Olga Lopategui [00:00:00]:

Loyalty programs can help, but loyalty programs are not the center of the restaurant activity. What we do is incremental, so it can help you shift your sales by a couple percent here and there, but it's not going to change the trajectory of your business altogether. It is helpful, but it's not some kind of miracle. So I think if the goal is to win against the giants, the heart of that win is in the restaurant decorations and food quality. And just, you can't win just on loyalty and CRM marketing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:39]:

Welcome to WISKing It All with your host, Angelo Esposito, co-founder of WISK.AI, a food and beverage intelligence platform. We're going to be interviewing hospitality professionals around the world to really understand how they do what they do. Welcome to another episode of WISKing It All. We're joined today by Olga Lopategui, founder of Restaurant Loyalty Specialist. Olga, thanks for joining us.

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Olga Lopategui [00:01:07]:

Sure. Thanks for inviting. It's always nice to talk about loyalty with other people that are in the restaurant space.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:15]:

There you go. And, you know, if there's someone who can definitely talk on the topic or speak on the topic, I should say it's you. Quite the impressive profile. So I always like to kind of get the backstory and then dive in. I think one thing that really stood out when I was looking at your profile is you had quite an impressive career working with global brands like Pizza Hut, KFC, et cetera. So I'd love to know, kind of like maybe to kick things off, what led you to transition from maybe some of those corporate roles to founding your own company, restaurant loyalty specialists, definitely.

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Olga Lopategui [00:01:46]:

So it kind of happened by itself. It was life reason. So I actually really enjoyed my time with young brands as well as with CGI Friday. So corporate, international, lots of travel. I was mostly in international marketing roles, and all of that was wonderful until I had a couple kids. And then that unreasonable amount of international travel was starting to catch up with me and especially my husband. So we decided to kind of shift gears a little bit. He took a job in Austin, Texas.

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Olga Lopategui [00:02:21]:

We made the move, and I left my corporate career behind for at least while the kids were little and while I was at home. Before the pandemic started, actually, I wanted to do something fun that is still in the restaurant space. And I decided, well, I'll do a little bit of consulting. Six years down the road, we have an actual company that works with dozens of clients. And it's so, it's been very, very fun. It's a very, now I'm not going back to corporate ever again. I just love being independent and running my own little show.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:57]:

That's awesome. That's awesome. And then for our listeners that don't know, can you just tell them a bit and we're going to dive deeper, but can you tell them a bit about the idea behind restaurant loyalty specialists? Why was the company founded? What do you guys do?

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Olga Lopategui [00:03:10]:

Yeah, so we are a consulting company, so we don't do any software. We just work with restaurant chains on making the best use of their loyalty and CRM software. So we're platform agnostic. So if you do happen to have a loyalty program that is on any of the popular platforms, we generally know all of the popular platforms within the restaurant space. A lot of our clients are on Punch, a lot of our clients are on patronics, some on. Thanks. So the usual suspects. So what we do is we work with restaurant chains to make the most out of their existing platforms.

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Olga Lopategui [00:03:45]:

It comes in as strategic support for some, it comes in as execution, just deploying campaigns and measuring results on their behalf. And then there's everything in between. So, but that's what we do. It's very custom engagements, it's helping meeting brands where they are helping them with whatever resources they have gaps on, and being very, very practical.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:06]:

You know, you deal obviously with many different brands and chains. What's a common thread you see like, so when they come to you, is it typically, just generally, that their loyalty is not working? And is there a typical theme you see on why that that's happening?

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Olga Lopategui [00:04:22]:

So the typical, typical client comes to us about three years into their loyalty journey. Okay, so they get the loyalty program running, or maybe they've shifted from one platform to another. Two, three years in. It's been going on for a while and they're wondering, is it actually working? That's the most common scenario. Usually when people just launch it, everything is fine. How hard can it be? Let's just do it. And it's all going to work by itself. I think what's also not helping is when those tools get sold to restaurant companies, get sold as self service and hands off, you know, it just like pretty much runs itself, right? You just put it in and there's nothing, absolutely nothing you have to do after that.

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Olga Lopategui [00:05:12]:

And then within two to three years, the realization comes in for many companies that actually you kind of have to have a driver and the driver kind of has to pay attention. And if your driver is paying attention to ten other things in parking at the same time, this is probably going to get abandoned. So we can help figure out the ROI and basically help drive it or reduce the amount of driving that's needed to the bare minimum that's usable.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:39]:

That makes sense. Makes a ton of sense. And, yeah, it's, it's, you know, I'm in the software space, as you imagine, and it happens. It happens a lot. There's a lot of, we try not to, we try not to do it at all, but there's a lot of people out there that will kind of over promise under deliver, which then leads to, you know, more clients for you. So it's good.

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Olga Lopategui [00:06:01]:

It's like sometimes it's a little bit sad. Like the way that I put it, it's almost kind of like the gym membership. It's not enough to just pay for the membership. You can actually have. Somebody has to go and work out. So if you don't do it at all, it's like just paying for it doesn't really help very much. Unfortunately, that's how those problems are.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:19]:

Yeah, 100%. And it's funny because the world we're in, we're in very much the inventory world and all that. And it's funny enough, we use the gym analogy, too, where we're like, listen, we're going to help you. We're going to give you the tools, but like, if you don't count, you don't count. If you don't scan your invoice, we can't process it. It's like you have to do basic things or we can't help you type of thing. So totally, totally get it. Out of curiosity for people listening, right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:43]:

They're maybe struggling with loyalty. They're maybe thinking about getting into it. Can you maybe tell us a bit more about what differentiates your consulting agency when it comes to loyalty versus maybe a general loyalty consulting business?

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Olga Lopategui [00:06:59]:

So we work only with restaurant chains. So that's really our main differentiator. We know the restaurants inside out. Everybody on my team has worked with at least a handful, if not dozens of restaurants and restaurant platforms. So we just know this particular vertical extremely well, and we think that helps, that makes things move faster, teach us what the food cost is, and, you know, what our operational concerns, why you cannot ask certain questions on the drive through. Philosophical questions on the drive through are not a good thing to do. So, yeah, so that's really the main. But other than that, we pretty much pick ideas from retail, because retail, from the CRM perspective, retail and hospitalities and hotels and entertainment venues, so much more ahead of the restaurants in terms of how they run CRM.

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Olga Lopategui [00:07:57]:

So we pick up lessons from there and we take whatever we can and we apply it to the restaurant space, we modify it, simplify it, but we're not in the business of inventing things. We borrow from the giants and reoplay.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:11]:

Yeah. Okay. That's amazing. And is there a typical, just to get a sense, is there a typical size of chain? Like can a chain be ten stores or is it like 50 stores plus, like, what do you typically look at when you say chains?

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Olga Lopategui [00:08:23]:

So most of our clients are 30 units plus. So average client is probably closer to a couple hundred units. And then we worked with some clients that are in like low thousands. We don't have a lot of clients that are in like top ten. But generally what I look at for most engagements is what is the size of your active database? Because where we add value is by getting people that are in your database to show up at your restaurant a little bit more.

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Angelo Esposito [00:08:53]:

Right.

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Olga Lopategui [00:08:53]:

So if you have 20,000 people in the database, I cannot justify the fees that we have to charge. Make it, make it work. If you have a couple hundred thousand, we can start talking. If you have a million, we definitely can talk. But if there is not a lot of people that we can impact in your system, you're probably better off just first building the database and them getting us on mold.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:18]:

Got it. That makes sense. And you know, we got a lot of restaurant listeners, restaurant operators, and part of the podcast value is really just trying to help them and give them value. So we get people from different walks of life. Sometimes it's tech companies, sometimes loyalty, marketing, you name it. And so one question that I'm sure the listeners would appreciate is really maybe some common mistakes that you see restaurants make when implementing loyalty programs.

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Olga Lopategui [00:09:43]:

So we'll set it and forget it is one.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:46]:

So that's a big one, I imagine.

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Olga Lopategui [00:09:48]:

Yes, and it's very, very understandable because by the time the implementation is finished, everybody is just so fatigued by this whole process of getting this thing up and running that it's very, very tempting to just completely forget about it. It's okay to forget about like for three or four months, but not for like a couple years, which some people. So set it and forget it would be number one. I think the other one is, interestingly, the over segmentation too. Erlab.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:22]:

Okay, tell me more.

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Olga Lopategui [00:10:24]:

There is a lot of conversation in the industry about how you have to personalize marketing, one to one marketing, which doesn't exist by the way, but people strive for it. So I've seen clients that get into the programs and they try to hyper personalize over segment their not so large database. It's very, very difficult. It requires a lot of effort. And if the segment size is not very meaningful, you do a lot of work and you get very little return because it doesn't matter which offers promotions, messages you put out of typical redemption rate or engagement rate is 1% 2%.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:09]:

Wow.

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Olga Lopategui [00:11:09]:

So if your segments are tiny, if your segments are tiny, you're putting a lot of work into getting four people to click the button. Absolutely. It's a lot of spinning, but there is no good reason to do that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:22]:

That's a good tip.

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Olga Lopategui [00:11:25]:

And then I think the other one that is, is pretty common, is when brands are looking for the software partner for loyalty and CRM. I see very often the brands are not fully realizing which stage of development they are at and what type of software is right for them. So I have seen brands acquiring, getting sold on solutions that are too basic for their needs. And I have seen also brands completely overshooting the scale that they're going for. And it's a big challenge because if you overshoot, it's very difficult because the cost of maintenance of the program and the cost of resources that you need to be able to run that program is not something that works for your business. So if you're a hundred unit chain, you just cannot use the same software that McDonald's is using. It's wonderful, but it has a different type of team to make it work. Similarly, you get a piece of software that is designed for mom and pops.

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Olga Lopategui [00:12:31]:

It may be more affordable, but then you find out you can't really operate as an enterprise system if you have such a restaurant and you don't want to set up promotions for each individual location manually. And that's what would happen if you get something that's targeted to mom and pops. It's not designed to operate as a single system.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:50]:

Makes sense. Those are some good tips. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I'm curious to know, like, how have loyalty programs in general evolved in the restaurant industry? From your point of view?

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Olga Lopategui [00:13:00]:

That's a tough one. How do they evolve?

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:03]:

How have they evolved? Like, you know, if you think about loyalty 20 years ago to loyalty today, what you know, how have you, like, what do you see when you think restaurant loyalty, let's call it over the last two decades.

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Olga Lopategui [00:13:14]:

Last two decades, which kind of coincides with my time on the restaurant space.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:18]:

There you go.

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Olga Lopategui [00:13:20]:

It's close enough. Unbelievably so. When I was just starting out back in mid two thousands in the restaurant space. Loyalty programs were only possible for large enterprise brands, and they were extremely expensive and they were very hard to operate, but they gave huge competitive advantage to anyone that was actually able to do it. So Pizza Hut is a great example. They had a loyalty program, rewards program early on. Database marketing was phenomenal, and nobody else could actually do it. So as technology changed, progressed, the loyalty programs and CRM marketing is much more accessible.

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Olga Lopategui [00:14:00]:

Almost any chain, not even chain, even individual restaurants, can do. Is it worth it for them? As a different question, but they can. It's affordable enough.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:08]:

Right, right.

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Olga Lopategui [00:14:10]:

So just the democratization of this technology is quite, quite amazing. So that's, that's what I've been, I've been observing. So now, loyalty programs, they're not quite what we call table stakes, but they're getting close to it. Not having a program is becoming a disadvantage, particularly for mid size and smaller chain. So that's why we see everybody jumping, jumping on the loyalty bandwagon, I would argue. It's not. It's not required. There are plenty of really, really strong performers in the market that do not have a formal loyalty program.

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Olga Lopategui [00:14:45]:

The database marketing is absolutely required, but the loyalty program, you can get away without it if you know what you're doing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:52]:

Okay, that's interesting. And I guess today, when, you know, you think about it now, there's like, you know, digital ordering pretty much since COVID but even before then, but it really got super popular. Everyone went to online ordering and all that, and then third party platforms. How do you think that has impacted the idea behind loyalty programs?

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Olga Lopategui [00:15:11]:

Well, third party platforms are challenging animal its guests, that they're not first party guests. Generally, we don't get a lot of data on who they are, what they purchase. We believe, and based on some studies that I've seen, that there is very little overlap between the guests of hello to the brand and the guests that are ordering through third party platforms. Although there are some exceptions out there. There are people that will pay for convenience, and they don't want to mess with the online ordering. Seven online ordering logins for each restaurant, and they're happy to pay 30% or whatever premium to Uber. It's a doordash. But those people, as far as we understand, are in the minority.

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Olga Lopategui [00:15:58]:

I work with restaurant chains that have a high percentage of those guests. We try to do our best to convert them into first party simply because you can control the experience better and they get a better value and the restaurant gets a better value. As well. So there's less of a middleman in there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:17]:

Yeah.

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Olga Lopategui [00:16:17]:

So we try to shift them away, but we also don't, we don't fight them. You just need, got to meet people where they are.

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Angelo Esposito [00:16:27]:

Yeah, that makes sense. And like when, what are some tactics, you know, without giving away all your secrets, what are some potential tactics that like a restaurant could do to potentially get some third party customers to become first party customers?

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Olga Lopategui [00:16:43]:

Yeah. And by the way, we don't really have a lot of secrets. Right. Everything we do is very much out on the open. It just, you just got to do it right. Just a lot of execution. So there is no, there is no magic on this. Right.

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Olga Lopategui [00:17:01]:

You just got to, you got to sit down and think through it and do it and actually do it and check, have you done it? How well have you done it? There is not, no, like not a lot of iP, not a lot of magic. Just do stuff. In terms of getting guests to convert. One of the most effective things you can do has nothing to do with database marketing. It's promoting first party ordering and loyalty program on everything you can legally do. Meaning in most cases, packaging. So typically you're not allowed to put flyers, at least not legally, contractually allowed to put flyers promoting your first party ordering into your broadish postmates, etcetera, which makes packages, which makes sense. But there is nothing that prevents you from promoting it on your standard packaging.

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Olga Lopategui [00:17:49]:

And that's why we always recommend you launch the program. You just push on, making sure that all of your packaging information contains best offers are in the app. Join here to download QR codes direct you where the guests can find you. So just making it very, very visible that the guest can join the program and order directly going forward. So that's really the most, the most effective piece. But we also highly encourage our clients to not allow third party guests to earn points on their orders. We want to exclude them from loyalty because the discount rate is already very high. You don't want to provide an additional incentive to continue ordering through and to provide benefits to guests that do that is just usually not cost effective.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:38]:

Okay, that makes sense. Those are some good tips and I'm curious to just pick your brain a little more. Super interesting. You briefly mentioned before, when we're talking about loyalty and chains, you kind of mentioned, is it worth it for single venues? So I have to ask from your point of view, tell me more about that. Is it worth it from what you've seen when it comes to individual menus?

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Olga Lopategui [00:19:01]:

So like single mom and pop, one store one star operations. I think that it's absolutely worthwhile to have an email marketing database. So gather the emails whichever way you can. There's not too many methods, but get the emails and get the regular email marketing program out there. In terms of the actual loyalty program, typically they require at least some level of management. So if you're a single store and you are on a point of sale that has a built in loyalty tool, it's worth looking at. It's not always an ideal option, but I would not. If it's a single store, I would not go to a third party sis platform and deal with creating a loyalty logger and stick to in built in probably.

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Olga Lopategui [00:19:48]:

Okay. Depending on how it can be configured.

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Angelo Esposito [00:19:51]:

Okay, that makes sense. And then. Yeah, in terms of collecting emails, I know obviously one way I've seen commonly is the whole Internet thing, you know, getting the Wi Fi and capture their email. But what are maybe some other ways that you've seen people collect emails?

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Olga Lopategui [00:20:06]:

So tabletops work with your will, sign up here, get whatever free desserts, whatever during your current visit. So you validate that they've actually made a download or edit their email. So that that definitely, definitely works. SMS programs also work reasonably well, so you get people to sign up for the short code. So usually you don't get as much of a scale. And if you don't send offers, you get high unsubscribe rates. It's also very effective with particularly the younger crew out there. What's even better than email but essentially in store acquisition? That's the way to go when you don't have a giant budget.

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Olga Lopategui [00:20:49]:

And actually, even if you do, it's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:52]:

The way to go.

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Olga Lopategui [00:20:52]:

It's still the most cost effective.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:53]:

Yeah, yeah, got it. And, you know, one thing I like to do with the guest, always kind of go back and try to understand what got them into this space. So maybe just taking a few steps back and we'll get more into loyalty, but just taking a few steps back. What originally got you interested in the restaurant space? If we go like pretty know, pre young brands and pre that.

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Olga Lopategui [00:21:13]:

Yeah, you know, I've always liked food, so that was. And my, my early career had absolutely nothing to do with restaurants or loyalty or marketing. I was actually a lawyer in oil and gas. I used to work as an in house counsel for Konake Phillips and working on some random upstream pipeline projects, God knows where. I could never relate to the product. There were nice people I was working with, but it was a big. I always loved international. It was a big international component.

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Olga Lopategui [00:21:48]:

We had a big international consortium working on that project. The best part of it was going out to it and all those countries I was visiting, and that's what I really enjoyed. And so then when I went for my MBA, I was like, you know what? I got to switch to something that's just a little closer to. To food and dining out. I think that's why I've stayed in the industry and I never left because it just.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:10]:

It's pretty cool. That's awesome.

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Olga Lopategui [00:22:14]:

One of the funnest parts about being on Yum international team, on TJ Friday's international team, is that I got to visit a big portion of the world with them, as well as just on my own locomotion, but with them.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:26]:

Right. So. Right.

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Olga Lopategui [00:22:27]:

It's probably, like 40 plus countries out of the 80 that I visited in my lifetime where, thanks to work, travel, and I ate my way, every little street market and every little corner, just learning about what the people enjoy. Food is culture, right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:47]:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The reason I love restaurants so much, I mean, there's a few reasons, but one reason, funny enough, is actually because I think that's what, like, makes a city special. You know, when you go visit a city, a lot of the times, the first thing is like, oh, you have to try this restaurant or this scene or this area has a few good restaurants or cafes. So it's like, it's such a common thing. And it's like, if you take a really cool city and then, you know, take out the restaurants and put maybe just chains, all of a sudden it's not a cool city anymore. So it's like, it's a good metric to see, like, what restaurants and chefs and mixologists, etc. Or hotels are in that city.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:23]:

And generally that's what kind of gives it a very unique vibe.

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Olga Lopategui [00:23:26]:

Yeah. And also, like, what do locals eat? What do expats eat?

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:31]:

Exactly.

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Olga Lopategui [00:23:31]:

Do cultures, regional, international, how does it all come together? So all of that's just been very, very fun to observe. And I miss that a little bit on my current role where I'm mostly in my own office.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:47]:

Right.

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Olga Lopategui [00:23:47]:

Very little. Little travel time for everything.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:52]:

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And since, you know, you've been to so many countries, I have to ask you, and you ate at so many places. Are you on so many loyalty programs personally? Are you. Are you part of a ton of loyalty programs?

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Olga Lopategui [00:24:05]:

I am. So we typically work with a dozen clients at any given time. So that's like, your minimum. I do have to admit. I turn post notifications off because I just can't. It's not, I, I would be able to work if I had post notifications for every restaurant. But I probably have two dozen loyalty programs on my phone for client support, testing, R and D, baseline assessments. And then there is a handful that I use routinely myself actually shout out to a client.

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Olga Lopategui [00:24:39]:

So today I don't have a lot of local clients. Today my sister and her kids are in town and they ask for something local here in Austin. I'm based in Austin, Texas. So we went to Smokey Mo's barbecue, which we helped them launch their loyalty program last year. So we went there and I got my app up out and we got some brisket sandwiches. That was great.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:08]:

That's awesome. That's awesome. And then in terms of like, what you've seen when you work with people, I know you mentioned a couple different loyalty platforms like Punch Patronix. I know there's. Thanks. We actually had the CEO thanks on the show. He's, he's awesome. But yeah, Zach, it was great.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:24]:

How do you think about these different programs to you? Are you fully agnostic? It doesn't matter. Or what do you think, you know, like how does that affect you guys when kind of consulting these different franchises?

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Olga Lopategui [00:25:35]:

Yeah. So we work with, we are fully agnostic. There are certain platforms that we wouldn't work with just because we don't have the right expertise. Typically it's something that is ridiculously complicated. Something like McDonald's for example, would be, I just don't have the expertise to work with that. Other platforms, what we do minimal work on are very entry level platforms. So for example, if you look at some Pos built in pos platforms, typically brands that are using them are very, very small and we can help with a little bit of setup or a little bit of your just general strategy. But typically we don't routinely execute on those types of platforms.

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Olga Lopategui [00:26:15]:

Other than that, there is a platform for everyone out there. They're all saying that they all can work with anybody from two restaurants to 3000 restaurants. In reality, there is a sweet spot for each one of those. Of course, some of the clients that come to us, they ask us, hey, which one should we go? And we'll typically, we recommend what we think is appropriate for their size, scale and resources based on the conversations with them. And then we routinely have clients or prospects coming to us saying, hey, we hate whichever platform we're currently on. What should we switch to? And my answer is always, let's look why you hate it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:58]:

Exactly.

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Olga Lopategui [00:26:59]:

Before you mix it 90% of the time we can fix it. And the other 75% of the time, switching platforms is not going to do what you think it's going to do. It's like switching gyms if you're not losing weight.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:11]:

Yeah, exactly.

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Olga Lopategui [00:27:12]:

Usually it's not quite the gym, but sometimes the other one is closer. You can make it there. Okay. Usually it's not the gym itself.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:20]:

That's a good analogy. I like that. And it's good because it'll save them a lot of time and switching costs. So like, let's make sure, let's understand why before we move on. I love that. Love that. And so for restaurants listening, and they're looking to improve their loyalty program. So obviously we're going to plug your website, all that stuff.

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Angelo Esposito [00:27:35]:

The end of the episode, I like to do a bunch of plugs. But just in general, what are some key metrics they should focus on to kind of drive long term growth?

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Olga Lopategui [00:27:46]:

Yeah. So the most important one is loyalty participation rate. So what percentage of your transactions goes through the loyalty program? And it depends on the type of restaurant, the type that you're dealing with and how you're acquiring, identifying those guests. But generally, if you're below 15%, that's not very good. If you're above 15%, that's probably not bad. If you're pushing into 25 plus, it's wonderful. Again with the caveat. It depends on identification method and the restaurant type in general.

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Olga Lopategui [00:28:22]:

Right?

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Angelo Esposito [00:28:22]:

Yes.

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Olga Lopategui [00:28:23]:

So for most common, common programs. So the other one that we really like paying attention to, we call it the spendlift or it's a difference between how much loyalty guests are spending compared to non loyalty guests. So you want your loyalty guests to spend more money than somebody off the street? Ideally, it's usually like that. Sometimes it's not. So it's also a fairly common problem that clients come to us with. Why is it that our loyalty guests are actually not spending as much as people off the street? So we work with that and help them fix it because all of this is fixable. Typically fixable, yeah. So I would say, like, if there's nothing else to look, to care about, I would look at those, I would look at those geometrics as the most important ones.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:10]:

Okay, that makes sense. And then I gotta just pick a brain on this one, because now I'm just personally curious. What's maybe a common reason that someone on the off the street, excuse me, might spend more than a loyalty member?

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Olga Lopategui [00:29:23]:

Well, so one of the very common scenario is that you would see that loyalty guests are very value driven for a specific brand. And sometimes brand just reinforces that for those guests. Sometimes you, sometimes you just, the brand ends up training people to expect a discount and they wouldn't come in without a discount. So that happens every now and then. Sometimes you will have people that come in routinely and they sign up for loyalty program. And people that visit the brand every day for lunch are not going to spend as much as somebody who comes into the same brand once a quarter for dinner. So if you become so, if your, if your program is unbalanced in terms of you're only driving super frequent people into the program, you're probably going to see lower spend among those girls. And sometimes it's not the end of the world.

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Olga Lopategui [00:30:17]:

If they have super high frequency and you're driving their frequency even higher, maybe it's okay as long as you're getting incremental visits out of them and it's a profitable. So, but overall, just like seeing that your loyalty guests on average are spending less on loyalty is always a little scary. So you've got to get to the bottom of that and figure out, is it okay? Can you reverse it? Should you reverse it?

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Angelo Esposito [00:30:40]:

Got it. That makes sense. And for small and medium restaurants, what's some advice you can give them, or I should say smaller and medium chains advice to give them to compete with the larger, maybe more established brands? I mean, short answer is book some time with you.

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Olga Lopategui [00:30:58]:

But, you know, I think that loyalty programs can help. But loyalty programs are not the center of the restaurant activity. What we do is incremental. So it can help you shift your sales by a couple percent here and there, but it's not going to change the trajectory of your business altogether. It is helpful, but it's not some kind of miracle. So I think if the goal is to win against the giants, the heart of that win is in the restaurant preparations and food quality. And just, you can't win just on loyalty and CRM markethouse. It helps, certainly helps if you have something good at the core, but it's not going to be.

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Olga Lopategui [00:31:46]:

So I would trying to win, put more effort into ops and then do what you must with loyalty. It's not the center of the universe. It's a useful tool.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:58]:

Yeah, that's good advice. I love it. Super, super pragmatic. And then I guess what would you say is maybe strategies that you have found most of effective to turn customer data into actionable insights. Because I know restaurants get bombarded, especially these days, with, we'll give you data, data, data from people like us. On inventory, payroll, staffing, every area, and now loyalty. So what are some strategies you found to be effective from your point of view?

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Olga Lopategui [00:32:30]:

So when we work usually with larger restaurants and that's less of an issue with little ones, medium ones, with the larger restaurants that actually have the ability to absorb ridiculous quantities of sorted data and then they have to house the clean the data, house the data, figure out how to access it real time, not real time. So all of that, all of that drama. So what we like to do is we like to work on specific use cases.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:59]:

Okay?

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Olga Lopategui [00:33:00]:

So we go back to what do you actually need the data for? So how are you going to utilize it? And what we find is the most useful data is data around product propensity, meaning what do you like to eat? Which is typically based on what you've eaten before. You could also ask questions about what do you like? But typically whatever they ordered is probably what they like to eat. That's the easiest way to get there. And then the second part that is particularly helpful is the RFM decency. Frequently frequency and monitoring. So how recent they should, were they when they showed up? How frequent do, how frequently do they typically show up and monitor? How much do they typically spend? What's the range? So to me that data is really the only, not the only data, but the most important data to work with. Because the example I always give is like, if I find, if you find out that I'm 40 something female that loves scuba diving and you are 40 something male that loves skiing and we're both customers at Sandwich restaurant, who the hell cares? You're not going to like as a restaurant marketer, I'm not going to send me anything that shows underwater photography or send you something showing the mountains. We're just not going to do that.

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Olga Lopategui [00:34:24]:

You're still going to get a picture of a sun, so it better be a turkey for me and beef brisket for you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:31]:

Whatever it happens, at the end of.

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Olga Lopategui [00:34:34]:

The day, our marketing is going to be to be tied to, or at least database marketing is going to be tied to our product preferences and our spending patterns.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:44]:

No, it makes sense. I think it goes back to what you said at the beginning about some people try to they over segment. These are small, you know, into the over segment, which in the end then is just a useless list because it's, you're trying to optimize something that will really have a big impact.

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Olga Lopategui [00:35:01]:

Yeah. And there's like, there are examples when things like this are relevant, right? Like if you're a sports bar and you want to find out who, which people are fans of baseball, which people are fans of football. That is probably wonderful information to have, but then you have to turn it into target marketing. So one baseball game is on the, you email baseball people, on football gamers on, you email football people, but you don't send everything to everybody because then who cares?

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:26]:

Exactly. It's true. No, it's true. And looking ahead, what are some trends that you either see happening or can see happening when it comes to the future of restaurant loyalty?

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Olga Lopategui [00:35:38]:

The trends that I'm seeing, although a lot of AI everywhere AI, and what I think we're going to is a lot of people, ourselves included, trying to figure out in the next couple of years how do we practically deploy AI to achieve better quality segmentation? Because right now we are doing decent segmentation. It can get better, but it's just too difficult to do manually. So that's definitely going to be a trend. And I'm very excited about the improvements in generative AI in particular because one of the biggest challenges for us in segmentation, micro segmentation, is coming up with the correct creative and quantity because you have to have different creative assets to target every single, well maybe not every single micro, micro targets. Yeah, segmentation, you've got 50, 50, 6000 campaigns per week. Each one of them has to have a different creator. So because otherwise it's not segmentation, just send one to everybody.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:40]:

Right, exactly.

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Olga Lopategui [00:36:42]:

So I think that we will see more higher quality segmentation there with the help of generative AI. Also, I'm hopeful for seeing more of a trend around analytics.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:57]:

Okay.

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Olga Lopategui [00:36:58]:

Historically, our clients are more interested in doing things and less interested in seeing how those things performed. And partly because analytics is, you know, it's expensive, it's, it takes time to process and even if you use other tools to help you, it still takes a bunch of brain power from somebody to understand what happened. So I'm hoping that we're going to see more, not just test, but also learn more people closing that cycle and getting their marketing better.

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Angelo Esposito [00:37:35]:

Thanks for that. I love that. And Olga, to wrap up, I always like to give a chance for people to obviously plug away. So anything you want to share from website, your socials, newsletter, anything you have. So this is an opportunity for you to share. So I'll just give you the floor.

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Olga Lopategui [00:37:52]:

Yeah. So we are at restaurantloyalty specialists.com. so my email is Olga at restaurant loyalty specialist.com. we are not on Twitter, we're not on Facebook, we're only on LinkedIn. We're pretty easy to find. So we have a newsletter, which is a quarterly newsletter. So if you would like to sign up and get some updates on what's happening in the restaurant loyalty, please shoot me a note and we'll sign you up. And I'm just always open to conversations with people in the restaurant space.

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Olga Lopategui [00:38:26]:

If you have thoughts, ideas or questions around loyalty, whether you're with a small brand or a large brand, doesn't matter. I'm always game for a quick, quick chat.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:35]:

I love that. Well, Olga, thanks for joining us once again to all our listeners. Olga Lopategui, I think I mispronounced that.

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Olga Lopategui [00:38:41]:

But I'll just say no this time. You got the price?

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:44]:

Yeah, I got it right. Amazing ending off on a good note. So we once again, thanks for joining us. We had Olga from the founder of restaurant loyalty specialist, and you can check them out @ restaurantloyaltyspecialist.com. thanks again for joining us, Olga.

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Olga Lopategui [00:38:59]:

Thank you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:00]:

If you want to learn more about WISK, head to WISK.AI and book a demo.

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