Experience Strategy Podcast: The Future of Guest Experiences in Restaurants

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In this episode, Sherif Mityas, a trailblazing leader at the helm of a conglomerate encompassing 57 distinctive restaurant chains, delves into the pivotal role of distinct value propositions and shared services in shaping the future of dining experiences. Highlighting the shift from convenience to a deeper focus on creating unparalleled experiences, Sherif explains how guest-centered leadership, blended with emotion, vision, and lots of data becomes a powerful recipe for innovation, personalization at scale, and business growth. This conversation offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolving restaurant industry, where technology meets nostalgia.

Learn more about industry trends in our 2024 Experience Strategy Trend Report.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts, experienced nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.

Aransas: Welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Aransas Savas.

Dave: And I'm Dave Norton.

Aransas: And we are joined today by Sherif Mityas. Sherif has a rather storied career here. He has more than 25 years of experience in retail and hospitality. He's currently the CEO of Bricks Brands Portfolio. So that's a leading restaurant investment group with over. 300 locations across brands like Friendly's and Red Mango and Orange Leaf and Smoothie Factory and Kitchen and Super Salad.

Prior to his current role at Bricks, Sherif served as the CEO of TGI Fridays and led brand [00:01:00] strategy, marketing, innovation, digital efforts, and also CEO for Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery. Sherif. I've been following along with the work you've been doing in this most recent role. And I'm just so excited to have you here with us today as we start a new year and the context for experience strategy is radically shifting.

I think in every sector, certainly in restaurant and hospitality, we're seeing some big shifts to customer expectations and what that means for how we do business and how we build relationships with customers in ways that are timely and relevant and meaningful. And as I look at the work that you are doing, I think you give us some really powerful and compelling roadmaps for how to do that.

So thank you for joining us today.

Sherif: Oh, thank you both for having me on.

Aransas: So this is a relatively new role for you at BRICS, Sherif.

Sherif: I've been here now about a year and a half [00:02:00] and really have a great group of portfolio brands. That I get to help lead with my team and a great set of team members out in our restaurants that serve millions of guests every day and really thankful that we have such a great team that allows us to grow and to kind of create that right experience that we need to have in each of our locations every day.

Aransas: I love that you immediately highlight these four key stakeholders, of course, the business performance itself, but also the teams that are driving strategy, as well as the field teams and service providers, and certainly. the customers as stakeholders and, and I suspect as we talk, we will find ways to better understand how you align those influences, but tell me as you came into this new role, what big opportunities began to emerge for you in terms of how you brought new life and growth to these brands as a whole?

Sherif: Yeah, it's interesting. In a, in a portfolio group, it's different [00:03:00] because each brand has its own identity. Each brand has its own demographics from a guest perspective and thus the experiences and the requirements of those experiences can be vastly different. You know, someone walking into one of our frozen yogurt shops, it's quick.

It's a treat. It's fun. It's probably with your kids and it's how do you create something that is Kind of the Willy Wonka of frozen yogurt shops and really create that fun creative atmosphere. And then on the other side, you have Friendly's, which is an 88 year old brand. It's been around forever. It's sit down, table service, servers coming up, Americana food with melts and burgers, and of course ice cream at the end.

And it's still bringing the joy of that experience. To grandparents who are bringing their grandkids who used to be there as kids themselves. And so the opportunity was really around first defining what each of these brands stands for and what the expectation is in terms of a guest [00:04:00] experience that we not only have to meet every single day with every single client, but.

How do you exceed it? How do you create surprise and delight? How do you create something that's unique? Because in this day and age, especially in the restaurant space, there is so many places to go get food. There are so many places you can get sushi at a gas station. There are so many places you can go that you have to create a memory.

You have to create, I don't like to use the word loyalty because loyalty can be bought. You have to create stickiness and stickiness comes from an experience. Stickiness comes from how that establishment, how the people, the team members made you feel when you were last in there. And that to me was critically important to set and define what that is and then deliver that through how we hire, how we train, how we measure.

How we create and execute that on a consistent basis.

Dave: You're coming into this particular role after having served as chief experience officer for another [00:05:00] legacy brand. I had some fun dates as a kid in the eighties in TGI Fridays, right? Super fun concepts. And I wonder how being chief experience officer shaped the way you became a CEO for this portfolio of brands.

Sherif: It's a great question, Dave. I think, especially in the restaurant, and I would say the retail space, really any B2C environment, it's all about the experience now. And I think the experience you go through as a Chief Experience Officer, and when you're the guy in the room, or the woman in the room, that has to To be the guest in the room, you speak for the guest because you have marketing in the room, you have culinary, you have merchandising, you have it, you digital, but someone in the room has to speak for the guest.

Someone has to sit there and go, I don't really care functionally what you think needs to happen from an experience perspective. This is what I need. to have happen. And if that's your guiding light and you learn that as a chief experience officer, I think it's the best proving [00:06:00] ground to be a CEO.

Because if the CEO is not worried about what the guest thinks and feels and wants, then I'm not sure what he or she should be focused on. It does put you in a different spot. One of the first things I did is build my team. And I found the chief experience officer for, for my team, right? Um, one of my direct reports has that role and critically important because they're the glue in my mind.

They help connect the dots in what all the other pieces of the organization needs to execute to make this thing work. And I do think it's a great proving ground. Obviously there's a number of great CEOs. In our space that come from marketing that come from operations that come from technology now, but I think it's, it's one of the most critical roles to have in any B2C organization.

Aransas: As you really thought through an experience strategy, what questions did you ask yourself? What inputs? We're a part of creating that experience, vision, and strategy?

Sherif: Well, to me, it all again has to start with the guests. So [00:07:00] one of the first things I did is I got into our restaurants and talked to people, talked to folks that had been in that establishment for years.

Both team members and guests talk to folks who just stumbled upon it for the first time. And you can learn a lot from folks on both ends of that spectrum in terms of here's the people that have been there for a long time, people that have frequented you for many years will tell you all the things, good and bad, right?

You kind of get the full download of here's what you guys are doing, right? Here's what you guys are doing wrong or what you used to do that you're not doing anymore. And then you get folks that are brand new, that come in with a fresh set of eyes and go. Well, this is interesting, but it'd be even better if he did this.

And so you start collecting kind of these disparate data points and you start then kind of formulating what should we be standing for? What not only do our guests expect and how can we surprise and delight and make it even better, but how do you uniquely position each brand? There's so many places to go get ice cream.[00:08:00]

How do we create something that is differentiated? And you do that, not just through the products, not just through the service. You do that through the entire experience and you do that in today's world across every channel that a guest can touch you. So it can't just be one experience when you come to my store and one experience when you're sitting on your couch ordering at home.

It has to be a consistent experience. It has to be a consistent feel and engagement with the brand. And that's what's, I think, critically important, but incredibly hard to be able to pull that off. each day at every spot.

Aransas: How are you succeeding in creating that continuity across channels?

Sherif: To me, it comes down to kind of the three legs of the stool.

One is people. So the people we have, the people that engage with our guests, whether they're on the phone, on our apps and chatting with them on text, or obviously standing in front of them at the counter at the table, the people piece is critically important. I can do everything in the world. To get someone to come [00:09:00] in and if they interact with a team member who's having a bad day, everything I did prior to that is meaningless because that point of engagement with my people failed.

And so that piece critically important to make sure, again, we're hiring right, training right, measuring right, and sending right, and retaining right. So people, first leg of the stool, second leg of the stool, technology. The ability to do what we have to do at. Scale requires technology. I have 300 restaurants across six brands and across three channels.

You can come to my restaurant, you can pick it up, you can have it delivered. So many different engagement points that the complexity of that requires technology to be helpful. And that's not just. Digital it's obviously utilizing new AI tools now, and the pieces of that, that again, allow not just an engagement to happen online, but maybe making that engagement even better inside the restaurant by providing the right information to our team members and creating a better experience for that guest utilizing technology.

So second leg of the [00:10:00] stool critically important. And then the third leg of the stool to me comes down to this ability to. Measure. And when I say measure, I'm a big believer. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. And how do you know if you're doing it right? How do you know if you're on the right path?

So everything we do has to have a metric. Everything we do has to be data driven. And we need to understand that if we're down a path, if we're doing something, do we need to course correct? Do we need to do more of it? You can't make an experience better unless you know what you're measuring. What does success look like?

And having data to prove to the organization and to our teams, do this, not that. because it works. Right. And that’s what brings the stools together.

Aransas: No doubt. Absolutely.

Dave: You said that it was important with a brand like Friendly's to inject relevancy into that brand because people have such a long history with the brand.

Can you describe [00:11:00] how One injects relevancy?

Sherif: Well, I think when you look at the demographics of a friendlies, for instance, there's a portion of our guests are very much older, right? Because they went there as kids. There's grandparents now, and they remember this environment. They remember their favorite.

Grilled cheese. They remember their favorites Sunday. And so you can't take that away. So there's always going to be a core to a legacy brand that you can't take away. But when I talk about injecting relevancy, it's, I also need to start attracting other demographics. I need the next generation of grandparents that are now kids.

And our ability to do that comes in a number of ways, right? One is. So I can go from just offering the normal flavors of ice cream, for instance, to offering cookie monster ice cream. Well, they didn't have cookie monster ice cream 80 years ago, but they do today. And it's blue and it's very appealing to the eye and kids see it and they go, I want that.

So I can inject [00:12:00] relevancy through my menu and through new product introductions. I can also inject relevancy in terms of, can I make friendlies for no better term, cool again? Can I have it appeal to a different set of again, demographics, because it's associated with something that's more relevant in today's world, more relevant in today's society for maybe teenagers or maybe young adults.

And so. We have this great partnership with the Jonas brothers, right? Jonas brothers were not alive when Friendly started, but the Jonas brothers came up with their name as kids sitting in a Friendly's and they have their favorite ice cream sundaes since they talk about it. They were on Jimmy Fallon telling Jimmy, we actually came up with our name sitting at a Friendly's.

Eating our favorite conehead Sundays. And so what better authentic spokespeople than someone that loves the brand is relevant again, this relevancy issue to a completely different demographic and creates this connection that people are like, what the Jonas [00:13:00] brothers like friendlies friendlies cool again.

And it starts that conversation. And we had a pop up in LA with the chain group. So the chain group brings back legacy brands, does these very cool celebrity pop ups in LA. And they featured friendlies all summer as their ice cream shop and first night red carpet thing, 500 tickets. It's sold out in five minutes.

People love friendlies and we made it cool again. We made it relevant again, and that's part of how do you think about taking a legacy brand and injecting relevancy, creating this buzz that it's not your grandfather's place. It's my place. It's your place. It's my kid's place.

Aransas: Incredible. And you're talking about so many different new plays, all based in experimentation.

So how do you and your team think about structuring experimentation to understand what is a fluke [00:14:00] and what is the future?

Sherif: I'm a big fan and there is no harm in trying lots of things. I'm a big fan. We try, we test, we pilot, and some are definitely not going to work, but we'd learn from everything. And from a structure perspective, to answer your question, it's creating both an environment that allows people to try things without fear, right?

If we had an environment where someone tried something and it was a miserable failure and we came down on that person, guess what? They'd never try something again. They'd never bring up a new idea. You can't have that. In today's world, you have to engender and encourage almost failure because after 10 failures, that 11th one might just be the best darn idea ever.

And so you have to create an environment where people are willing and excited to throw things on the table, A, because they know there's no fear if it fails and B, because they know this environment. Is willing to try almost anything. So we have lots of little stores where we pilot [00:15:00] things and lots of little things where we do different experiments.

Some work, some don't ones that work quickly. How do you accelerate? How do you expand? How do you roll out? And the ones that fail, why let's learn something so that we don't do that same thing again and creating an environment again, where cross functionally our teams are working together to ensure that that kind of fly wheel starts to move even faster.

Like, how do we create. more experiments faster, learn faster, do better faster is really the key for where we're headed.

Aransas: I love that mindset. And I think it also is much harder done than said to actually measure the success of a test and learn environment. So how do you and your team evaluate what's working, what isn't, and what's worth learning?

Dave: I have to believe that you being a chief experience officer prepared you to have that kind of fail fast approach.

Sherif: You're absolutely right. And that's the key is kind of getting how I grew up, right? If you can't measure it, it doesn't [00:16:00] exist. And so around us to answer your question before we test anything, we do have requirements.

For folks that bring up new ideas and things that we want to launch and pilot and test. And one of those requirements is right now, define what a success look like right now, before we start this test, before we even talk about it, you give me the metrics on what a success look like. Is that number of customer increase?

Is that frequency increases that average check increase? Is that guest satisfaction scores increase? Give me the metric and tell me what it's going to go from and to that. If that happens, we all agree. That's what success looks like. If we can't do that, then we don't pass go. If someone can't tell me what the metric is and what a success look like, we don't start because then there's no debate at the end.

There's no, well, it kind of did this, but it didn't really do that. Well, that's not how we define success, right? So define it up front. Tell me the measure, tell me the bar we're trying to hit. If it gets there, then we know we have something. I think

Aransas: [00:17:00] the, in theory, that makes great sense. I also see a lot of teams struggle to do this successfully.

And so I'm trying to get really tactical here to help others see their way through. How are you isolating variables? specifically in an in person environment where so many factors are at play with any given experiment.

Sherif: I think the piece to us is how to use technology and data for some of these. So I'll give you a very specific example.

So when we're thinking about rolling out a new menu or a new item, like I mentioned, it's cookie monster ice cream or, or something different. We'll do that in a set of stores first, right? And we'll do that. And we'll have basically lookalike stores, right? Kind of a control group. And so very specifically, we'll know kind of how much ice cream are we selling in the test stores versus the control.

We'll know the mix of the ice cream flavors. Again, test versus control. We'll know from a loyalty member perspective, our loyalty members coming in more often. Right. Test versus control. [00:18:00] We'll look at guest sat scores. So we have ovation in our restaurants and we get a lot of feedback. And so people can tell us I liked it.

I didn't like it. I liked it a little bit more than the others. And so again, test versus control. And. We also ask our team members, right? The actual folks that are in the restaurant talking to people will survey them. How did it go? What did you see? What did you hear? And so we collect all this data, but again, upfront, we're saying I need to see frequency go from X to Y.

I need to see that guest satisfaction score go from 4. 3 to 4. 4. I need to see the mix of ice cream go from 22 percent to 24%. So it's all these pieces, but again, the technology obviously helps a great deal and setting it up up front with a control group obviously gives us a very clear understanding on whether something is.

Aransas: I think that's smart, too, that you're using not just performance data, but also customer perception data and employee perception data. [00:19:00] So now if we pivot just a little bit to talk about this portfolio of brands that you lead, how do you think about Leveraging these brands to strengthen one another. I know you talk a lot about virtual branding and ghost branding within the stores.

So how does that drive the customer experience?

Sherif: Yeah, great question. So I think there's a number of ways we do this as a portfolio group. So one that you mentioned is kind of co branding opportunities, right? I have certain locations where we can put two brands together. So for instance, our smoothie factory in our red mango, right?

So folks can get frozen yogurt, great probiotic, great acai bowls on the red mango side, but also come in for juices and smoothies and toasts and wraps in the smoothie factory plus kitchen and allows us to basically extend the volume that we can produce. in a certain box, right? In a certain location by offering more things, right?

So there's more occasion. [00:20:00] There's more opportunity for guests to come both breakfast, lunch, and dinner versus just one day part. So our brands by putting them together allows us to extend that. The other pieces of that though is it also allows us to extend what we can offer guests from a support perspective.

And what I mean by that is if you're a loyalty member, for instance, in one brand, then We know a lot about you. And then is there an opportunity to introduce you to the other brands and for you to become a loyalty member across more of our portfolio, right? The more we know about you, the more we can suggest, the more we can provide convenience and potentially products and services that you as a guest would want to have, that we could supply.

Across the entirety of our portfolio, not just the one brand you interact with today. We also then from a portfolio perspective, obviously have scale benefits because we have a core shared service. So my marketing team serves all the brands. So as we learn things from one brand, we [00:21:00] think about how and if it could apply to the others.

Similarly in our supply chain. Right. If we're buying strawberries for one brand, we can get scale benefits and provide strawberries for all the brands. And so there's benefits from being a portfolio group that not just our internal, like the supply chain, but external as well, that actually touched the guests like loyalty.

Marketing products, menu items that we can leverage across the brands. The more we can play a role in our guests lives in more days, more day parts, more occasions, the ability to serve food and have that great experience. Again, whether you're out for a quick. Smoothie after your workout, whether you want to sit down dinner with your family, whether you're picking up a quick juice in the morning on your way to work, all those pieces, right?

If I can create that stickiness again, with you as a guest of my portfolio, I'm able to serve more than just one occasion. I'm more than one brand. I'm [00:22:00] more than just one thing you think about when you're thinking about, I'm hungry or thirsty right now. Well, when you say I'm hungry and thirsty in the morning, you think about a different set of brands than when you say that at night on your way home from work.

But if you think about different brands. And at least one of those brands throughout the day is one of my portfolio. Then I'm in your consideration set. I'm at least, um, I have a shot right at grabbing your food and beverage dollars in more than one time, more than one day part, more than one day of the week, when you're with friends, when you're with your family, when you're alone, that's critically important.

And really what I believe is the power of having a portfolio versus a single brand organization is you can play in line in the, in our guest lives more broadly.

Aransas: Yeah, I also think about it from a trust perspective as they begin to associate the brands and consumer trust is so hard to earn. And so you have more chances to earn it and lose it, I suppose, in a portfolio, but once you really forge that trust, you can really [00:23:00] hold it with a multiple brand approach.

So one of the things we haven't talked a lot about, certainly in that portfolio model, but in general, is the role of time. in what you offer right now. And so in our latest experience strategy trend report, we see across all trends, the driving undercurrent really is time value. And this understanding that time well spent with a brand is the most important factor and many value based decisions.

So how are you as an organization for your portfolio thinking about the role of Time for your customers and your brands within your experience.

Sherif: Yeah, the time in our world, we believe is actually a two facets. There's the time of you got to make it convenient for me. And so you see a lot, especially in the restaurant space.

And there is this rush for speed, right? And the QSRs guys, you know, the Taco Bells and the Chick fil A's of the world, mastering that right. In terms [00:24:00] of all their new concepts, all their new designs, they got five, six, seven lanes now, right? Just how do you get throughput? How do you get people in and out as quickly as possible?

And. We obviously have drive throughs in a number of our locations, digital pickup. Everyone has to do that. It's kind of table stakes. And part of that though, is you, you think about menu development, because if you create very complex menu items that are not fast to execute, you're actually doing yourself a disservice in certain concepts, right?

So we're very. Very specific in certain brands, that speed of menu is as important as speed of experience and valuing our customer's time that they're looking for something I want to come. I want a smoothie. I want to be in and out, right? This is not a sit down occasion. Now you contrast that though on the other side of time, which is almost the value of my time.

So from a friendlies perspective, if I'm coming in with my family, I'm not expecting a 32nd exchange, right? I'm expecting to be [00:25:00] there for a while because it's an experience inside the restaurant we're going to eat. We're going to have crazy Sundays and everyone's going to have a great time. But there's still that value of time in there.

And that value of time comes in of the interactions that our team members have with that table, the interactions they have to ensure that the drinks are full, that the ice cream comes out as quickly as possible, right after the food is cleared, that the check comes out as quickly as possible when those Sundays are just about done, because we still value the time that they're investing, even though it's not measured in minutes.

It's still measured in terms of the value of what I've placed in terms of spending that time in your establishment. And that's critically important.

Aransas: Yes. Dave and I are in separate ends of the country and we're both, I have a feeling, jumping up and down and flinging confetti at you. That's exactly the right mindset to win.

with customers. It is to understand that the [00:26:00] time they are investing in you is their most precious resource and that time well spent and time well invested are just as important as time saved. And oftentimes, depending on the situation or the mode that your customer is in, oftentimes much more important.

Dave: There's so much innovation that's going on in food service these days. You have so much innovation that's occurring. It's the industry behaves at a very fast clip, which is very different than the way it was like 20 years ago. So you have to be experimenting and then you have all of these channels that you've described, which can be daunting.

It's a lot to pay attention to. And that's part of what makes the category so interesting. I do think that the consumer is moving to a place where whatever the situation is that arises and whatever mode they're in, they expect that there's going to be [00:27:00] something there for them. Their expectations are instantaneous.

Sherif: It's kind of the highlight, which is how do you continue to innovate? How do you continue to think about what's next? And for us, obviously we're looking at a lot more into, you know, what AI can bring to us and help with the overall experience. We're looking into robotics and automation. We just launched a new brand called pizza jukebox.

A robot makes your pizza and it's in front of the guests. So it's not behind the scenes, not in the kitchen. It's part of the experience. You kind of can go on the kiosk and pick exactly what you want on your pizza and see this little robot make your pizza. And you have, again, kids, parents all there with their phones, right?

Putting your content on their feeds. And I have a million people who are in my marketing department for pizza jukebox right now, because they post this robot making pizza and get people excited about it. It's certainly consistent. It is very, yes, that's absolutely right.

Aransas: Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how long the value [00:28:00] of those robots last.

I'm really interested. You know, we just had a demo of one at Coca Cola with a Costa Coffee robot who makes your specialty drink and it's really beautiful and it's really inspiring visually. We are definitely in a window where those are going to be shareable and exciting. And I'm curious. If that will ultimately translate to something that's just valuable from a time perspective once it loses the novelty of the robotic aspect.

Sherif: That's absolutely right. And for us, the first thing that we spent most of the time on actually was The quality of the pizza, right? Because to your point, the, the, the luster, the novelty of the robot will lose its value over time for sure, especially for folks that continue to frequent that location. But that's why at the end of the day, we serve food and you're not going to go back to a place if the food's not good.

Yeah, that's a clear part of the experience. And so the food, the pizza has to be amazing [00:29:00] and yeah, it's, it's kind of fun how it's made. It'll lose its luster, but I'm coming back for the pizza was the ultimate success factor for this brand and that's what we're hearing from our guests. It's like, yeah, the robot's cool, but the pizza is actually amazing.

That makes us feel good.

Aransas: So, what do you believe is the future for restaurant and hospitality?

Sherif: I see, with all, we talked about automation and technology and, and all the pieces. At the end of the day, I see hospitality in restaurants. Is, is still always going to come down to a guest and a team member, because at the end of the day, people are going to pick up still, they're going to go through the drive through, they're going to talk to AI bots, they're going to order through kiosks.

All of that will still be there and will still be a good portion of how sales are conducted. But if you look at just the totality of interactions that occur in the restaurant space and will continue to occur, this touch point between a person and a person, when you go out. A lot of times [00:30:00] that experience is because John or Nancy made it better.

That server did something that was beyond just, I had a great meal. And that again, creates stickiness. It's really hard to have stickiness to a robot. Or to a kiosk or to a digital drive thru. It's really important to have stickiness with a person. This person that handed my kid this cone with two scoops overflowing with their favorite ice cream.

And that kid is now the happiest person and is. Just makes their day, makes their mom's day. That's, and they do it with a smile and maybe they give that kid a little sticker or a little press on tattoo of a friendly Sunday, and you just did something just a little extra. You just brought a smile to someone's face.

That to me is still the future of restaurants. That to me, at the end of the day. will still ensure stickiness, will still ensure longevity, will still ensure that the brands that really [00:31:00] do it right will be around for a very long time.

Aransas: And I guess as we aim to do that across categories, we can all come back to the image of the ice cream shop.

And perhaps it is not a coincidence that everything you mentioned as being sticky is literally. Sticky, the stickers, the tattoo, the ice cream, and the humans are the cherry on top. It was really a delight to have you with us, Sherif. We're really excited to watch what you continue to do with this powerhouse group of brands and the power of nostalgia and relevance.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you over at stonemantle. co where you can find lots more tools, resources, and frameworks to help you with some of the ideas that you heard here. Certainly the experience strategy trend report is there waiting for you for 2024, along with information on modes, situational markets, personas, and more.

Voiceover: Thank you for listening to the experience strategy [00:32:00] podcast. If you're having fun nerding out with us, please follow and share wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, find more episodes and continue the conversation with us at experiencestrategypodcast.com.