better reporting, um, in, in those platforms as well. 'cause meez is really meant for everything that happens, you know, before you ever get to that report.
Eric Cacciatore: Got it. So, um, so it's the menu engineering elements of, that you've developed over the past four years that enable you to do this theoretical food costing. Um, and I think it's also, did I get that right in terms of like.
Josh Sharkey: Well, menu engineering is really, it's funny 'cause like, I think when you hear menu engineering, you think, um, here's a report of your menu sales.
And that's not menu engineering, that's just a menu sales report. Right. Menu engineering is the, is a, is a verb. It's to engineer. Like, you know, when you value engineer, um. A, the build out of a restaurant, for example, an architect does this, they're sort of understanding where can I, um, where can my equipment schedule get, you know, yeah.
You know, you know, shrunk [00:18:00] down or where can I like, you know, save space and things like that. Menu engineering is menu value engineering, which is, okay, where can I improve the price point of something because that will, um, I understand, I know what the impact of that will be on my total. Total, right? The amount of
Eric Cacciatore: volume we're doing on this product, and it's relatively inexpensive where we're selling a bunch of it.
Yeah, we can increase this by 25 cents. Customer will not feel that. But if we're doing this, this one item makes up 40% of what we sell, or 30% of what we sell, then that super expensive item that, you know, you know, maybe we can lower that a little bit to make it more approachable. That's,
Josh Sharkey: that's right. Or, you know, or you know, what turns out we're using, um, uh, similar, uh.
Batch recipes. We have a chim maturity and a salsa ver. I wonder if we could have some base and save on some prep time and improve our, our costs or, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm buying this, um, this chickpea right now. What would happen if I bought this one? How would that impact my overall menu cost? Because I use so much of, so many chickpeas or something.
Eric Cacciatore: Got it. [00:19:00] Um, so I think the other really cool thing that meez is doing, and I think that this is, um, just a, a life lesson. A business lesson. This idea of like having an abundance mentality, right? Like you could look at Restaurant 365 as competition because they offer similar services. You could look at restaurant assistance Pro as competition, but instead you're saying, well, how can we create a win-win situation?
You know, like, I have so many customers using us because we're best in class for e-learning and scaling recipes. And like that's what we do. We have these other things like costing and inventory that are conflict of interest with Restaurant 365 and Restaurant Three systems, or restaurant Systems Pro. So like you could look at each other as competition and you could say, no, we don't wanna work with you.
Or you can choose to go further together. You know, and like, I think having that mindset of knowing your strengths and surrounding yourself with, with people who are strong or you're weak, like you don't have a general ledger tied to meez. You don't have scheduling tied to meez. But if you, if you can, you can [00:20:00] take all the customers that you've attracted onto yourself because of how good you are at the e-learning and the recipe scaling and you can create this win-win situation.
Like getting, help me get into your mindset as to like Yeah, absolutely. How Navigate that.
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Josh Sharkey: So, uh, it, well, and it's true, uh, and I believe that, you know, you. You know, for the, for the better of the, of, of the customers, the restaurants, you know, we should be focused on the thing that we do really well. Yes. And, and do that really well. The way that I think about it, uh, it's funny 'cause we had, we had a, we had a, a a every year I, I bring my team somewhere from all over the world.
We, we come, we come together in one place. 'cause we're, we're remote. Um, this year I brought everyone to Cabo and, uh, and I do, we do an all hands every, you know, every two weeks with the whole company. But, uh, we do a big one whenever we meet together in person, uh, with everyone. And so this year we have a lot of new team members and I wanted to sort of, uh, revisit where we sit in the, in this whole sort of, uh, food tech [00:22:00] ecosystem.
And you know what, what I believe is there's, there's really everything that happens before the customer buys the product. Right. So before the, or before the customer actually like, receives the food and eats it, right? So whether you get it, you know, you're sitting at a table and you get the food and, and you're eating or you're at home and you're, and, and you get a delivery.
So what's everything that happened before that and what's everything that happens after the sale, right? It's pre-sale and post-sale and meez is really optimized for everything that happens, presale, right? So what that means is before you ever sell something, right, you have to make sure that it's profitable, right?
Did you create a profitable menu? Right? Did you, are all your recipes optimized to be as profitable as possible? Do you know the profit margin of all those recipes? And I think more importantly, and this might be controversial, but I think way more importantly is, are you [00:23:00] executing that food consistently?
Why
Eric Cacciatore: is that controversial?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, well, I mean, you think about profits, I dunno if it's controversial, but, but, you know, profit is obviously, um, you know, you have to, you have to be profitable to stay, uh, you know, to stay in business. But. I think anybody that's really good at operations knows is that the most important element of a successful business of any kind and restaurants are no different, and restaurants may even more so is consistency.
Yeah. Can you deliver something consistent every single time? Because it's terrifying to go to a restaurant, have a delicious, you know, meal, maybe you have this awesome risotto and then you go back the next time and it's completely different. They, you know, it's this time it's dry things. Were with Coke.
You're like, I, I don't know if I can trust going back here again, so I probably won't. Right. And, and you know, I said this quote to you last time, which I believe is more important, is important in life in general, is that it's far more important what you can do consistently every single day than something that you can do, um, incredibly well once.
Right. [00:24:00] And, and that is for sure true in restaurants, right? Right. You have to be consistent, right? So before you ever sell, you know, before you ever like look at a report of all the sales of your food. Can you execute that food consistently every single day? Right. That's imperative. Right. And so where meez sits in this whole sort of, um, ecosystem, is
Eric Cacciatore: that ecosystem Before the sale.
After the sale, yeah.
Josh Sharkey: Before the sale and after the system. Before the sale, right? You wanna make sure that you are designing profitable menus that you're building, you know, the, the, the, uh, the training that you need to make sure that everybody can execute well. That everybody knows what good looks like.
They knows, they know, uh, like the, the source of truth of like where the, you know, you know where each recipe lives or where any of your sort of procedures live. And that you're building the building blocks of how to make sure that you execute consistently every single time. Right? So you're, you're designing like very profitable venues and you're making sure they ex they're executed well.
That all has to happen before you ever look at a report of how [00:25:00] much you sold, right. And how profitable you were. And if you, if it doesn't matter, um, how good that report is, how tight that report is. If you didn't do all that work beforehand, then what happens after the fact is kind of, well, you're gonna right.
There's nothing you can really do about it right now. Those are important, right? So what happens after the sale? Having good reporting, having a really, really good p and l, something that's like easy to build and easy to manage and easy, easy to to use is really important. Having really good reporting, having really good forecasting.
These are all really important things too, right? We don't, we don't do that stuff. Right. Right. And I don't wanna do those things because, um, it's a whole nother can of worm. It's a whole nother can of worms and, and, and it's a lot of work. And, and those are important for me. Um, one. Where, where we, where I think the, the biggest impact, you know, personally is helping people to, uh, make sure that they execute well and have proper menus so that those reports that they look at are, are look good.
Right. You know, have the right numbers of them [00:26:00] because, uh, I don't want you to see a report and be like, well, it's, this is a really accurate report and we lost a lot of money. You know? Yeah.
Eric Cacciatore: I think it's just this mindset of choosing to go further together. Uh, you can do it at like this scale of like restaurant technology, like having open AI and working together, but also like in your community, um, like some of the most successful restaurant tours, the biggest lessons I've learned is what I like to call, like restaurant owner polyamory, where like everyone has their lane.
You know, you got this one person over here who's an amazing mixologist and they ha they can create the best bar programs, you know, and they just have this wealth of knowledge with cocktails and wine and they can develop programs. And you have this other person who's an amazing chef and like that's what they do.
But you have this other person who's this amazing marketer or like, you know, and what you do is like, you can. You can like, choose to like hoard your relationships and or you can choose to stay in your lane and just help different people. And then you have like this community of restaurant owners that come together.
One person might have a, like a stake in this business and that business and they, you know what I mean? It's almost like it's, it's [00:27:00] partnerships, but like, it's, it's being, it's like kind of like offering your services to different partners instead of just like being all in, in one, one restaurant group.
Have you seen people, like, does this ring a bell for you? Have you seen anything like that?
Josh Sharkey: I think that's, I mean, I think that's pretty endemic of the, of the industry as, as a whole. I think we, we, we are pretty collaborative industry. I mean, maybe on the restaurant tech side it's slightly different.
There's, there's, there's, um, you know, unfortunately, you know, not as much of that, um, um, collaboration as I'd like to see. But on the restaurant operation side, like restaurant owners and, and, and, and chefs, I think, you know, it's, it's far, it's far more collaborative. And there's, there's, there's also just far less, um.
Risk of competition because you, you're not gonna go eat at the same restaurant every day, right? In the same town, right? Yeah. Uh, even if there's, they're somewhat similar. You're not gonna go to the same place every single day. Now. If Popeye's and KFC open right next to each other, you'd see some cannibalization there.
That's probably not gonna work. Right. Right. But if you have, um, you know, like a, an [00:28:00] Italian restaurant and a Spanish restaurant next to each other there, there's not gonna be that much cannibalization, you know?
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. Well, I mean. I just think that that mindset of, of choosing to be open, choosing to work with people who are strong or you're weak or who might round off what you offer, you know, you will always go further together.
And I think it's in our nature to be tribal, to like, to, like we all bring something special to a tribe. One person might be really good with like their mushroom knowledge, right? Like they go forging and they know exactly what mushrooms to eat. Another person might be extremely athletic and they can go kill the, like, the deer, you know, and like haul it back.
Like, but when we all bring our unique strengths to the, the community, to the tribe, like the tribe is healthier. Right. So I think that that mindset in business communities, right, like restaurateurs, like if you're in a, a city, like look at the, like other people and embrace their strengths and choose to learn from 'em, choose to, to benefit from each other's strengths.
And I think if we take that and we blow it up even bigger, the world of like restaurant tech today, like [00:29:00] now it's a nationwide marketplace, right? Or even like a global marketplace. I think the bigger you get, the almost like, like it almost narrows your ability to work with people because it becomes about like owning the market, right?
But if we change that and we are conscious, like consumers in the restaurant, like, not like the, like the, the guest consumer, but restaurant owners consuming restaurant technology, right? With our purchasing and we like, I don't know, I think we, we could be really good about supporting the organizations that want to do what's best for the industry.
Josh Sharkey: I mean, of course. Yeah.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. And I, I guess what I'm saying is what I see with what you're doing in your ability to like, to have partners to integrate with Restaurant 365 with Restaurant Assistance Pro, I'm gonna toot my horn here. I made the introduction between Josh and Fred Langley for Restaurant Assistance Pro, and I'm so stoked you guys are actually gonna be like integrating like that.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. We just started chatting, but uh, it looks like there's, there's, there's definitely, um, some interesting [00:30:00] stuff we can do there.
Eric Cacciatore: But now as the restaurant owner, you get the best of both worlds. You know, you don't have to choose this or that. You can, you can, you can be stronger as a result of these restaurant technology companies choosing to work together.
And I think that's the magic.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Yeah. No, look, there's, there's, uh, there's nuance to that, right? That, that I, that I, I try to make, make sure I, I. I'm honest about with myself. 'cause yeah, I have a pipe dream that like, um, you know, in a perfect world we are the recipe medium and restaurants can use all kinds of other platforms and we can pipe our recipe data to all those platforms and, and, and it works all sort of hunky dory.
Um, but to your point, yeah, there's, there's, you know, I think the bigger they get the the harder it's to partner together. And, and this data does need to be, you know, I don't like using technical terms, but you do need to be able to unify and normalize this data if you're gonna be, if you're gonna be sharing it with other systems.
Yeah. Otherwise it doesn't work and, and it's harder to do. Um, you know, we can't rely on the, on the restaurant to be able to, to figure that out. [00:31:00] We, you know, we have to, it's incumbent upon us as, as on the tech side to, to, to figure it out.
Eric Cacciatore: Right. But I mean, so in this example with like a, you know, restaurant assistance pro and that integration basically what the, the, the, uh.
Restaurant owner, consumer in this example, 'cause they're consuming your products. Um, what they would get is like your best in class, uh, e-learning platform costing, um, and that all that, like if you're putting all of your recipes into meez, uh, but you don't have the what happens after the sale resources.
Yeah, that's right.
Josh Sharkey: That's right. Yeah. Then, and this is what we do with we, and we do this with a number of companies, but the, but the, again, we, to your point, we, we do not do a general ledger. We're not doing scheduling, we're not doing, um, a lot of that reporting that something like an an RSP or 365 will, will have.
And um. But what we do is, is we have created a very structured way for you to take this recipe data that that is set up really well in meez, right? You, you're using these recipes to cook, to train, [00:32:00] um, also to, you know, to, to do RD and to, and, and to cost them so you understand if they're profitable. But you can take this, the, the data, uh, meaning like the structured sort of recipe data that you would then need in order to have the right reporting in another system, like in an ERP system.
So Epic specifically costing,
Eric Cacciatore: right? Like, so when you're, when you're like costing out your recipes and you're putting in like line item by line item, like what is all the inventory we have, what are all the purchases we have, uh, how much of all these different purchases, ingredients are in each one of our recipes?
Where's the money going, right? So if you're using meez, you can take all that data. Right. And you can push that data into a, uh, a restaurant 365 or a Restaurant Systems Pro, right? Yeah,
Josh Sharkey: that's right. So you can, so you can take the data, you can export it, you kinda do whatever you want with it, right? You can put it in any system you want.
We, we, we, we just make sure it's structured really well so that, um, the, I mean, I don't wanna get too technical here, but there's, um, you know, there's a, there's a very specific way that [00:33:00] your recipe data has to be structured in order for it to work in an ERP system. Like, like what, what is
Eric Cacciatore: ERP?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, well, ERP is really like a, um, enterprise resource.
I call '
Eric Cacciatore: em Enterprise Solutions. Yeah,
Josh Sharkey: yeah. But, but I'm saying ERP, but really it's, it's 365. It's Margin Edge. It's, it's Broken man. It's, it's, it's, it's a restaurant system Pro it's any of these, any these systems where they have sort of this full suite of reporting and things like that, that reporting, um, you know, to be clear, like if you, if you want, if you want your, your, like a full sort of.
A picture of your business in, in a restaurant, meaning you wanna know your, your, your, your food cost,
Eric Cacciatore: actual versus theoretical.
Josh Sharkey: You, if you, you know, you're actual and you want your theoretical, um, you, you have to have the recipe data. Without that recipe data, you have a half baked version of your reporting and it's really, um, you're, you're sort of flying blind.
Here's a, this is a very good example, right? I'll just try to like, make it very kind of, um, simple. I buy short ribs, okay? Short ribs cost whatever they cost. 14 bucks pound, eight bucks pound, [00:34:00] depending on where you're buying 'em from. Um, I'm gonna count my short ribs, right? I braise those short ribs. Okay? So now I'm, maybe I'm losing, you know, 40% of the, of, of the short rib because I, you know, I'm pulling the bone out.
They also shrink and, uh, that short rib also has, you know, red wine in it. It has a bunch of miis, it's got some, you know, whatever else we're, we're, we're adding to it. Um, maybe it's got some port and, um, and so I raised this thing. I need to count that short roof. I, I have to have, uh, I have to have a way to count how much braised short rib do I have as well.
I can count my raw short ribs, but if all I'm doing is counting the raw short ribs, then I don't know how much I'm actually using. So I have to count the braised rib as well. If I just counted 10 pounds of braised short rib and assumed it was 10 pounds of, of raw short rib, well, way off. Right? I just, like we said, we, we probably lost 40% of that.
And there's a bunch of other stuff in there. There's red wine. Yeah. Hopefully you're using a really good red wine. Right? And that's gonna cost some money too. So if you don't have [00:35:00] these recipes, then your inventory is totally inaccurate. And then you don't have one, you don't know what your theoretical cost is.
And then you also have a very skewed sense of your, of your actual cost. If you're not counting and understanding, you know, how much inventory you have at hand versus you know how much you have left. So, um, the recipe data is imperative, right? Yeah. And the reason, you know. It isn't really the reason why we started meez.
The reason why we started meez is much more novel, right? Is because I wanted a, I just wanted a badass recipe tool. Um, but what I learned, you know, over the, over time of building it was, man, it's impossible to get, it's, it is so hard to get your recipes into one of these inventories systems because they're, they're not built for that.
Eric Cacciatore: And that's, that's okay. The inventory system's not built for recipes. No. They're
Josh Sharkey: built for inventory, you know, and so the recipes are sort of like an invoice of the recipe. Yeah. And, um, that's not something you can kind of, you know, refactor, you have to start from the beginning this way, right. You have to start with the intent of it, of it being that, uh, it's, it's like [00:36:00] if, um, you know, the, it would be like if you are designing, you know, the new engine for.
Tesla in your accounting platform, and that's where your engineers work off of for like the designs for your, for your, for your engine. Right. Um, they're, they're, they're different workflows, right. You know, you can have an account of all the pieces of the engine in that platform. You can, you can know how many, you know, what, what, what, what are all the pieces?
How much they, how much they'll cost. And that will add up to the cost of the center. But, but, um, you're not going to use that to actually like, build the engine, right. And to like treat tain, train, train people on how to do that. So they're just different. There, there there're different workflows. Yeah. And I think we, we, until, you know, we came along, I think that was, that was just what was understood was Oh yeah.
That, that's where your recipes
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. But I mean the, the process of. Going through and, you know, filling out all the recipe cards, figuring out what, you know, what the cost of every menu item is. Um, [00:37:00] that's a lot of work like that, that process of going through and like doing this work to know exactly what you're, you know, the menu engineering, all this stuff, that's, you don't wanna do that twice, right?
So the cool thing is, if you're already using meez, right, and you choose to, you want to scale your operation, you want to improve your technology, and you want to get like a, like a restaurant, a built gen, general ledger, uh, purchasing, costing, budgeting, all these tools on the post, like the post-purchase level, like now you can push all that data straight from your costing and, and your recipes straight to the.
I'm gonna use the, the example of Restaurant Assistance Pro because that's the one I know the most and is what comes to my mind. Um, the biggest challenge with implementing say a restaurant Assistance Pro is getting it up and going is all the work you have to do in the back end to build out all those line items to get the data into the system.
And if you can just do that one time and have information flow, it's just so much better for the restaurant owner.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, and, and, [00:38:00] and again, the, the place where your team is going to look at those recipes to scale those recipes, to update those recipes and iterate on them and, um, is.
Is not an accounting platform. Right. You know? Yeah. And, and, uh, and so there's just, they're, they're, they're, again, they're just two separate, two separate workflows. Yeah.
Eric Cacciatore: I'm looking at the content calendar right now, and this episode is scheduled to go live on March 24th. I'm like, I didn't even realize this actually works out perfectly on March.
Uh, like the, the next four weeks I'm running a four part workshop series with Fred on the four must have profit systems and we cover all that, that post-purchase stuff. So it's actually good timing. Um, so where, where was meez in terms of like scale in 2021? How many clients would you say you had?
Josh Sharkey: Oh God. I don't even, I don't even remember, man, A lifetime ago.
Uh, I mean,
Eric Cacciatore: I feel like you guys are just like killing it and I'm just like, stoked to see your growth. I movie. I don't, it's where [00:39:00] are you now?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, I mean there's, there's, there's over 30,000 Wow. You know, kitchens using, using the tool. Um, we have a free tool as well, so a lot of those are on the, on the, on the free tool.
I think there's, you know, there's, there's maybe like, um, uh, like a few thousand, um, on the, on the, on, on the paid tool. Um, 'cause again, we, we wanna just be your, your database of recipes no matter what. Like use the free one, put all your recipes in there, you know, when you're ready to do more, do more.
Eric Cacciatore: Would you say you had like 50, like have you grown by a hundred percent since 2021, would you say or?
Josh Sharkey: Oh, far, yeah, far more than that. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we were, you know, we were in three Xing a couple years in a row. Well, we like nine XD and then we, that's awesome. And then we four X and then three x. And, um, you know, it's obviously as you get larger, it's, it's, uh, it's harder to, to continue that sort of scale of growth, but Right.
Um, but, um, you know, not the, the, the vision, the, the, the purpose, the mission has not really changed since day one, which I'm really grateful for. What is the
Eric Cacciatore: vision? What is the purpose?
Josh Sharkey: Well, we again, we, [00:40:00] we really do exist to, uh, bridge creativity and profitability. I, I think about, um, that you were talking about the restaurants that, you know, some one that might go out of business and, and the ones that don't.
Right. Um, you know, it's funny 'cause Bill Ackman is an incredible investor, was, you know, has, uh, now is somewhat, you know, famous for saying this. He's famous for many things, but recently, um, and I think it might've been a year ago, he said, restaurants are our best, uh, are our best investment. Uh, he's, this guy's an incredible investor, right.
He invested very well. Something you
Eric Cacciatore: would, uh, expect to hear from an investor. Yeah. And,
Josh Sharkey: and, um, and you know, he invest in Chipotle. Right. Okay. And, and, and the, the premise there is that once you figure out, um, the, the system, it's, it is a really good business. Um. But it's very difficult one to get to that scale, to be able to get to, to a scale where you can have those kinds of systems and then to make sure that you can [00:41:00] execute on those systems is very, is very difficult as well.
Like operational excellence, I think is, is um, is underrated in terms of, uh, the viability of, of a business. So, I mean, it's, it's really
Eric Cacciatore: Hit me with his name one more time.
Josh Sharkey: Oh, bill Ackman.
Eric Cacciatore: Bill Ackman,
Josh Sharkey: yeah. Yeah, he's, he's, um, about like, get him as a, a gasoline show. Well, that would be, that would be dope if you could, but I'm gonna try.
Eric Cacciatore: Um, but you know, I think you just said something that kind of struck a chord with me and it's like, um, it's a good investment if you can help these restaurants get to a place where they can scale like the, it's getting to that point where I think where my mind went is to be able to invest in the systems and the technologies.
Right. Like you have to get to a certain point in cash flow where you can like standardize and invest technology. But I don't think that's the case anymore. I think that as you know, Moore's law, like this idea of that technology gets exponentially better, it also gets exponentially more affordable. So I think we're gonna see a world where you can be a mom and [00:42:00] pop and have a tech stack that rivals like the biggest restaurant corporations in the world.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Well I think it, it's, it's, it's certainly far more, a lot of this is far more ubiquitous now. The adoption curve has really like, hit a, hit a hit, a hit, a knight's stride. I think that there's way more optionality now, which is great to your point. It's a lot more affordable. It's only more affordable.
The biggest, um, you know, the biggest leap that has to be made is, is just. Seeing that, uh, it's worth the time, uh, to, uh, to embrace some of this technology because when you're a, when you're a single, uh, location restaurant, for example, I mean, I've been this before, you're thinking about payroll, the next month you're thinking about like, am I gonna make payroll?
And, you know, every dollar counts. So it is, uh, I think we, we oftentimes, um. Uh, what's the right word? I don't wanna say underestimate, but we, but, but [00:43:00] we, we devalue the, the, the, the, the level of, of, of difficulty of these decisions as a restaurant operator to decide to invest in these things. At when you're, when you're, when you're, when you don't, when the dollars are, are, are, are not that great.
Yeah. We look
Eric Cacciatore: at are, you know, what, what do we have coming in? Like what, like what money is left over? And we think to ourselves, I can't afford this, but like, what money will you save?
Josh Sharkey: Exactly. But it is, and it is an investment and it's not an, it's not always an easy decision, you know? Right. But the, but the point I was making about, you know, why we exist is really that there are restaurants that, uh, have closed that are incredible restaurants with incredible talented people that work their asses off.
And they still close. And that's a, that's a lot of re that's a shame. Restaurants. And it doesn't, it doesn't have to be that way. Um, but. But my, my, my goal, why, why we exist is to, is to help more [00:44:00] and more people, um, not have that happen, right? Yeah. And, and, and, and every end of the, of the spectrum, right?
Whether you're small or you're, or you're large. And I think, um, it's interesting because where meez, um, provides, I think the most value right now is when you've hit, um, hit some scale, right? Where you're at like five to, you know, maybe like 40, 50, you know, locations. Um,
Eric Cacciatore: like the communication starts to crumble between locations.
Josh Sharkey: Well, it's, it's a number of things. One problem scale. Yeah. Right. So the, the problem that you had at location one exponentially scales as you, as you, as you, um, as you scale if you don't fix it. Two, maintaining consistency over all of those, uh, locations, whether they're the same brand or different brands is really difficult.
Uh, and, and that's where we help out a lot. And, and, and lastly, like, if you have not optimized the, the profitability of your menu, those little numbers have a much [00:45:00] bigger impact, right? So like 1% of a food cost on, you know, half a million dollars, right? It's. Very, very small amount of money, right? Yeah. Over the course of a year, 1% on a hundred million dollars right.
Is a lot of money. Yeah. Right. On $50 million. That's a, that's a big, that's a big number, right? Half a percent is a lot. And so if you're talking about three, four or five 6%, which by the way happens all the time, you're like, you find 6%, um, that you can improve just by, you know, engineering your menu. And because it's happened, I've, I, I've, I, I've, I've, I've seen it happen.
Eric Cacciatore: I mean, I can give an example real quick. Uh, we, uh, we're hosting a, a Profit Power Hour in the network and, um, there's this, uh, I'll say his name, s pretty public. Ronnie joined us and we're, our goal is to get him from 36% food costs to 30% food costs, and we had him get a descending report. Of all of his purchases.
And we had him look at the most, his biggest purchase as a burger concept. Uh, it's a, like a, you know, like your [00:46:00] typical, like simple, like in and out local burger joint. Their biggest purchase is french fries. And we found out that he was over portioning by like four grams. Like his, like he was giving like almost nine grams or like eight grams of french fries when you're supposed to be, not grams, but, um, ounces.
Ounces. Thank you. Uh, of french fries when you're supposed to be portioning five. Mm-hmm. So, um, like that alone. Oh yeah. Right there. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm curious, how close are we gonna help you get to your 30% food cost? Just by helping, like if you're biggest purchase and sold item is french fries and you're almost doubling the portion, like you don't think we're gonna get close to finding 6% Yeah.
On the food cost right there. And that's just the power of inventory and purchasing and tracking and like looking at the data. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: You know? Yeah. And I think, um. You know, oftentimes we, we, uh, we, we, we might spend too much effort when, uh, parade's law, uh, comes into play a lot here, right? Where most of the time, 80% of the [00:47:00] opportunity of, you know, profit improvement or, or whatever the improvement is.
Uh, in this case, let's say it's your, your menu profitability, your food costs, most of the time, like 80% of your opportunity is 20% of the work. Yeah. It's like 10 ingredients, right. That you're using, right? Yeah. It's literally like, there's 10 things that if you just focused on not wasting those 10 things across all the menu items and that's all you did.
Yeah. You would have, uh, you know, a huge impact. But you have to know what those 10 things are, and you have to know precisely how much you're, you're supposed to use of each of those things. And that's what tracking
Eric Cacciatore: does. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what system, and I think what, where you were going with this train of thought, um, is this idea as, as we move into the future.
What if I'm paraphrasing, I like to say we have to learn how to do more with less. We have to learn how to embrace technology 'cause cost of labor is going up, food cost is going up. We're gonna have to make sure every second counts, every thing we're doing in our restaurant. We have to optimize it for efficiency.
And the only way to do that [00:48:00] is by leveraging technology today. Like so whether that be meez or a enterprise solution where you have, where you can track all the data and when the thing is, once you are seeing where your money's going and seeing how your effort is manifesting in, in numbers, that can draw you to where the opportunities are to start shaving 1% here and there and it compounds.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. You know. That's true. And I, I think there's, there's another perspective that, that I think about, which is of course, yeah, we need to be more efficient, we need to do more with less. We need to, things cost more. The cost of goods has gone up far more than the, the, the perceived price point that we can actually charge for things in a restaurant.
Those are all true.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. You
Josh Sharkey: just hit another Keep going. Yeah, we, we, we can double click on that too. But the, the thing that, uh, I think is most exciting is that we can do more of the thing that we actually started this business for when. The, [00:49:00] the beauty of technology is, especially, you know, a lot of the stuff we're talking about, sort of back of the house or, or whatever it is, is, is replacing rote, um, you know, rote processes or things that, um, that, that are intended, uh, to be better done by, um, computer or an algorithm or something as opposed to a person, right?
There's a lot of those things, right? We don't need to do math. We don't need to be math experts, right? That's not where we started a restaurant business. You know, we don't, we don't need to be organizational experts. That's not where we started a restaurant business. It's nice, it's fun. I love to organize.
We started this to make people happy and to innovate and to be creative and to nurture that side of what we, of what we love, and we can do more of that. That's what's cool. That's what, that's what I find really exciting about, about, you know, how, um. You know, technology can help. And it's, it's more than just technology, but how, in this case, technology can help is, is, it's not that we are, you know, we, we we're [00:50:00] replacing people, but we are letting, we are letting people like do the thing that they actually love to do.
Yeah. And that's, it's interesting. That's, that's what, that's what's, um, that's what I hope and I believe can, um, can, can start to become even more prevalent is that you can spend more time on. Coming up with, you know, with, with new dishes and iterating on the dishes that you have and taking bigger risks, something like that, because you understand, um, and you understand the numbers, you know where you're at.
Uh, it's the same sort of premise. It's funny, like very early on in my career, I, I, I, I learned a lesson. Uh, it's the bole, uh, because bole would, would always come in and change the menu. Like at five o'clock he'd come in, like throw a whole pig on the, on the, on the counter and bring some, you know, vegetables from his, uh, from his, from his farm or, and then literally right before service would just change the menu and we would be, everybody be upset, half upset, half not, but like, true love that.
Uh, and, and also, but, you know, creating, you know, [00:51:00] incredible food in that moment, right? And, you know, like taking some of the fat back of that pig right away and like gently rendering it and folding in some, you know, parsley juice. And it was, it was really beautiful things, right? That could never happen if all of us didn't have our Meison Plus together if we weren't.
Incredibly organized and dialed in and had everything set. And the only way that you can really, truly be creative and innovative in the restaurant is if you are really fucking organized. Yeah. And it seems counterintuitive, like, wait a second, like art, we're supposed to be creative. We should be like sort of wild and free and, and spontaneous and Yes.
But if you wanna be spontaneous, you gotta be organized.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. You know, you're, are you still going through train of thought? No, no, go ahead. So you are hitting on a bunch of stuff right now. Um, so this 80 20 thing, pre principle, it comes up time and time again. And I think that in life, so I think [00:52:00] you've heard every action has an opposite and equal reaction, right?
You heard, I believe that every truth has an opposite and equal truth. I think every, um, what's the other one? Like every truth, every action. Um, you should be in politics. Well, there's every truth. Yeah. I mean, I, I think the truth is like we live in a very complex world and there's, and almost everything positive, negative, there's this bounce.
And I think that there's like an optimal, like a sweet spot, like a, a point of peak performance that typically works out to be a, a near that 80 20 split. If like, so like chaos and order is on this. Like those are complete opposites, right? They, you would say you need to be organized. You need needs, right?
To be successful, you need to have systems, processes, procedures, protocols. That's the secret to success. But without a little chaos. You need that, that, that's the [00:53:00] lubrication, the magic, the culture. Chaos is culture. Chaos. Chaos is the human variable. You can't have one without the other. You have to find a split.
And I would say that, you know, what is that split in the world of restaurants? Is it, is it 80% order in, in like discipline in 20%? Like creativity, chaos. Like there's these, like whenever I'm learning something that is a hard truth, there is an equal and opposite hard truth that is, you know what I'm saying?
Like that. Like what is this balance?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. No, it's great. It's a great point. I think you, it's certainly a spectrum. I don't know if the spectrum starts at 80 20, but you know, if you look at McDonald's it's probably a hundred zero. Um, and then if you look at, um, you know, uh, love in Madison Park Yeah. Or Massimo in Italy.
Yeah. It's maybe like, you know, 2080. Right. You know, but, and that's okay. And you know, you, you give up some things for other things. Um. But yeah, I think that's, that's a, that's a choice you make when you, when you start a business.
Eric Cacciatore: Well, that's the cool thing about the restaurant industry, and this is another thing that [00:54:00] drove me crazy in all these interviews.
Like, I started this podcast, I was looking for the path, what is the secret, the path to be successful in the restaurant industry. The more I started getting into it, the more I realized I didn't know anything. Because there is no single path. There's a million different destinations paths you can take to get to that destination.
So like, to your point where like there's a spectrum, like are you trying to be at 11 Madison Park or are you trying to be a, a McDonald's? Like, those are two different paths to take and those are, those are, you're leveraged. Like it's a totally different approach, you know? So like, what I think in order to, before you decide where you're gonna go, you gotta figure out like, who am I?
What are my values? What are my strengths? Like, where are my opportunities? And you gotta chart your own path that's uniquely fit to you in your situation.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, look, I think something I think about often. Who, especially when I'm talking to folks that are, you know, starting new businesses or it doesn't matter if it's a restaurant or not, it's like, you know, does your vision meet your actions?
And, [00:55:00] you know, this happens a lot in, in restaurants, but it happens a lot in, in many businesses. You know, where you're not quite sure where you're at, you're not quite you, you haven't really sort of chosen lane. Once you choose Lane, then you can develop a very clear plan of like how you're gonna execute, for example, right?
If I am deciding, I want to be, you know, the greatest, I wanna be the greatest restaurant in the world. I wanna be, I want to, I wanna get three stars from Michelin. I wanna get four stars from New York Times. I wanna win a James Beard, right? There's very specific plan I have to put in place and actions I have to put in place.
Now I have to stay in business, right? So that's important. But most importantly, I have to create, uh, food and, and, and, uh, and. And an experience that is, um, that is unbelievable, right? That is that, that is just like wowing on so many levels, right? And so there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of energy and time that I'm gonna to put into that, [00:56:00] right?
And if I want to create the next, um, Chipotle, right? I want, I want a thousand of this, of this restaurant, then I have a very different. You know, set of, well, set of principles, but also a set of, um, you know, processes and systems that I need to put in place right from day one. I have to know both
Eric Cacciatore: equally hard,
Josh Sharkey: both are equally hard.
Yeah. And there's obviously a huge, like, spectrum in between, but you know, what, what do you, what do you want to accomplish with your, with your business? And then, and then, you know, build it accordingly. You know, again, if you, if you want to have, you know, a, uh, a thousand unit group, you know, you, you, you're gonna have to make sure that this is a thing that can scale.
If from day one you're creating something that, you know, there's no possible way you could ever scale this idea, right. It's, it takes, you know, uh, a hundred, you know, hours of, of, of labor to create this one dish. Right. And this is the thing that's gonna, and there's not really a way to sort of, um, um, [00:57:00] do it, do it differently to scale it.
Right. Okay. Let's. That's probably not a thing that you'll, that you'll turn into a thousand year location. Right. Um, so again, you just have to like, like be very clear that make and, and ensure that whatever vision you have matches, you know, the actions that you're taking and that then makes that, that, that will then sort of drive the choices you make in terms of, um, the, the technology Yeah.
That you, that you, that you use, the people that you hire, the Yeah, the,
Eric Cacciatore: you know, you're making me think, um, you know, I, I made, I wrote down three goals this year. Uh, it was to get to 250 restaurant Unstoppable network members to scale my, my email list to 10,000 and to begin the process, at least have a working syllabus outline of my first book, which I'm thinking about calling the, the Unstoppable Path.
And, um, it's kind of like a, a trick because like in my mind, like, like this is the path. But once you open the book, you're gonna realize that there is no path. The path is relative. So [00:58:00] like, it's gonna be like, okay, along your journey. Like, here are different paths you can take and like, if you're taking these different paths, like here is a, an order of operation that how you can be intentional with your time going forward.
You know, kinda like mapping it out. Like, you want to be a franchise, take this path. If you want to be a Michelin star, take this path. You know? Um, so I, I love that idea of just these paths, you know? And that you have to realize that there is no one path in the industry. And I think that a lot of people when they get into this industry, they see there are two paths.
There's the extreme McDonald's path, and then there's the, the extreme, the extreme Michelin path. Not everybody, but a lot of people. I think that's can be a trap sometimes. 'cause we, we tend to look at the, the, the best versions of something and we forget that there's this middle market that is like a balance of those two.
That's probably the best path.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Uh, I mean, you, you're right. There's no, you know. Most things [00:59:00] to be truly successful are sort of one size fits one. And I don't think that's specific to, to restaurants, I just think in general, um, I, I say this a lot, like, you know, I don't take anybody's advice, but I index everyone's because no one knows, uh, no one knows what your very specific, unique vision is of, of, of the world, of, of what you wanna build and or who you wanna be and what you know, what, what impact you wanna have.
And, um, if you just, if you just literally take. One person's advice or one group of people's advice, and you apply that completely, uh, without putting through the lens of like, what do I believe? What values do I have? What vision do I have? Then oftentimes you're gonna rate, you're gonna make, um, a decision that's not optimal for yourself.
Yeah. Because Yeah, there's not, to your point, the way you put it is there's not one path and there's, there's not one right way to do anything. Right. You can [01:00:00] break a lot of rules and they could still be the right way to do things. As long as you understand the, you know, the, the, the vision of why you're doing it.
Eric Cacciatore: What up Unstoppable restaurant owners and operators, we have to interrupt today's video to let you know that Restaurant Unstoppable and Restaurant Systems Pro, we're taking our relationship to the next level, beginning in July of 2024. Fred Lang, the CEO of Restaurant Assistance Pro is making himself available once a week in Restaurant Unstoppable Network to answer all of your restaurant systems questions.
Whether it's be profit margins, he will look at your p and l, bring your p and l, he will take a look at that. He'll dissect it, he'll help you find your profit, whether that be through budgeting, inventory management, costing recipe cards, uh, labor checklist, you name it. He's a Master of Restaurant Systems and he's making himself available to you.
Fred Langley in Restaurant Systems Grow started as a consulting firm and for over 16 years, they've been helping their clients increase their profit by [01:01:00] 10% or more. What are you waiting for? Click the link below to join our Facebook group Restaurant Unstoppable Network. Yeah. Back to the idea of, um, two points or like two things that are equally true, like you've heard the advice, say yes to everything.
Right early in your career, say yes to everything. Get the perspective, like to your point, index everyone's advice. Understand what different people have done to be their version of success. And, and then over time, as you're saying yes to opportunities, doing a one year here, one year here, one year here in STAs on the side, indexing all those perspectives over time, you gotta stop saying yes to everything.
And you gotta start saying no to everything until once you start getting that clarity of who you are and where you want to be, what are the, the, the specific things I need to start saying yes to, the intentional things to get to where I'm going. So it's like, to your point yeah, like get as much perspective as, as as possible and like index [01:02:00] these, these perspectives and then f and then cherry pick all those, the, the, the, the nuggets you've learned from different perspectives to create your own path.
Um,
Josh Sharkey: sure. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think the. One. Uh, not everybody should start a business. I think that, you know, you don't, if you, if you don't, if you can't not start a business, you, you probably shouldn't. Like, it needs to be something that you, you, you, you couldn't live with yourself if you didn't. And typically that means that you have a very clear vision.
I, I would advise folks to spend a lot more time thinking about not how to do something, but why they want to do it. Yeah. And be really, really, you know, honest with yourself. But why you wanna do this? Because if you, um, anything you're, anything you're gonna do, if you wanna be great, it's gonna be really fucking hard.
Yeah. You know, it's gonna take a long time and you're gonna [01:03:00] make a lot of wrong decisions. Right. And that's okay. You know, but if you aren't like crystal clear on like, why you're doing it and you can't remind yourself of that often, it doesn't matter how much good advice you, you get, or, um. Or how many right decisions you make, it's gonna be very hard to sustain.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. Well they say you can deal with any how, if you have the right why. I haven't
Josh Sharkey: read that. That's good.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. Darren Hardy, I believe quoted that one. Or maybe that's Brian Tracy. I can't remember. Um, you said something earlier that I kind of wanted to circle back to. Um, the cost exceeds the perception of value.
Uh, there's like this issue right now where the cost of goods going up, labor's going up, people are going out, and the consumer's like, what the hell, $18 for a burger. This is ludicrous.
What do you, how do we, I think I, I've identified that as probably the biggest challenge right now for restaurant owners, that they know that they have to increase their, their prices, but they are terrified to, because the [01:04:00] consumer won't. Accept it. How do we overcome that hurdle?
Josh Sharkey: Man, I wish. I, I wish it, it, it's, it's a, it's a very hard problem.
Uh, I talked about this last year a lot with, with, um, on our show and we, we, we aren't able to charge what we need to in the restaurant, and that's because of the perception of what things should cost. And you know, when you pay for that burger, you're not just paying for the ingredients in that burger.
You're paying and you're not just paying for the person that's gonna serve that burger to you and you're not just paying for the person that's gonna cook that burger for you. You're also paying for the environment that you're sitting in. Right. The music, right. That someone chose. Yeah. You're paying for someone that's cleaning up the table after you, you're paying for someone that's making sure that the place that you're in, it's clean.
Yeah. All the time. You know, you're paying for the feeling that you're getting otherwise. You [01:05:00] could be at home and buy some burger meat and make it, and then you could clean up after yourself and you could, you wanna have a date with your wife and you could put some beautiful music on and some candles, and you could make sure that like your table set up really nicely.
And, um, and it feels seamless to you to, you know, to, to both of you. You could do all that stuff. It'll be a lot of work. And you, and, and by the way, you should. Um, and, and I think that's amazing, right? But all of those things, right? All those things, like, all of those things that you want to do, take a lot of effort and planning and thought, and you are gonna think about how you want that dinner to be special for you and your girlfriend or your wife or your boyfriend.
And you can do that. Or you can outsource it to somebody else. And by the way, if you outsource it to somebody else, it should cost more because you're outsourcing it. And it always costs more to outsource something. And it's funny, but in most it, in many industries, um. You know, we pay for the experience [01:06:00] on top of paying for the, the, the product.
Right? So if you go to a, a spa Yeah. Right? Uh, you're paying for the luxury of being at that spa, right? Because again, you're, when you go to a restaurant, just as the same as you go to a spa, you're paying for them to keep it warm in the winter. You're paying for it to keep it cold. Right. In the summer, you're paying for, you know, the air, the airflow to be right, and the makeup air to be, you're paying for all these things.
If you go to a spa, you're paying for them to keep that water warm. You're paying for that experience. Right. But you're also, you might get a smoothie. And you might get a salad. Right? You're paying for that too, on top of paying for the experience of being in this place, you know? And a restaurant is an experience.
Mm-hmm. You know, look, there's varying degrees of that experience. Obviously. You go to a fast food place, it's very different from the experience at, you know, at, at, at a restaurant. You look to experience
Eric Cacciatore: convenience or luxury.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. And, and again, you might be paying for speed. Right. Um, which is awesome.
Something Right? Like if I have to get to a meeting in 20 minutes right. And I want lunch and I wanna make a salad, [01:07:00] it will cost me whatever it costs me at home. Okay, fine. Um, but do I have the time to make it? If I do, that's great. If I don't, I'm, I need to pay somebody for that time. Right. You know, and then I'm not just paying for the, for the time it takes 'em to cook it.
I'm paying because it's faster for them to make it so I can get to my meeting on time. Yeah.
Eric Cacciatore: Uh, have you heard of the experience economy, Joe Pine? Great book. I had him on the show. Uh, he's actually writing his next book. He's, his argument is that we're, we went from the service economy to the experience economy, and now we're going into the transformation economy.
Um, but in that book, he talks about like, you know, just everything that you just discussed that we're not in the, the, the business of selling goods in products as much as we're in the experience of selling experiences. And when you understand that the game totally changes. 'cause now you can, you can literally charge whatever you want, depending on what experience you're able to deliver.
Josh Sharkey: Well, I think that's the argument we're talking about though, is that, I don't know if you can, [01:08:00] even if you do, um, in a, in a restaurant, um. You know, to, to be at a, uh, a place that's a, a nice like neighborhood spot, right? Uh, if you can charge for the experience that you're, that you're, that you
Eric Cacciatore: Right. Well, go ahead.
Sorry.
Josh Sharkey: No, I mean, you know, I think that there's a, there's a, a perception of what things should cost no matter what. Right. And maybe that will change, you know, but we, the margins in a restaurant business, uh, are obviously much lower than the margins in other, in other businesses. Right. Um, and it's just because, well, I think it brings us
Eric Cacciatore: back to that, that spectrum before of like extreme luxury and convenience.
And I think that as we go into the future of restaurants, you're gonna see that spectrum diversify a lot more. I think, um, the most successful restaurateurs are gonna figure out how to meet people at different points in that, that spectrum of ultra touch, high service, experiential [01:09:00] based. And I want something as with the convenience of one tap on my phone.
And I want it brought to me, those are two different experiences, but there's value to both, right? But there's also that middle ground and there's like, I think that middle ground has that, there's so much opportunity in that and like figuring out how do I deliver value, but do it with as little people as possible.
And like cost is possible. And I think there's so much opportunity there and you're seeing it happen with, there's more and more like Bar Taco I think is a great example. I've had them on the show a few times, and you go to a bar taco and it used to be you have a PA Have you been to a bar taco before?
Josh Sharkey: I actually haven't.
Eric Cacciatore: Okay. So the experiences, you sit down and you put, like, you like basically build your own taco, you check the ingredients you want, it goes to the kitchen, and then they bring you the food. There's like food runners, they're called like, uh, service leads essentially, where they're like, kind of like managers, but they're also servers.
But they're like, they get zones and if you're in their zone, like they're making sure that you're, you have everything you need, but they're not your server. They're like just delivering [01:10:00] service, like hospitality, but they're not taking your order, you know, like you're doing the work. Same idea with a QR code or something like that.
So I think you're starting to see these hybrid models where there's service, but like you can do a whole lot more or less because the, the guess is taking care of themselves in terms of like, they have the heavy lifting of like putting the order in. You're just scanning the room and making sure every, like, you're more of a host at this point where you're just making sure you, you have eyesight, like lines of sight.
Yeah. You're just scanning, making sure as every table Yeah. Look happy.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah.
Eric Cacciatore: Right. So you can lean on technology, right? Just like we would lean on meez in the back of house. You can lean on these services in the front of house, but in the back folks, what you're doing now is you're, you're not trying to like be everything to everybody.
You're like, no, we serve pizza. That's what we do. You're, if you want pizza, come here. If you want a chicken sandwich, come here if you like. So they're, they're doing one thing really well, but then they're creating a very comfortable space so they can, they can do more. And I think you're just gonna see, like, like the world of restaurants, especially in the cities, is fragment.
People are gonna stay in [01:11:00] their lane so they can put their resources to doing one thing really well. What are your, do you disagree with that?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, no. I, I don't, I think that, I think a lot of that happens already. It is interesting that you, I I was literally just talking about this with, uh, Ben Pryor, uh, yesterday.
Uh, he, he's got a company called Four Top. Used to be the head of four Top Information Spot at, spot On. Yeah. Um, he was in restaurants for like 30 years and now he's got a technology company. Anyways, we were talking what, what, what's
Eric Cacciatore: the technology company?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, four Top Four Top. They do like, um, data services, data integration for, for, for, for larger scale restaurants.
And he was
Eric Cacciatore: with, he was with Spot On before. He was with Spot On. That's a company he spent a lot of
Josh Sharkey: time on the Breaker and things like that. Anyways, the point being, I brought what, what you were just talking about, I, I brought this up because I, I think that there's this really interesting opportunity that I might just have to do because I, I.
It, a lot of it involves the menu, uh, the, the menu, like information, recipes and things like that. But I do think that there's an opportunity to [01:12:00] improve the service of a restaurant and improve the labor and make the guest happier. Um,
Eric Cacciatore: what
Josh Sharkey: does that look like? So I'll share a couple anecdotes. I just shared this recently, by the way as well.
But like, I mean, and by the way, this happens all the time. Like, uh, you know, I get to a restaurant, maybe I'm with my wife and we sit down and it's, you know, server might take five, 10 minutes to get there. They're busy. Um, but more importantly, once they get there, I have all these questions about the menu and maybe it's a nice restaurant and, um, I have, I wanna know information about the menu and I wanna know like, okay, what, what, what cocktail should I order?
What, what is, tell me about this cocktail. There's just, it only has three ingredients in it. I'm not clear like what, what it actually is. Um. Maybe the survey doesn't actually know, right? They, they have some sort of semblance of it, but they, this has happened to me by the way, where like they just kinda gimme this answer.
I'm like, okay, clearly you don't really know what this, what this, what this cocktail is. Uh, and yes, you can train them better, right? Uh, but maybe I have a question about like [01:13:00] one of the ingredients in the cocktail. I'm like, oh, that's an interesting spirit I've ever heard of that. But what is that? Right?
And maybe they don't know. Um, it's a lot of stuff for them to, you know, to remember right on top of just being personable and making, making us feel good. And I think there's this opportunity where when you get to the table, we all have phones. Why, why can't we, one, just to start getting some orders right away and also ask any question we want about this menu and the restaurant can, um, be intentional about.
Like making sure that, um, again, we can solve a lot of this with tech and things like that, but like, um, making sure that every question could be answered in as much depth as you want. Right. So I'm
Eric Cacciatore: doing that when I go out to eat, like I will, I'll see something on like an Indian like restaurant menu. I'm like, I have no idea what that is.
Or like a Thai restaurant. I'm like, why? What the hell is that? Like, I don't wanna look like an idiot. Like I'll, I'll Google it at the table, see what it looks like, and then I'll be like, how do you pronounce this? So when I order it, I don't feel like a schmuck. Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: You know? Yeah. And, and you know, [01:14:00] yes, we can train our servers, do that, but I think, I think there's this really cool opportunity where, where there's so much information there.
Right? Right. There's, there's a circle level things like, okay, I, I'm allergic to aum. Okay. I wanna know, I wanna know anything that is not aum. Let's say that I, I'm not by the way, but like, let's just say I am right? Or I, I don't like, um, lemongrass or something. Hopefully everybody likes lemongrass, but like, let's just say you don't, and whatever.
You have these particulars and you wanna know and, and any question you have about that menu. Um, a computer is gonna be able to answer that way better. Yeah. Right. And, and, and on and on top of that, you might then the, the restaurant might actually want to, um, to share some more personal information about this.
Like maybe this is, um. You know, uh, you know, there's a, to your point, you're at a Thai restaurant, okay? Cow soy is the menu. Cool? Most people know what cow soy is. Maybe I don't, and I wanna know what cow soy is. Okay, cool. But maybe also the, the restaurant owners, um, are married a married couple, and they traveled, [01:15:00] um, to Thailand and this was the first dish they had together.
And it was the reason why they sort of fell in love. And, um, the chefs created this dish in memory of this thing. And, and what they learned there was that, you know, they actually found this really cool lime and, and, and, and that's what they're using in this thing. And that's really interesting information, right?
'cause cows always made a lot of places and hopefully it's also delicious. But it'd be really interesting to know those things. And again, how many of these things can your server re remember and do they have time to share with you? Um. When they're trying to service all these other tables. And I just think that there's this opportunity to provide basically anything you wanna know about this menu and more.
And then, you know, as you're asking about the cow soy, them saying, you know, the, the, the, um, you know, it, it knowing like, Hey, you know what, I actually think that I have, don't know if this would be a good pairing or not, but like this er we have would be delicious with that. You know? And, and, and the, the, the producer of this ER's name is, you know, Robert [01:16:00] and he's got 17 puppies that he, you know, like interesting information and an upsell and, um, more information than a surface be So tying
Eric Cacciatore: AI into these, this, this data mining like guest experience?
Yeah.
Josh Sharkey: Because it's, it, one, you're gonna get precise information. I mean, hopefully if you, if you, again, if, if you have control over the, the, the information that they're, that, that, that you're sharing and. And I think it can just be a better experience and you can get, you can get the table and have the power to order right away, even if your server is coming.
I have two kids, like as soon as we hit the table, I want to get my kids' order in because there's a, you know, there's only so much time before they're gonna freak out. Right. And I wanna make sure that we get in there, you know, they're, you know, they're order really quickly. Um, and that way I can just sit down and do that.
So,
Eric Cacciatore: sounds like a project for Noah, Noah Glass. I feel if he gets his hands on that idea, uh, with Olo, uh, interesting that things could happen. Did I introduce you to Susan Abbott? I don't think so, no. So Susan Abbott is the founder and CEO of No, my menu. And she's doing something [01:17:00] very similar where, um, so her story is, she is, um, a very conscious eater.
Uh, she got very sick and she chose to like, to change her diet and she was able to kind of heal herself with food. But now when she goes out, she doesn't have like allergies, but like she wants to know what's in every. Recipe. So like she's asking all these questions, is there seed oil? Is it this, is it that, like I want like a clean menu.
And there's, I think that consumer is only going that, that that type of consumer is only gonna increase as the consumer gets more and more knowledgeable about what they're putting into their body. Like we're learning so much about diet right now and like reverse engineering food for health. Right. Uh, what's going on?
Seed oils, you know, and like all these different things, GMOs or like all these variables that affect our health. Um, more and more consumers are gonna wanna know exactly what are the ingredients, what do you, not only like what, like what are the ingredients, but what are [01:18:00] you cooking it in, you know? But, so she basically created this, this tool where you can put in like your dietary aversions and it will eliminate everything on the menu that has that.
Right. Uh, so now you aren't being tempted by all the things you can't have, but it'll also help you find where these places are who can cater to your dietary needs. Yeah. It's called, no, my Menu.
Josh Sharkey: It's interesting. There's a, there's a company called Houdini, that similar thing as well. Yeah. Interesting.
Eric Cacciatore: Uh, I think that you, you're onto something there though, that there, there's an opportunity in just the, using your menu as like a, a source of like, um, not just like, what are we serving, but like a more like Yeah, there's,
Josh Sharkey: there's the utilitarian piece of that, which is important, right?
Yeah. But that part is, is far more important to be accurate, by the way. So in that regard, it's imperative that you have the actual, like, restaurants information, not like, there mean there's a bunch of AI tools that could like, look at a menu and tell you it might have these ingredients, but if you're allergic to garlic, you [01:19:00] wanna fucking know that, that thing, right?
Um, like they, 'cause they might not use garlic, who knows? But, um, the utilitarian piece is really important, right? Yeah. Like, I have an allergy. I, I don't eat this way. Um, but again, to. We are also delivering an experience. And there's also a lot of interesting, you know, um, information and storytelling is really important, right?
Mm-hmm. I wanna know why, why do you have this dish on the menu, right? Why, like, why did you choose this? And if I'm the restaurant operator, I'm the chef. If I'm the, you know, like, I want you to know that too, because it might just seem innocuous that like, I have this one, you know, dish or this one, you know, cocktail or something.
But there could be a, um. Something more interesting about why it's on the menu or something that, that is more personal and that that affects the experience, that affects how you feel about something. Like, you know, as a chef we come to the table like when we have, you know, if you have, if you have friends over and you're cooking, you bring this thing out and you talk about it, and it's like you have that inter that, that, that, that time to interface.
Any chef will tell you this, like, you want me to like, well that's experience. [01:20:00] Talk about the food a bit, right? Yeah. But you make it more personal and it just tastes better, by the way. Right, right. And, and, um, and it feels better. And I think that there's, there's a lot that you can do there, um, in addition to the sort of utilitarian piece to, to, you know, to, to create a better experience.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. You, you said something earlier that I wanna bring back to the surface. You were talking about the, the future with ai. Um, and, you know, we're, we're gonna have to learn how to lean more on technology. You should embrace it because it's gonna be, let us connect with what it means to be human, like the human side of like delivering the service and the connecting with our communities.
I think about what you said there, and it made me think of, I think what's happening in the bigger picture of like the world we live in with, um, more like you're gonna see more white collar jobs go away to ai, uh, and quantum physics and machine learning and robotics in the blue collar world. So I think that as, um, jobs [01:21:00] start getting automated in outsourced to technology instead of people, a lot of people were the, were these, these people that are being displaced, where are they gonna go that are losing their jobs?
Josh Sharkey: So I mean, look, there's, there's a lot to unpack there, there, I, I think in the restaurant space, it's a very long time before, um, you know, for example, robots become ubiquitous because there's an infrastructure piece. I agree. Um, but there's a lot, look, there's a lot of things in sort of the, um, you know, on the, on the, um.
Um, what would you call it? Like the g and a side? That, that, that probably can be, that probably can be optimized, but I think what we, this conversation is not a new conversation. Right. What's a GA Uh, so g a's, like, if you think at the p and l, there's the, um, you know, there's the, there's prime costs, right?
There's opex and then there's like, you know, the admin and, you know, the admin costs, things like that. General, general admin. Um, [01:22:00] so, but this, this conversation's not new. It's happened. It's, it's happened many times throughout the years. And I think what, what we don't know, and it, it's almost impossible to predict is what are the new.
What are the new jobs that get created, the opportunities because of this? Because, um, I mean, humans are pretty, you know, um, there's a lot of ingenuity that we take for granted. Um, there's, there's already a bunch of new, uh, uh, there's a bunch of new jobs that are created because of you. You have a podcast, right?
This is basically your, this is your job, right? That didn't exist 40 years ago. You couldn't do that, right? Uh, it does today, right? There's just people that, that, that have YouTube YouTubers that are just, that's their job, right? Yeah. That didn't exist. And each time there's sort of a new step function, like improvement in technology, we have this fear of like, well, all of our jobs are gonna go away, forgetting that there's all these new things that will be created.
I'm not gonna begin to try to even speculate what they are. Um, but I [01:23:00] know that they are there. I mean, for example, I, if I just thought of one, right? Is that. Um, I mean, this is one that on the, like, you know, servicing restaurants, not for restaurants, but you know, every restaurant might have their own, um, unique, um, you know, uh, module that's AI powered that's specific to everything that they do, uh, instead of a whole bunch of these other technologies or that, that that's bespoke to them.
Right. And it'll be far more cost effective. And there might be a service that just helps you build that for your restaurant. And it's with this evergreen thing that who, who knows, there's, there's, there's likely a lot of things that we're not thinking about that could be new services in a restaurant because they don't need as many people doing X, Y, and Z.
Right? I, I don't know. But what I do know is that we don't know, and the idea that we, that everybody's just going to lose their job, I think is, it's a, it's. If it did happen, it's not gonna be for a long time. Um, at least at scale. And, and I think that along the way, a lot of new opportunities are gonna be created.
Eric Cacciatore: [01:24:00] So where I, where I was going with that train of thought, and I agree with you 100%. I think the, I'm hopeful for the hospitality industry because I think that as AI progresses and as machine learning progresses and as quantum physics and quantum computing that world, all those things start to like sling shot off of each other.
I think what's gonna go to the wayside faster is gonna be the corporate and like the, the white collar jobs. And why I think this is a good thing is because it's gonna bring opportunity. Like where are people gonna go? They're gonna go back to what it means to be human. And I think that is back to we're we're gonna get closer to food.
And I think you're seeing this, this trend happening right now where people are getting closer to food. People are getting, realizing, okay, what we've been eating, what we've been doing isn't good for us. It's not good for the environment. And if we really want to be the healthiest versions of ourself, it's about supporting a healthy food system.
And if you look at humans over like the span of [01:25:00] evolution, like food has literally been the thing that our evolution is hinged on how we find it and how we grow it. And we have evolved side by side with food and our ability to influence how we get in in food and scale food, right? If you think it's gonna be any different in the future, like why would it be any different?
So I think that we kind of swung away from this idea of like what food was our relationship. We've kind of gotten away from our relationship with food and I think we're starting to swing back to it. I hope we're swinging back to it as we get more and more data on like, like what this, what happens to.
Ourselves when we put bad food into our systems, and like, not just the food and like what we're putting into our systems, but the act of being a part of a tribe that produces food. Like you have hunters and you have gatherers. We go out, we go, we get the, we grow and we get the food, and we come together and we share it around a table.
Like there's this, we've kind of gotten distant from that. Do you ag agree or disagree with that?
Josh Sharkey: Uh, I, well for sure we are. I mean, there's not [01:26:00] a lot of hunters, uh, that are hunting in order to sustain themselves.
Eric Cacciatore: We got so good at food that we've got, like, we've like removed our, like, it's like this thing we take for granted, you know?
But it's literally life. Food is, life food was once living. You know, like when we look at it, it's literally defined as a commodity or a good, like, it's, it's where it's, it's, it's literally life. It's this thing that we share with all the things that we're putting into our body. This like, unless it's
Josh Sharkey: salt.
Yeah. Look, I, I, I minerals, I, I I, I, I totally agree. Of course, I, I, I. I, I love to know where my food come comes from and, and, and, um, it, that, that's very important to me. I, I don't know if that's necessarily, uh, I don't see where that, that that's becoming something that we'll revert back to as a culture. I think the, the importance of our bodies, I think is becoming a lot more, um, uh, closer to, to each person because we understand the impact of each thing.
We have more control [01:27:00] over it. We can sort of biohack, you know, things far more than we ever could before. Um, so knowing precisely the thing that you should be eating specific to your own, um, you know, microbiome and things like that are, I think there'll be a lot more of that.
Eric Cacciatore: Um, and that's a perfect example of going into the transformation economy.
So we're in the, the, the experience economy right now, but we're heading into the transformation economy, and I think that that's where the opportunity for restaurants is, is looking at food as medicine. And you're seeing a lot of people who are like taking this path where they're, they're like. They're like focusing on creating food that's meant to be fueled or meant to cure.
And like you're here in your, your, your journey to, to improve your health. We're gonna get you here. We're gonna transform you to a healthier version of yourself. And it's just not just this experience that you're going out for one night, it's an experience over five years of you becoming a better version of yourself and we're gonna help you get there.
That's the transformation economy. And that's where supposedly we're heading. Or maybe it's this transformation of like, you're, you're [01:28:00] lonely and you're unhappy. Well, come join our community, be a part of our community where these are our values and our values that we have in the four walls of this restaurant with our staff spill over into our community.
So we're, we're transforming our community by injecting better values into our community, about lifting up our community, about educating our community on where you can go get food to support your farmers. That's the transformation economy. And supposedly that's where we're heading. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think that's beautiful, but I think to your point, to come full circle is we're gonna lean on automation, ai, and all these things to free up human bandwidth to not, bandwidth has to go somewhere.
And I think it's gonna go back, go to fixing the broken food system and, and making communities better, because we're not gonna have bandwidth to focus on what matters most. Food and relationships.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah. Well, yeah, that's
Eric Cacciatore: the, that's the hope and I, I, that, that's my goal. I mean, like, I would love to see that world.
How do I, like, how do we like, make that a thing?
Josh Sharkey: Well, I, I think, I think you're right. The more [01:29:00] time we have to dedicate it toward to it, the, the more we can,
Eric Cacciatore: I can't tell if you think I'm spinning, like, do you think I'm a crazy person right now?
Josh Sharkey: No. No. I don't think you're crazy at all. Uh, and I, I'm, I'm processing what you're saying.
I'm also, I tend to be, um, um. Far more sort of pragmatic or realistic as opposed like, and, and I, I, I, I, I, I shy away from, um, being as idealistic as I maybe I should be when it relates to things that are not something that I control. Um, so I. I, I think it's a beautiful thing. I think that there's a, definitely a world where, because we have a lot more time, uh, there'll be a lot more opportunity to, to, uh, to embrace that.
Uh, I, I hope that's, yeah, I hope that's the case.
Eric Cacciatore: There's a powerful book out there. I tried to get the, the author of this book on the show, it's called Power in Progress, by Darren, um, Deon Mlu, if I'm saying your name incorrectly, I apologize. And Simon Johnson is co-authored, and it's basically like this anthropological approach over a thousand [01:30:00] years of the struggle over technology and, and prosperity.
So it's like, okay, as technology has been improving, like who's the beneficiary of this technology? And over history, generally speaking, it's the people who own the technology that are truly the biggest beneficiaries of the technology. That like, so you look at like the, the mills, like when mills started, when we started grinding, you know, uh, grain and we could like mass produce flour, it was the kings.
That owned the mills that really prospered from it, the people who were farming weren't really prospering, you know, like, so like, I guess where I'm going with this time and time again as technology gets better. Um, and I think what I'm tying this to is what you were saying earlier with, um, as new technology emerges, new opportunity emerges, right?
So you use meez as an example. I think what we have to be wary about is as new technology emerges, example ai, [01:31:00] we have to be really careful about who owns that ai, who controls that ai. Because in a global marketplace, there's only so much room for people at the top and humans gravitate towards number one, the best solution.
You know what I'm saying? See where I'm going with this? Yeah, no,
Josh Sharkey: I, I do. Oh yeah. I think obvi obviously, you know. It there, there's a, there's a big push for, for, for a lot of these models to be open source and, and for sure not one, um, not one company, uh, should own nor nor will they, by the way. Because, you know, again, there's basically, if you think about technology, there's two applications.
There's consumer technology and, and, and, and enterprise or business technology and, you know, technology. There's a lot more money spent on that, you know, well there, there may not be more money spent on an enterprise technology, but technology for businesses. But businesses want optionality. They're not gonna settle for, the market won't settle for one, you know, one provider, unless it's a zero sum [01:32:00] and AI does not seem to be a zero sum.
Right. Likes search, for example, is kind of zero sum, right? There's basically one, one search engine Google. Yeah. Well, that was
Eric Cacciatore: gonna be, but keep going. I want, I'm gonna come back. But I
Josh Sharkey: think, you know, the, um, uh, again, I think. There, we, we, we continually, uh, as a, as a, as a, as a civilization benefit from technology.
And I think what's first, and one that's important is, is to, is to frame, when we say technology, you know, what it, what it means. Because it's not just, you know, computers, it's just any, any sort of innovation. There's a great book that you probably know of that, um, that everybody should read called Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith was actually written in Yes. In the 17 hundreds, but it still applies. We're coming back to that. Yeah. Well, it still applies today. And I think the, it's just the, the, um,
Eric Cacciatore: was it Milton Friedman who came out like a hundred years after that, or 200 years? And he said basically it's the, the job of an organization is to return profit to its stakeholders.
And that kind of like, til tilt, like changed [01:33:00] the, the, um, was it Adam, uh, something? Adam's, um, say his name again. I believe It's Adam. Adam. Adam Smith. Adam Smith. Thank you very much. There's like that, that, again, that's, that's like the, the yin and the yang. Well,
Josh Sharkey: yeah, the, the point. Keep going. The point being is that, you know, like.
Technology. Um, typically what it does is it, you know, at least what I believe is that is, is allows and aggregate the entire, you know, uh, society to, to, to be able to do more than it could before, right? So when, uh, we started seeing innovation in, uh, or industrialization of like, you know, equipment in farming, things like that, uh, farmers, uh, you know, certainly, uh, were impacted some in some ways negatively, but there's also less farmers.
We didn't, we didn't have as many farmers anymore. And then what did they do? They went to do other things, right? They didn't, you know, we didn't just lose all these folks. They ended up doing other, other things, and that continues to happen, right? It's humans tend to be pretty, you know, there's, there's a lot of annuity and we [01:34:00] find more things to do.
We find more, more, um, ways to spend our time and that's how we actually evolve as people. Yeah. Right? When before we had any technology, all we could do was go hunt for food to your point, right? And then each time. Were you able to do more things? Yeah. Agriculture. Yeah. Now there's, then you're able to start, you know, other businesses and you can have, you know, the someone that makes the shoes, someone makes this diversify.
Yeah. Then, then you, you, as technology grows, you're able to do more things. And we get to a place where, you know, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like a lot of them are now met right now, there's some negative impacts of that where you, you know, humans tend to try to find, um, you know, uh, uh, struggle or drama because they don't, they, they're, they're, they, there, there needs to met.
But there's also, um, you know, a lot of innovation that happens a lot of, and a lot of, uh, just net new opportunities that we have to do. Things that we couldn't, uh, do before and spend time on things that we couldn't spend time before. So, to your point, maybe that means actually that we can spend more time on, on.
Local agriculture and [01:35:00] farming and yeah. Getting better. Um, it certainly means that there's going to be more time to do things that we didn't have time to do before. Right. What that, what that is, I don't know.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. I think it's complicated. I think it's a complex, uh, issue and there's not a simple solution.
Um, but you use me as an example. Like, um, I, I, if I, you know, I wanted to work in the restaurant industry, uh, that wasn't an option for me because of the amount of debt I had. I had to go figure out to be an entrepreneur. I had to figure out a way to make money into it in the, an industry I love. So I started this podcast, um, and that's opportunity that was new to me because of the technology that evolved in order for this podcast to exist.
Like iTunes, right? Developing the idea of a podcast, uh, like being able to get on Facebook and, and Instagram and promote myself to be discovered, uh, Google, right. Was another tool that you talked about that's important. Like, these are tools I need. To be successful. These are tools every podcaster needs to be successful, but what happens when every [01:36:00] podcaster needs the same tool and there's only one player or two players that provide that solution?
See where I'm going with this?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, I do. It's, it, it didn't happen. Right? Right. There's, there's, there's a, there's a lot of different, you know, platforms that you can, you know, uh,
Eric Cacciatore: I mean, there's two options in like, almost every vertical. Like it's either Spotify or iTunes or Google or, or Microsoft or, you know, like in order for me to, to exist, I need to use one of these giant tech companies.
Josh Sharkey: Well, again, I, I'm not, I'm not sure there's anything necessarily, um. You know, um, nebulous about any of this other than that, just, it's just how the market works and there's network effects and, you know, the product that is the best will get used the most and will by, by default, then get more of the capital and be able to improve and acquire more customers.
And that's just sort of the nature of, of, um, how the market works. So I, I don't know if necessarily, um, that's just sort of what, what happens in most, in most, uh, [01:37:00] in most industries. Not, not, not specific to technology, but really to anything. Um, so I don't know if that's necessarily, you know, a bad thing. I think the, the, but, but the point, because I'm not sure we don't cut the rails here, is that as a, you know, you know, the, as, as an industry, if we're just sticking to, uh, of course the restaurants here, right?
I think that what I would urge everyone to do is, um. Uh, take, uh, you know, 10, 20, 30 minutes out of, out of, out, out of a day once a week or something to, to think about. Like, I wonder what else, um, we could do if I didn't have to do X, y, Z anymore. Right? Right. If, if this was, was, was, um, you know, taken over by AI and now, now this, this job is not needed anymore, what's a new thing that we could do?
What, what would be a result of that? Because those things are gonna happen and it takes a long time, right? And you get, like, this is where startups come in and this is where, um, like new ideas come from. But it [01:38:00] doesn't have to be a startup. It can just be like, you know what? In, in the business that you have, there might be something new that you can do.
And instead of looking at it like, well, I'm going to lose this. Well, maybe I can, um, maybe I can actually gain this instead. Um, Dan Simons is a really great, uh, restaurant operator and if you, if you know him, he's got, um, founding farmers, uh, group in, um, in DC And, um, I always loved his perspective. On growth, you know, because it's always a challenge just when you scale a scale a restaurant, you know, you, you, you can get in this sort of, um, cycle where you have to open up more restaurants because you need more upper mobility for your team, right?
People need to grow, you need more, need more managers. And, and I, and I asked him about this and he said, well, it doesn't always need to be, um, new restaurants that create upward mobility. You can create new, um, you know, new businesses within your restaurant. Vertical creation. Yeah. Well, and he's sort of, he's sort of, sort of positioned as, or is it [01:39:00] horizontal?
Yeah. You know, growth where you can, you know, obviously you can create a catering arm, you can create a CD arm, you can create a farm. What, whatever these things are where, where, um, you know, a CSA, we see that with
Eric Cacciatore: Zingerman's, right? What would they do? The Zingerman's community business.
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, absolutely. And, and, um, and, and I think the same can be true as you start to think about like, well, well, okay, maybe this layer of my business is gonna get, um.
Um, automated away by ai. So what else could I do with, you know, with the people that were doing that? Um, I don't know the answer by the way. Yeah. But I think that there's some interesting stuff.
Eric Cacciatore: Let's bring us back to meez. So anything that we just talked about, tying it to mees, things that you're looking to do with meez.
I mean, you talked about you have like the, this, uh, menu engineering features, you have this costing features, you have all this database of ingredients. Uh, you look to ai, right? How are you as the CEO of meez? How are you thinking about the future of meez with all this?
Josh Sharkey: Yeah, well, it's a couple things. One, you know, it would be silly [01:40:00] for anybody really anywhere in any industry not to think about, okay, how, how can AI improve what we do?
And so we do a lot of that, right? I think a lot about that. Um, I use a lot of AI in my, in my day to day, and we deploy a lot of it into, into, um. Into the product as well, and not just into the product, but how we operate. And we're deploying more into the product now, um, to make it faster and faster and, and, and more seamless to get all your, your, your, your, your recipes in.
Um, another, another thing that I think about is, um, you know, as we, as we think about this sort of, you know, uh, how quote unquote reporting has existed for restaurants is, you know, there's a lot of reports and a lot of, you know, analytics that you can look at. And then from there, decipher and what should I do with the information?
And I think that we are getting to a place where we can skip that part. And if you have all the data right, um, get right to the answers right in instead of, you know, waiting for a report [01:41:00] and reviewing a report, reviewing all the details of the report. Um. Why can't we just tell you, you know, so your fingertips, yeah.
Here's the 10 things that, that, that if you change these, um, you know, tweak this price, um, consolidate this item, you know, buy this in instead of this, or, or stop buying this because you're already buying this. Um, and, and these 10 things, if you do them, will increase your, your profit margin or decrease your food cost by five, 5%.
Yeah. And as opposed to trying to look at a report every week, right. You're just giving you the information. And that's exciting for me. Um, but you know, for us, we also are always thinking about how do we make, um, the experience of, of, you know, creating, iterating, sharing and training your, you know, with your recipes and organizing them.
How do we make that better and faster and easier? And, and so that's always something that we're working on.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. Josh, thank you so much, man. I've had a lot of fun talking to you today. I had fun exploring the possibilities of our future with you today. Uh, you definitely have some cool perspective. Um, I'm super stoked with what you've done with meez.
Congratulations. I feel like you're a [01:42:00] great guy. And if there's anybody deserves like the scale that you've had and the, the success you've had with meez, it's definitely you. Um, you made some, uh, some, you mentioned some names today, Bill Ackman, um, investor. He's a high hit. If I can get him on the show, I'd love to get Dan Simons on this show.
And the last time I connected with you, you, you, you called out your former, uh, partner or boss. Um, you know what I'm talking about.
Josh Sharkey: Oh, I think, I think I might have, yeah. Maybe John Rigo is from, uh, from War of uh, yeah, you should definitely talk to him. You know who else you should talk to is, um, because you were just talking about food as medicine.
I think you should talk to Seamus Mullen. Seamus, yeah. He is a great chef. And also, um. Uh, he found out years ago he had RA and really dedicated a lot of his life now to, to, um, really to that premise of food as medicine. Um, he's, he's, he's super smart and also really talented. I think he'd be a great person for you to talk to.
Eric Cacciatore: How do you spell his last name?
Josh Sharkey: M-U-L-L-E-N.
Eric Cacciatore: Mullen. He's out in La. Seamus Mullen. Look out. I'm coming after you. John Rigas. I'm coming after you. Dan Simons. Bill [01:43:00] Lookout. I would love to get you on the show.
Josh Sharkey: I, I don't know, Bill Ackman. Oh, hey. If you get Bill on, let me know.
Eric Cacciatore: That'd be a good get.
Um, anything we should know, uh, any final thoughts, calls to action, interesting things, uh, that you want my listeners to know about meez before we wrap up?
Josh Sharkey: Um, no, I think we, we covered a lot of it, but I would say is if you're already using these, I am always thirsty for, um, feedback. Uh, right now I'm actually on a tear of going to all, every customer I can, um, to get more feedback. Uh, I love feedback. I wanna know what else, you know, what else can we improve?
Uh, where can we, where can we keep getting better? Um. So if you're using meez, you might get an email from me soon. Um, but if you don't, always feel free to reach out to me and I'd love to hear any feedback, uh, about how we can continue to, to make this the best recipe tool in the world.
Eric Cacciatore: Yeah. I do wanna say thank you for the support.
Um, meez has been a sponsor now I like years. I honestly, going back to like the last time you were on the show,
Josh Sharkey: I think that 28 years now, is that
Eric Cacciatore: right? At least three or four years you've been supporting this podcast and [01:44:00] honestly, um, when I think about the future of Restaurant Unstoppable and the direction I want to go, it's this, it's, it's partnering with organizations I believe in and, uh, not just the, the companies, but the people behind those companies that I think are really great people.
I think about, uh, you and, um, you know, Fred Langley at Restaurant Assistance Pro, uh, before we entered into this, this 2025 year, uh, agreement on sponsorship, I was very transparent. I was like, listen, both of you have like features and your products that are direct directly, like. Competitive. I was like, I need you to know this before I take your money.
And I assumed one of you was gonna say, no way I'm out. But neither of you said that. They said, Eric, we love the work you're doing. We wanna support you. Not only did that happen, but now you two know each other and there's the, the potential of an integration happening. You know, and I think that is, I'm so stoked to have people like you guys in my corner and like, I want more when I say I want freedom of relationships over freedom of money.
I [01:45:00] wanna prioritize this. This is what I'm talking about is being able to work with companies like meez and Restaurant Assistance Pro. And I just cannot say thank you enough, uh, for your support over the years.
Josh Sharkey: I love it. I'm proud, you know, proud of what you've been building and, and, uh, I'm excited to see you.
Keep building it man
Eric Cacciatore: meez.com/rest, or sorry, getmeez.com/unstoppable, I believe is, I should probably figure that out. Uh, if that's not the case, I'll correct it in the outro. Uh, I think it's all good. I'm pretty sure it's getmeez.com/unstoppable.
Josh Sharkey: It's pretty easy to find us.
Eric Cacciatore: All good. Uh, support the podcast. Use my links, and this is where I say.
Josh, my man, there is no questioning. You are unstoppable.
Josh Sharkey: Thanks brother. Cheers.
