Chip Klose [00:00:00]:

For me, there's only three things you have to focus on when you market a restaurant. Doesn't matter what you've heard, doesn't matter what anyone else tells you. It's only three things you need to do. You got to figure out a way to get people in the front door, right? How to get new people. That's customer acquisition. How to get people back. That's customer retention. And then what I call is evangelism.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:21]:

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 here today with Chip Klose. Chip is a restaurant coach with over two decades of restaurant experience. On top of that, he is the host of the restaurant strategy podcast, amongst many other things, which we'll get into. So without further ado, Chip, thank you for being here today.

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Chip Klose [00:01:00]:

Thank you for having me here today. I love the title of the podcast, for what it's worth.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:05]:

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, we play with a bunch of names, and that one just stuck. It felt like a fun little play on words.

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Chip Klose [00:01:11]:

Yeah, for sure.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:12]:

Amazing. Well, look, there's a ton I want to go through. I know you have a vast knowledge when it comes to the restaurant world, and you have your own podcast, which I was checking out with over 300 episodes. So I'm sure there's a lot of fun and exciting things we can get through today. A good place to start for me would be to understand just how you got to where you are today in the sense of what got you into the industry, right?

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Chip Klose [00:01:38]:

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think, like a lot of people, I took the side door. I think the vast majority of people who were in this industry took the side door or the back door in some way.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:49]:

Right.

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Chip Klose [00:01:49]:

I went to theater school for my undergrad, and I came to New York City in 2002. I waited tables to make my way through school, but I moved to the city. And what do you do as an out of work actor? You get a job in a restaurant. And so that's what I did. And I did that for a while. For a while, restaurants were my day job in between gigs when I wasn't out of town working. And then after a while, I started getting some cool opportunities, because I think in most markets, if you present yourself as competent and qualified and engaged, you will be given opportunities in the restaurant industry. And I was given opportunities, really cool opportunities.

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Chip Klose [00:02:32]:

And I started opening a lot of restaurants. That was like 2004. Five, six, seven. There was about a ten year stretch or a nine year stretch where I opened eight different restaurants. And mostly I was in the world of fine dining, right? And I became really enamored with that world. I was working at Michelin star restaurants, opening Michelin starred restaurants. I started working with some really big names, James Beard award winners. And I was like, whoa.

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Chip Klose [00:02:55]:

At a certain point, I looked back and I said, hey, my theater resume is okay, but my restaurant resume is pretty incredible. I've got 13 Michelin stars on there. Three different James Beard award winners. I had opened a relay and chateau property in upstate New York for Richard Gere, the actor. It was a beautiful. So, like, I sort of did all the things. And that sort of took me to the crossroads when I started getting out of operations and into consulting. Eventually, consulting led me to coaching.

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Chip Klose [00:03:24]:

But the answer to your question is, how did I get into this? I got out of this because I was an out of work actor.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:30]:

Well, that's a funny way of putting it. Once you realize, you look back at your resume and you're like, I'm actually doing pretty good on this side, maybe I should continue here.

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Chip Klose [00:03:39]:

It's funny. And this bear is mentioning, in the beginning, I really hated restaurants. And that was because restaurants were sort of, at least for me, was just a sign of the failure, right? Like my failure, oh, I'm not working enough as an actor. Every time I was in a restaurant, it was just proof that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing, right. And so for a long time, I couldn't get rid of that. I mean, I wore that like a wet. So. But I was loving it.

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Chip Klose [00:04:08]:

The stuff I was being able to taste and try. I mean, I was introduced to wine and spirits, know, learning about stuff and different cultures and different types of cuisines. And I sort of longed to travel and sort of being able, being in New York City, obviously, a world with so many different cuisines, so many phenomenal restaurants, great neighborhoods with all different sort of nationalities represented. It was when I was able to acknowledge the things I was getting, not just the things that I wasn't getting, that it changed for me. But that didn't come overnight. That took a few years.

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Angelo Esposito [00:04:40]:

That's amazing. And I guess with some of the experience, right, with opening Michelin starter restaurants and collaborating with James Beard award winning chefs, what are some of the lessons that you kind of took? I mean, I'm sure there's probably a long list, and I know you also wrote a book, which we'll jump into, but what are some of the maybe key lessons that stand out when you kind of look back?

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Chip Klose [00:05:04]:

I don't know that I could draw any one lesson. I will say that if there's anything that we really fail at in this industry, it's that we're not, which is unique here. And ironic is that I don't think we pay enough attention to the customer in that we're really good at steps of service. They come in, we know what to do, we do this and that, and then this and that, and then this happens, and then this happens. And yet I think we can be better, and other industries are better at this, of saying, what do people need that I'm uniquely qualified to provide them with? Right? Like, what's the problem I can solve? And if we go about the world, we go out into the world just trying to solve someone else's problem, make them look prettier, make them feel more attractive, make them feel like they belong. Giving them community, giving them a place to celebrate, giving them a way to feed their kids easily when they've been running all day. We have to figure out who has the problem that we're solving or who has a problem that we can solve and what makes us uniquely qualified to do it. If there's any common thread that I've seen over my career, it's that that too often a restaurant doesn't actually need to exist.

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Chip Klose [00:06:27]:

That somebody opened a restaurant because it's what they want it to do, and that's fine. But the ones that succeed succeed because they're solving a problem for the customer. And what's ironic is that we're in the service industry. We are here to serve people. Somewhere along the way, over the last, I'll say, 20 or 30 years, we lost sight of the importance of focusing in on actually why we exist. We don't exist because I want to open a restaurant. We should exist because there's no restaurant like this in this neighborhood. Or people would love another option to try.

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Chip Klose [00:07:07]:

You can answer that question a million different ways. The best restaurants in the world, or the most successful ones get really good at answering that question. And I think we'd save a lot of heartache and heartbreak if we could go into it with that in mind. And that's true for little bagel shop, for an italian restaurant, for three Michelin star property.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:27]:

That's interesting. It's a good way you put it, because it's very obvious, or at least it should be quite obvious in the regular quote unquote, business world. It's like, identify the problems, but it's true. And now you mentioned, I'm reflecting on it, and it is true. A lot of restauranteurs, not a lot, but a good chunk of them. Right. It's almost like a fallback. It's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:07:47]:

Oh, I've always not sure what to do. I want to be an entrepreneur. Let me open a restaurant. That's right. And the ironic thing, getting to the part about irony is a restaurant is one of the hardest. A business in itself is hard enough. A restaurant is the hardest type of business in a sense.

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Chip Klose [00:08:03]:

You know why it's funny? Because I learned this solidified for me when I was in business school. Yeah. So I went back, I got my MBA because my undergrad was all in theater. So what the hell did I know? One of the things that drove me to go back to school is I said, I don't think we do things right. There's something not normal about what we do. And I feel like I don't understand why. And I want to get better at it. How can we make better, more profitable restaurants? It was funny.

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Chip Klose [00:08:32]:

I went back and I went to St. Joe's, which has a program. It's an MBA in food marketing. It's the only one like it in the country. It's incredible. But I was around people who came from the manufacturing side, from CPG, from retail, from other food service venues, not just restaurants. And so my voice was among sort of a mosaic of other voices. And one of the things, you know, we had a bunch of people who worked at Wegmans.

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Chip Klose [00:08:58]:

We had a bunch of people who worked. The university is based in Philadelphia. Campbell's soup company is based in Philadelphia. And what I realized is what makes our industry so difficult is there are three moving targets. Right? Revenue. Revenue is a moving target. I have no idea how many people are going to come in tonight or tomorrow night or the next night and how much they're going to spend. And this is profoundly impacted by world events and weather.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:22]:

Yeah.

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Chip Klose [00:09:26]:

Because revenue is a moving target. Our cost of goods sold is a moving target. I don't know how much to order. I'm going to order this much, and I think that'll be enough. I don't think it'll be too much. And maybe we'll have some waste, but that's another moving target. And then the last one is labor. Right? Is that I think we're going to be busy, but I don't know, maybe we won't be.

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Chip Klose [00:09:44]:

And so maybe I'll be overstaffed and I'll have to cut revenue, cogs and labor. And there are three biggest metrics that we should be measuring, and we don't measure them enough. When you juxtapose that against, let's say, the Campbell soup company, they have salespeople who go out to giant supermarkets, giant retailers, and they sell, hey, they're going to buy 500 cases of this soup. And so they go back to the Campbell soup factory and say, I just sold 500 cases. And the other guy says, I sold 1000. I sold 800. They have sold what they're going to, and they have the order, and then they know how much product to order and how many people to schedule to fulfill those orders. So revenue is not a question mark.

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Chip Klose [00:10:30]:

The product, the cost of goods is not a question mark, and their labor is not a question mark. It's a much more boring living, but it's an infinitely much more consistent and solid business.

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Angelo Esposito [00:10:45]:

A lot more predictable. Right?

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Chip Klose [00:10:47]:

Predictable. And so my entire path now is trying to get to the place of how can we make restaurant work more predictable so that we can generate a consistent return so that we can be more profitable. All of that. That's the biggest issue with our industry. We get all these moving targets.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:06]:

It makes total sense. And it's funny, that was the quick plug, but the idea behind WISK when we started was literally that it was, okay. There's these big things, and you nailed it. We're really focused on the cogs part of it because it's hard to do everything. There's people that just do labor, just do this. But for us, it was the cogs. And even more specific, when we started, it was the beverage side. So liquor, wine, that kind of thing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:11:25]:

And then over the years, people were like, please, we don't want to use, like, three different apps. When are you going to do food? And we're super reluctant, but we eventually launched with food, too. But the point is, it's hard to do that thing, especially when you're doing it manually and whether you use WISK or something else, but the idea that your inventory and your orders and everything's kind of manual or on an excel sheet, and we'd see this pattern of, like, even from your example of ordering, you got a manager who's there a year, two years, they know what to order. Fast forward, they're on vacation, or they get let go. It's like ordering is chaos. There's no kind of sop or something left over where someone can easily pick up where they left off. And we saw this gap, and in an industry where there's so much staff turnover, it almost becomes even more important to have these playbooks and things set up because of that staff turnover 100%. I love what you're doing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:13]:

I know one of the biggest things you do is, and we'll get into the podcast in the book as well, but I'd love to start off a bit with the coaching side of things. So I know you coach a lot of restaurants. I'd love to dive into a bit like what type of restaurants do you typically coach?

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Chip Klose [00:12:28]:

Maybe.

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Angelo Esposito [00:12:28]:

What are some of the challenges that, and I'm sure there's a wide array, but what are some of the challenges you typically see them facing when you first engage with these restaurants?

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Chip Klose [00:12:37]:

Yeah, so I've been consulting for the last eight years. Consulting turned into coaching over the course of the pandemic because I couldn't leave my apartment, and yet restaurants still needed help, and I found that there was a fair amount of stuff I could do via Zoom and the phone. And then about two and a half years ago, we launched what we have now, which is a mastermind. It's called the P three mastermind. So it's a group coaching format now. Grown it to be three totally different groups. So we have 115 members currently enrolled spread out over the three groups. It's an incredible community, and specifically what we're focused on is very narrow.

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Chip Klose [00:13:16]:

It's profitability. So we work with rights. In order for them to be a qualified lead, they have to be doing at least a million dollars in revenue. Got it. They've got to be around for at least a year. That's helpful because we have an entire sales cycle there, and we know that they're doing enough revenue on their own that they're popular, right. That they're putting out a good product. If somebody comes to me and says, hey, I'm doing $300,000 in revenue, I don't know if, number one, I don't know if they're going to have sort of the cash flow to be able to do a program like the one I run.

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Chip Klose [00:13:50]:

Number two, I don't know if they're going to really be able to see the impact of the work we do. Most importantly, though, is that I don't know if they just picked a bad location. I don't know if the food's bad, if the service is bad. So I'm a big fan of the sales profit growth model. Right that's the path that every successful business takes. You come up with a product that people want, a product that people are willing to pay for. Once you do that, you figure out a way to do it profitably. After that, then you grow it, because there's no reason to grow a business that's not profitable.

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Chip Klose [00:14:20]:

So once we figure out a way to get really green money coming out the bottom of this machine, we know for every dollar we put in, we get twenty cents out the bottom. Well, then that's a business that we want to grow, that we want to scale. So, for me, sales is handled before they even get on the call with us, before they even consider coming in the program. We help them get their sort of fiscal practices, their systems in place to really show them how to generate a good PNL, how to read a good PNL, and how to use that to make decisions. We then show them how to forecast and budget, which a lot of the people that I work with. So most of the people I work with are between, let's say, one and $5 million auv, right? So a lot of these are independent operators. It's a lot of mom and pop shops. If there are maltese, they're pretty much ten units or less.

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Chip Klose [00:15:13]:

Some of them are like four locations of the same concept, or five locations, three different concepts. That's sort of where we end up working with best. There are people that know how to do what they do well. Just as they've started growing and scaling, they're losing the profitability. And so we show them how to forecast, how to budget, how to generate really consistent, predictable returns. Then once we do that, the other piece to that is marketing. How to market with really great intentionality. For me, there's only three things you have to focus on when you market a restaurant.

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Chip Klose [00:15:48]:

Doesn't matter what you've heard, doesn't matter what anyone else tells you. It's only three things you need to do. You got to figure out a way to get people in the front door, right? How to get new people. That's customer acquisition, how to get people back. That's customer retention. And then what I call is evangelism, right? Which is word of mouth. If we agree that word of mouth is one of our most powerful tools, then it blows my mind that more of us that we don't have a plan for how to actually generate word of mouth. And there are specific things we do in each of those areas.

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Chip Klose [00:16:16]:

So we help people put together what I lovingly joke about. And I say it's a three page marketing plan. What are you specifically doing to accomplish a specific goal? Right. I want to get new people in the front door. What are you doing to get new people to walk in the front door? And then we measure it and then we analyze those results. Did our efforts work or did it not work? If it worked, we doubled down, we do more of it. If it didn't work, we scrap it. We figure out something else.

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Chip Klose [00:16:39]:

If you do those things right, if you really get your books in order, really understand how to project and budget, so at whatever revenue level you can be profitable, well, then we just turn the heat up on it and just try to get more people in the front door because we know how to be profitable at month. So it's the same thing at revenue you do, the more your fixed cost lower as a percentage against sales, which then will magnify your profitability. So we work with a lot of independent operators to show them what the big groups and the big chains already do so well. We give them some version of the same system that the groups use.

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Angelo Esposito [00:17:19]:

That makes sense. Yeah. And I love the idea behind, like, show me the actions you're doing and how they link to that KPI, because it's funny, I was just planning like a couple of weeks ago, my 2024 calendar, and it's something I've only started doing like the last two years. And I do it for work really well, but I didn't do it for my life very well. And so what I started doing is like, okay, wait, what are my goals for the actual year and how many things on my calendar actually touched some of those goals? And it's so funny how sometimes you have that disconnect, like, oh, this year I'll take a simple one. I want to travel at least three times. It's like, is there anything on my calendar that's blocked off for traveling? If not, how is that going to happen? Right? It's like such an obvious but silly things. And I see that with restaurants where one of the things I always find crazy.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:04]:

Now I'm used to it. But when we first started, WISK is how many restaurants don't even have a good PNL or a PLNL at all, right. When you deal with your restaurant clients, is that pretty common, or do they have some version at 1 million of a basic PNL?

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Chip Klose [00:18:19]:

Yeah. So for the most part, we've got people who are, we've got really smart, savvy restaurant owners. Right. There's no one in our group that's brand new. And we sort of check for that. So it's hard to be doing a million or $2 million in revenue and.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:37]:

Not, yeah, you must have a bookkeeper and some type of accountant doing exactly like.

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Chip Klose [00:18:41]:

I just don't think people are, I mean, in some instances, but for the most part, you've got some assistance there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:46]:

That makes sense.

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Chip Klose [00:18:47]:

What I find is that they utilize the PNL to just show them how they did. Like, okay, let's see how we did. And for me, I want them to be building basically P ls every week or something that will sort of generate for them. Part of that is how we measure how we track revenue goals every day and how we track our either through a declining budget or whatever that we know by the 20th about how well we're going to land on the end of the month. By the 25th, we know within, I'll say a couple of $1,000, 1000 or two where we're going to end revenue wise. And we can pretty much predict what's going to be on that PNL. I want people to be proactive because again, it's what all the big chains do. It's what all the big restaurant groups do.

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Chip Klose [00:19:35]:

They learn to manage in real time. So they use that PNL really as a tool for the next period or for the next year to show, well, this is how we did. That's going to help determine how we forecast for the next period, whether it's next month or the month we just passed next year. Right. That's a better way to use the PNL rather than like, let's see if we made money. I don't know, man. You should know if you're going to make money by the 15th, the 20th, the 25th, barring some natural disaster, you should have a pretty good sense of it. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:20:10]:

And then that makes total sense. And it's funny because when you go into a restaurant, and obviously we'll definitely want to plug people to your website, to the P three group, to the restaurant strategy podcast, because I'm sure there's a wealth of knowledge there. But maybe just at a high level, when you start dealing with a restaurant, you look at their PNL, right? In my mind, prime cost comes to mind, right. And labor and cog. So let's just dive maybe high level in each. Obviously, it depends on the actual restaurant and the actual tactics, right? But at a very high level, if someone's labor cost is higher than it should be, what are some high level recommendations you can maybe give them?

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Chip Klose [00:20:52]:

You're exactly right. Prime cost, right. Cogs plus labor, those are our controllables. And in business, we say we got to control the controllables. So most of what I mean, there's a reason I talked about the three moving targets, right? Revenue, cogs, labor, those are the things that we can really influence. We can influence how much revenue we make, whether we're getting more people in the front door, generating more per guest. Average driving business. Exactly.

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Chip Klose [00:21:20]:

There's a lot we can do, actually, to affect that number. Right. Same with cogs and labor. I had Kevin Bame on the show, on the restaurant strategy podcast a couple months back, and it's probably the best interview I've ever done. It had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with him because he was an open book. He was so incredibly transparent, and he also fortified. Something that I firmly believe is that I talk a lot about my buckets.

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Chip Klose [00:21:48]:

Right. Everything you spend money on over the course of the month goes into one of three buckets if you run a restaurant. Cogs, labor, or what I lovingly call everything else. So rent, insurance, utilities, your merchant fees, all of that is everything else. Cogs and labor are the majority of what we spend money on. Right. High level, it's got to be at 55, max, 60 for prime cost. So cogs plus labor can't be any higher than 60.

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Chip Klose [00:22:15]:

If it's higher than 60, it's very difficult to make money. So what Kevin Bain was talking about on the show, and I had said this, and he's like, you're absolutely right. He's like, here's a really great illustration of this. He knows at his restaurant Boca in Chicago, right? Very well known Michelin star, he knows that they can't get their labor really below 38. He's like, given the climate, given the level of prep required, the kind of people that we need on hand every single night to execute the kind of restaurant we want to do, we can't get it below 38. But I believe that prime has to be at 60, which then dictates where my cost of goods has to be at. It has to be at 22. Has to be.

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Chip Klose [00:22:57]:

And that then helps shape the way we put together a menu or the way we build our beverage program, our wine program, our cocktail program. He's like, it's all so you have to work in reverse order. Like you said, systems and goals is what I talk about a lot. You got to set a goal, and then a system is just a repeatable set of actions. I'm going to do the following things to achieve the following goal. I want to travel three times next year. Well, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to figure out where I'd like to go. I'm going to research flights and hotels and see what's the most affordable way for me to get there.

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Chip Klose [00:23:29]:

And let me find out where my three trips should be for me to stay on budget if I want to achieve these right. It's the same thing with cogs. Cogs can't be any more than 60. Your labor and your cogs. I'm sorry, prime can't be more than 60. Cogs and labor. There's some combination of those numbers that will get you to that high level. That's the first thing we do with everybody in the program is we look at the PNL and we see where their buckets are and where their buckets should be.

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Chip Klose [00:23:58]:

That shows us our opportunities. Right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:59]:

That makes Sense.

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Chip Klose [00:24:00]:

What are we going to do to get this place in line? Because I work with people who were at 65, 75%. Right. And so they're doing everything right. They're doing $2 million. People love their food, but they're just not doing it profitably. So, okay, let's look and see where the problem spots are. That becomes our opportunities.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:17]:

That makes Sense. And I know when it comes to the coaching, and correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I saw, I believe you start off with maybe a 30 minutes kind of discovery strategy call. And then from there, I think there's also a 90 day money back or kind of promise. And I hope I'm not misquoting pretty much.

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Chip Klose [00:24:35]:

We get on the phone with everybody who inquires about the program. Right. Because we bring in, last year we brought in almost 100 people into the program. So it's ten to 15 people every single month.

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Angelo Esposito [00:24:46]:

Right.

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Chip Klose [00:24:47]:

And so there are plenty of people we have calls with that just aren't right for it. Either they're not ready, they're not at the revenue level, they don't meet that revenue threshold, or they haven't been open long enough, or some of the things they're struggling with are not things that we can really help. And that happens, too. So that initial call is for us both to get to know each other, for us to learn what sort of their struggles are and where they're at, and then for them to learn more about the program because it's totally feasible if they say, yeah, that's not going to work for me, I don't want to be in a group setting. Yeah, I'm a private person or no, I couldn't commit the 2 hours every week or those are my busiest times, and that's how it goes. But the 30 minutes for us to get to know each other ends up being part discovery call, part coaching call. Because for everybody that doesn't join the program, we basically give them action items. Right before this, I had a call just like this where she wasn't quite ready for the program.

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Chip Klose [00:25:41]:

I said, okay, here are your action items. Do the following things, and I want you to call me in a month. You're not bugging me. Just call me. You have my cell phone number now, right? Awesome. So the ball is in her court, and I told her, I said, these are the first four things I would do with you if we were to work together. If we're going to work together, I can help do that pretty seamlessly, but there's nothing to say that you're not capable of doing it yourself. So go.

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Chip Klose [00:26:05]:

You're not ready. You're not ready for the investment, and that's fine. And so that's sort of the beginning. We always have that same 30 minutes phone call where we get to know each other. And then when the people come in the program, then there's a series of onboarding things that we do to get them ready for it. But really they're just sort of like thrown into the pool and they just start swimming. And within a week or so, they're pretty well acclimated to the water. That's awesome.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:30]:

And then just to paint the picture, because we have quite a lot of restaurant listeners and some might definitely benefit from this type of coaching. So the coaching program, 30 minutes call, see if they're a good fit, see if they could. This makes sense. If it does, they sign up and then what does that look like? I know you briefly mentioned two hour commitment. I'd love to know what it high level looks like so our listeners can get a sense.

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Chip Klose [00:26:52]:

Yeah, no, I appreciate you talking about it. I mean, this is something I'm obviously really passionate about because this is how I spend the majority of my time every week. But, yeah, new members will come in and commit themselves to six months in the program. We're convinced that over the course of those six months, if people have the problem that we solve, we can solve it in that time. Right. Got it. This goes back to one of the first things we talked about. Right.

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Chip Klose [00:27:15]:

With restaurants. What's the common thread? I think we have to be really clear on figuring out who has problems that we can solve. And I feel like I'm uniquely qualified to solve this problem, this profitability problem. So it's a six month commitment. The heart of the program are really the two hour group coaching calls. It's 2 hours every single week for those six months. The structure that I bring to it are through a series of hot seats, which basically is like specific time where we focus just on an individual member. Where we go through the PNL, where we walk them through forecasting and budgeting, and we help them set up forecasts and budgets for their restaurant.

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Chip Klose [00:27:53]:

And then where we help them put together the marketing plan. Right. This three page marketing plan that we do. And then the rest of the time is spent with open member agenda. So I always like to say that the majority of the program is member led. You tell me what we're supposed to be talking about. So, people, we have a list, right? A sheet that everybody accesses. Put your name and your question, your name and your topic, and say, I want to talk about my Facebook ads.

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Chip Klose [00:28:15]:

I want us to critique my website. I want to look at my payroll from last week. I want to look at my menu. Can we engineer this? Can I look at my Pmix? What changes should I make? Whatever people want to talk about, we'll talk about. And the idea is that it's really focused on profitability. So people have been around for a while doing a fair amount of revenue. People love the product. They just can't do it profitably.

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Chip Klose [00:28:36]:

That's what we can fix. I believe everybody works way too hard to not make money doing this thing. So we've built a program to help fix that. So it's the six month, 2 hours every week. I also do office hours. So I open up a bunch of 4 hours of my schedule every week for a bunch of 20 minutes private coaching sessions. Nice. Which ends up being a cool way to sort of fortify the weekly calls.

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Chip Klose [00:28:59]:

And then I have an online course that everyone gets as well, which ends up being a pretty incredible resource, not just for them, but for their chefs, their managers, their team at large. We always joke around. We say we're the anti netflix. We give you a login and a password, and we want you to give it to everybody. We really don't care. It's free information. It's a resource that we want you to use.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:19]:

Wow, that's awesome. Well said. And for people to access this course or learn more, where's the best place to go?

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Chip Klose [00:29:25]:

The best place is always just to go to the website. It's restaurantstrategypodcast.com that you'll see the full ecosystem. You can learn more about the coaching program, the mastermind. You can sign up for a call with us. You can go check out episodes of the podcast. You can learn quite a bit. You can get some of our free resources on there. Just sign up.

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Chip Klose [00:29:46]:

We send them to you. So it's sort of the center of our universe.

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Angelo Esposito [00:29:51]:

I love it. Cool. And then right before we jump into a bit of the podcast stuff and restaurant strategy podcast, I should say, I wanted to ask any, and I'm sure there's a lot, but any success stories from your coaching that particularly stand out to you that maybe you want to just share?

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Chip Klose [00:30:05]:

There are so many. That's the coolest part about what I do, is I always joke around and I say, and it's not joking, it's serious, is that all the cool things I've done with my career, all like the big names, the important restaurants I've opened, all of that, all of it pales in comparison to the work I do now, because people say, oh, what restaurants do you work with? I said, no restaurants that you would have ever heard of, because they're all around the country, big cities, small markets, everything in between. But they're a bunch of just, like, neighborhood restaurants, and we help them be more profitable. The one that comes to mind. It's really funny. I always talk about one of the big clients that we do have in New York City. There's a beer bar downtown down in the lower east side, and the owner, Doug, had come to us, and just, I make tons of money during the summer, and I just don't know how to make money any other time. And I feel like in first quarter, I lose all my profits that I made the rest of the year.

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Chip Klose [00:31:01]:

I feel like I break even or maybe a couple of points profit every single year, and I just don't know how to do it. And he had huge swings in his revenue, as you can imagine.

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Angelo Esposito [00:31:09]:

During patio season, I guess.

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Chip Klose [00:31:11]:

Yeah, patio season, he would do, like, $700,000 a month in revenue. But then in first quarter, January, February, March, there aren't a lot of people sipping beer out on a patio, right? So it would swing all the way down to, like, $200,000. And he says, I have these huge swings. So I spend all this on advertising just to get people to come in the front door during first quarter. But then it cuts into my profitability. I just don't know how to do it, et cetera, et cetera. I said, I will show you how to do it. It won't be easy.

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Chip Klose [00:31:44]:

You're going to have to have hard conversations. You're going to make difficult decisions. But there's something simple about what I show. And he was like, I mean, he just sat here, arms crossed, just sort of grumbling for six weeks. It's not going to work. I just don't understand. This is BS. And he came back and he said, so we do this when we show people how to forecast and budget and how to put all that into practice, and then they have to come back and show us what happened, right? He says, well, you guys know that I was, let's generously call it skeptical.

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Chip Klose [00:32:16]:

I was skeptical about whether this stuff would work. He's like, and I'm here to tell you, do whatever this guy says. Like, whatever he says. And then he put all his numbers up and he showed us. He showed us January was at a 15% loss, right? So they lost, like, I don't know, $30,000 or something, $35,000. And then February, March, he was plus 16% on both of those.

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Angelo Esposito [00:32:39]:

Wow.

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Chip Klose [00:32:39]:

And he said it's a 25 26%, 30% swing in profitability because I did what he showed us to do. And here's the best part. Now, in my lowest months, when I'm making 200 or $225,000 a month, I know how to make 15 or 20%. And I know this same system is going to help me the rest of the year, make 25, 35%. Now, he's a beer bar. It's some food, but it's mainly a bar, right. Mainly beverage, which has a much better profit margin, as we know. Right.

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Chip Klose [00:33:14]:

But the idea was still the same is that he would lose all his profits. So he was never as profitable. I want to say he was at like seven or 8% the rest of the year, never at 20%. And we always swear by 20%. So he was like seven or 8% and then minus ten to 20% on three or four months a year. And it would literally wipe out so much of the profit of the year. And he says, now I know how to make money every month of the year, every period, and in the summer, I know how to crush it. And he's like, this literally is going to change my life, change my life, my family's life.

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Angelo Esposito [00:33:50]:

That's amazing.

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Chip Klose [00:33:50]:

We have that story happens every week, every other week, when people literally implement the stuff that we show them how to do. It's so cool to see.

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Angelo Esposito [00:34:00]:

Yeah, I can attest to that. On the WISD side, that's my favorite thing as well, is when customers come back with some success story, whether there'll be different topics, whether it's someone that was, like, crazy wine seller and it was 20 hours of inventory down to, like four or 5 hours, or sometimes it's cost of goods going down or ordering. It's such a gratifying feeling for me. That's my favorite thing, is when a client comes back and talks about how your thing actually helped them in real life, it's super.

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Chip Klose [00:34:31]:

And when you help someone get their cogs from 34 to 29, right, that's five points. But that's tens of thousands of dollars that literally just drop directly to the bottom line and impacts the partners, the investors, the families of those people. It goes straight to making a more profitable business. More profitable business can grow. They can create other locations which provide other jobs, feed other people, help support other investors, and it just keeps going. We can make it really profitable. So five points. When you've got a program that can help them shave 20 hours and five points, which I can attest to.

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Chip Klose [00:35:11]:

Right. That's the power of technology, can do that kind of stuff. It's huge. Then has real life implications.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:18]:

Yeah, no, I agree. And it's funny, because pre Covid, I would say I found generally, and I'd love to hear your opinion here, but I found restaurant mentality, generally seeking was very revenue focused. So almost like promoter, if you think of nightclub, okay, this promoter will bring me money and less cost focus. Like, oh, I can save tens of thousands of dollars if I buy from this supplier. But the one, because it's mainly negative, but the one slight positive that I think came from COVID from our point of view, was just that restaurants became a lot more cost conscious and tools like a WISK or, like your coaching program, where people were like, they got it. Now, it was like, less selling. They got it. So just like, okay, I know the problem now I'm looking for a solution.

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Chip Klose [00:36:04]:

This is that same thing I was saying, right, that three step process. Sales, profit, growth. We got to find a product that people are willing to pay for. We've got to be able to do it profitably. If we can do that, then we can grow it. We grow it. If it's replicable, it's therefore scalable. And coming up with a system.

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Chip Klose [00:36:23]:

You said it yourself, right? With WISK. Right? Oh, this guy's been doing ordering for two years. He takes vacation. Somebody's got to plug in. How do they do it? That's a system that is replicable. So the goal is to hit 28% cogs. The system is the app you use, the interface, the sop that you put into practice to achieve that. And without those things, we can't get those consistent, predictable results.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:49]:

Yeah, I always joke around that. It's funny because restaurants get into the business, and this is what actually got me into the idea of starting with. But when we first started, it was funny, I think back, and it was restaurants. I love restaurant owners as entrepreneurs like their passion for hospitality, for the guest experience, maybe the culinary side, and it'll vary. Maybe some people more architecture design, some people more on the beverage side, but generally there's this kind of consensus of a love for hospitality and guest experience. But then they open a restaurant and it's like they're on excel and it's like recipe, and there's just so much boring, tedious, but, and this is the big but necessary work that I don't think they anticipated. And it's like, man, I got to do inventory and figure out my ordering and my budgets and my forecast, and there's so much of that work. And part of, I think, what you do, and even what we do is how do we give them some time back so they can actually focus on the main reason they open this thing 100%.

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Chip Klose [00:37:49]:

It's what I say all the time. I'm going to show you to do this and it's going to feel like a lot more. It's going to feel like I'm telling you to do more stuff, which is I sort of fundamentally reject because there are other coaches out there, consultants, that just want to overhaul everything you do. And I sort of come at it. I'm like, I'm going to assume you know what you're doing, that you're pretty good at what you're doing, and you're coming to me because there's a couple of things that you really need help with. So I'm going to plug those holes. When I show people how to forecast and budget, when you know what you're doing, you can do that in a half an hour a month. Half an hour a month.

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Chip Klose [00:38:22]:

And it's going to save you a lot of stress of poring over your bank accounts to say, oh, how are we going to make payroll? You already know what you need to make and what you need to schedule to make sure you can absolutely hit payroll. So it's going to save you so much. Just a really good, dedicated 30 minutes sort of fixes a lot.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:41]:

Yeah, that's huge. I think that's one of the big things in the restaurant. World is even before getting to the nitty gritty is just getting visibility. Like, how many owners lose sleep just being like, am I going to make pay? Like, just the not knowing. Right. Just the lack of information and not knowing is probably half the battle. And then obviously, once you know it, how do you improve it and how do you make it better? But I think that's the biggest, which.

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Chip Klose [00:39:08]:

Goes back to the PNL. Right, right. P L is a diagnostic tool, not, let's see what happens. How do we do?

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:16]:

Yeah, it's funny when you say that. I picture the reveal of prices right behind the curtains, and it's just like, PNL.

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Chip Klose [00:39:24]:

Or, you know what I think of? I think of family feud.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:27]:

Is it up there?

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Chip Klose [00:39:30]:

Didn't make money.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:31]:

Yeah, that's funny. And so switching gears to just jump into the podcast, the restaurant strategy podcast, I'd love to know. Like I said, I think 300 plus episodes in, which is huge. Someone was telling me the other day, I think once you hit 20 episodes, you're in the top. Like, I don't know, one or 5% or something crazy, which was funny. So you're definitely up there. But what motivated you to start the restaurant strategy podcast? What was the idea behind it?

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Chip Klose [00:39:55]:

Yeah, so I was doing a lot of consulting at the time, and I found I was having the same conversations over and over and over again. And ultimately, I was rejecting potential clients because they just didn't believe what I believe. And we have to agree on some foundational pieces to it, and they just didn't. And perfect example, they would sit there and say, hey, we want you to run Facebook ads. I'm like, great. I totally agree. You should be running Facebook ads. Let's talk about some of this other stuff.

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Chip Klose [00:40:25]:

First. Talk to me about who your audience is. Who do you think is the prime avatar, and what problem are you solving and who are you competing with in this neighborhood? And what are your key differentiators? And they were, no, no, you don't have to worry about all. Just run Facebook ads. Yeah, except I have to pick a headline. I have to pick creative. I got to write copy for it. I have to pick an audience, and basically I've got to tell them what they want to hear.

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Chip Klose [00:40:54]:

So back to what I was saying, and I just felt like what they looked, what they were really looking for was just the silver bullet. Like, we're just not busy. Go do this thing to make us busy. And it just doesn't work that way. There was so much. It's the one example I can give that sort of was, I don't know, that's everything, all the conversations I was having with people. And so I just said, you know what? I'm going to scratch my own itch. I'm going to have this conversation because I was dealing with a lot of owners and operators who were working at a very high level, doing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of monthly revenue.

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Chip Klose [00:41:31]:

And I was like, well, if these restaurant owners in this big market don't know this stuff or aren't thinking about this stuff, then I got to imagine there are other restaurants out there. And so I just said, I'm going to turn on the microphone once a week for 2030 minutes. Because in the beginning it just started as a monologue. And I said, I'm just going to just sort of like talk about this and talk about this and talk about this, and hopefully it will help people. And I had no idea where it was going to lead. Now it's sort of how we, it's the free content we put out every week. So it's a quote unquote content strategy if you think of it from a marketing perspective. That's how we build awareness for what we do.

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Chip Klose [00:42:14]:

That's how we build trust with people who may need more help than just a free resource of a podcast. And it's taken on a life of its own. Now, we do two episodes every single week. We do an interview on Mondays, we do monologue on Thursdays, and it's pretty crazy to see how it's grown there.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:31]:

That's huge. Yeah, two episodes a week, that's not easy. And to be that consistent to hit over 300 episodes is something special. And again, quick plug because we love to help restauranteurs, whether it's through WISK, through the podcast, through other people's podcasts. So for people who want to listen to the podcast, it's restaurantstrategypodcast.com.

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Chip Klose [00:42:50]:

That's right. Perfect.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:51]:

Cool. Love it. Again, switching gears now. I wanted to quickly just touch base because I didn't have time to look into it, but I know you wrote a book called the restaurant marketing Mindset, so I'd love to just hear. I got to know the story behind that. Not everybody writes books. So a, what made you write the book and can you tell us a bit about it?

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Chip Klose [00:43:09]:

So I can't dictate how people learn. Right. This is something that I got from my friend Sean Walshf, who's the head know restaurant influencers. He has his podcast Cali Barbecue media.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:24]:

Yeah, he's awesome.

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Chip Klose [00:43:25]:

Sean's a big deal and a really generous person and a really smart person. And he said, you got to be everywhere because, you don't know, maybe somebody likes to read a book, that's the best way they can get their information. Or maybe they do listen to a podcast, or maybe they just watch TikTok or Instagram, or maybe they just need free ebooks because they just need bite size. So you sort of have to be everywhere, and that's where the book came from. You could probably get a lot of the content on the podcast over the course of the last five years, but some people just need it in book format. I certainly learn really well that way. So I wrote a book. It's four sections.

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Chip Klose [00:44:04]:

It's 24 chapters total. And it just sort of takes you from a to z. Like if you're going to launch a restaurant, or if you're going to sort of relaunch a restaurant, rethink your restaurant. It's what are the things you have to think about? And it starts with this exercise of the ABCDs of marketing, which is about. ABCD stands for audience, brand, competition and differentiation. And it's a way of thinking about what you do and why it needs to exist. Right. Audience is your people.

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Chip Klose [00:44:35]:

Specifically, who has a problem? Who has a problem that you can solve? Brand, your brand, your company, your restaurant is the solution to someone's problem. When we look at our competitors, rather than looking around at the other restaurants like us, we say, who's trying to solve the same problem? We are. That's how we define competitors. And then once you've got competitors, you're in a category, or probably in a couple of categories. Then it comes to differentiation. You're in a group of other restaurants. How do you separate yourself from those restaurants? Because in business, that's what we have to do. We have to convince people to come to our restaurant as opposed to somewhere else.

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Chip Klose [00:45:12]:

Right? Textbook definition for this is value proposition, right? What makes someone choose one thing over another? Ultimately, there are a bunch of different reasons why someone might choose one over another, but we have to supply them with that. If we don't, they're just going to get it from wherever they're going to get it, or they're going to decide because someone else tells them why they should go to one place. So that's where the book starts. And it's like this foundational piece of like, who has a problem that you can solve? How do you solve it? Who else is trying to solve it? And how do you separate yourself from the others? It's not like you got to beat the others. You just have to beat the others one night a week.

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Angelo Esposito [00:45:49]:

Right.

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Chip Klose [00:45:50]:

They can go to my restaurant tonight, your restaurant tomorrow, another guy's restaurant another night. But we definitely need to be in the mix. So why should they come here on a Wednesday? Well, for the following reasons.

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Angelo Esposito [00:46:01]:

That makes sense. I love that.

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Chip Klose [00:46:02]:

And then we take them all through, and then we take them through from there and really talk about internal marketing, which is, for me, like four walls marketing. Yes. How you talk to your employees, how your employees are talking to your people, but also how you're using your four walls. And then external, really, how are we setting goals, and how are we using the tools to achieve specific goals? And then finally, how we get organized and how we give structure to it. And that's sort of how the book is laid out. It's 200 pages, mercifully short, and it's meant to be actionable. There are assignments at the end of each chapter. There's a free workbook that goes along with it that when you're reading it, you can go download it.

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Chip Klose [00:46:40]:

So you can literally work through the book as you go. So you've got a really good workbook at the end. You've got a little bit of a bible for your restaurant and how you might market your restaurant at the end of it. So tried to keep it really focused. It's the coach in me. I can't help it.

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Angelo Esposito [00:46:53]:

That's awesome.

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Chip Klose [00:46:53]:

But make it practical.

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Angelo Esposito [00:46:55]:

That's awesome. For those listening that want to check it out. The restaurant marketing mindset, that's the name of the book, and I'm also a big fan of books as well. It's funny. I don't know if it's just is like, I'm a nerd, but I never really loved reading fiction that much. But I always loved just reading books. I could just learn from where I was, like, I want to learn this. Let me buy a book.

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Angelo Esposito [00:47:12]:

I want to learn this. And so it sounds like this will be a great book for restaurants that consume it that way. And speaking of, by the way, yeah, we actually had Sean Walshef on the show, and I can back you up when you say, yeah, he's a great guy, super nice, super generous. A lot of experience, too, which is awesome. And one thing that he shared with me that kind of helped in me pursuing this podcast, amongst other things, was just the idea of just do I like his line where he says, be the show, not the commercial? That one stuck with, like, yeah, I just wanted to plug Sean real quick because he's been a great resource and I think a great person in the.

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Chip Klose [00:47:48]:

Yeah, he's. If anybody listening to here doesn't know of Sean, then I'm glad that we can introduce you to Sean. The restaurant influencers podcast is outstanding. What he's doing out in San Diego, the barbecue, I've been out to his restaurant. It's phenomenal. There's a lot of great stuff he's up to, and I just think he's a really generous guy. He'll tell you everything he knows, and if it can help, I love that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:48:16]:

Cool. And so I guess maybe just to wrap up any kind of trends that you are seeing in the restaurant industry that maybe you want to share. I know things are evolving fast, but anything you want to maybe share that you've seen in working with so many.

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Chip Klose [00:48:33]:

Restauranteurs, here's the thing that I see coming, and I think people are crazy if they don't see this coming. I think there's a new type of dining that's going to emerge over the next, let's say, two to three years. And I think bar taco is doing this really well. It's something between, it's a new style of full service restaurant that I think the technology solutions that we now have at our disposal are so powerful that I think there's a way of utilizing them to create a more efficient, more profitable restaurant. And what I really care about is actually make a more hospitable restaurant. Specifically, I think if you know what bar tacos done where they've basically gotten rid of waiters and replaced.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:24]:

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I was there yesterday, so it's just so funny you mentioned it. I went for dinner to bar Taco yesterday, and it was funny. I was just chatting with the manager there about what they're using and their beverage solution, but you nailed it because it was my first time there. And that's what I was thinking, too. They really efficient. If you can do an FSR because you can sell liquor, that helps with profitability. But anyways, go on.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:49]:

Yeah, go on.

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Chip Klose [00:49:50]:

So what they've done is basically, they've gotten rid of waiters. Here's where I think we have to rethink the role of the waiter. And I was a waiter for many years. It helped provide a certain lifestyle that I'm grateful for. I just don't think we need them anymore in the way that we've had them. And here's my caveat to that. Right. Waiter service.

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Chip Klose [00:50:10]:

The restaurant, as we now know, them was basically invented 250 years ago. Restaurants have been around for thousands of years, and they've only existed the way that we really think of them in the last 250 years. And I promise you in Paris, France, 1783, that if they had had technology, they would have utilized it. What happened is that the chef's in the kitchen, the guests are in the dining room, and they needed an intermediary between the two. All they're doing is providing communication between the guest and the kitchen. What would you like? Yes. Yes. Okay, I'll go let them know what to make, and then when they make it, they bring it back.

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Chip Klose [00:50:50]:

But now we all have phones, we all have pocket computers that allow us to very easily, very efficiently, very effectively communicate to the kitchen. And when you think about it, when you think of the role of the waiter, most of their job is very inefficient. Right. Half their night is spent either asking people what they want and copying it down, right. And then regurgitating that into a computer. So we're asking them to do what we now have trained computers to do very efficiently. Right. So if we can just remove that job from the waiter, we then don't need as many of them, which means any restaurant has, let's say, ten waiters on staff.

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Chip Klose [00:51:33]:

Three great ones, four okay ones, three horrible ones. All we're doing is losing the people at the bottom and bringing everybody up. People at the bottom don't really want to be there anyway. So what happens is that we free them of this very menial task and we invite them to be in their station because they're not taking orders, they're not putting orders in. They can be on the floor greeting more guests, guiding through the menu, making recommendations, being there to anticipate their needs. Get the second beverage, the third beverage, get the side dish, get desserts, get them cleared and reset to get more guests off the waitlist quicker. I just think there's an opportunity to do it better, more efficiently than we've ever done it before, really. There's a way of integrating technology to actually achieve more of what we want.

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Chip Klose [00:52:20]:

Now, not for every restaurant, certainly, there are certain restaurants that we pay for that personalized attention, but I don't need sassy Sally at the diner to be sassy. It's like, no, thanks, you can just leave it over there. I'll just order myself. I'm going to come in and get an omelet with toast and an orange juice and coffee. I can do that on my own just fine.

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Angelo Esposito [00:52:40]:

Right.

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Chip Klose [00:52:40]:

I don't need you to write that down, right? I just don't. I think that's coming, and I think it's going to come in a very real way. And I think five years from now, we're going to laugh at the fact that I had to say this on a podcast because it's going to be par for the course. I think 50% of the restaurants in America will turn into this, and I think we'll be better for it. I think restaurants will be more successful. We'll have better, happier people, we'll have better paid employees, and I think it'll be better for the industry all the way around. Love that.

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Angelo Esposito [00:53:10]:

No, really well said. And just so funny, the example you mentioned, I was there yesterday, and to top it off, my brother, I'm in Miami. I'm based in Miami. So I was at their Aventura location, and my brother just arrived yesterday visiting, and picked him up, and we went basically there in the evening, and his first remark was like, oh, the service here is really good. I'm happy we came here. It gave me a good start to my vacation, and it was just everything you mentioned. The waiters had more time to actually kind of check in and make sure you're having a good time and recommend a drink and less time doing data entry.

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Chip Klose [00:53:43]:

And now those waiters, right, are actually, I think they're called, like, floor captains or floor ambassadors or something like that. They're all salary. They're all salary. The tips go to the runners, the busers, the host, and the bartenders are then in their own tip pool. They do not pull the tips. They basically eat what they kill, just like a sort of a quote unquote regular bartender. But those two, three, four captains on the floor are salaried positions. And then what they've done is basically, those are the managers.

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Chip Klose [00:54:15]:

They now don't need upper management, so they're not as heavy at the top. When they integrated this two years ago, they cut labor by five points. They added 5% to revenue. The proof is in the pudding. And they've rolled it out over all 14 of their locations.

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Angelo Esposito [00:54:30]:

Wow.

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Chip Klose [00:54:32]:

The data is hard data. Anthony Valetta came on to the restaurant strategy podcast. He's phenomenal. If you haven't had him on yet, he's worthwhile to talk about this. But, yeah, I would love that. It's so obvious where we're going.

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Angelo Esposito [00:54:46]:

I love that. And last but not least, just to wrap it up, what's next for Chip Klose? Any upcoming projects or initiatives you're excited about, you want to share?

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Chip Klose [00:54:56]:

So the next book is in the works. I'm excited about that. That won't be for a while, though. It's just the podcast. Week after week after week, it's the mastermind that just continues growing. We're bringing on more people into the program, bringing on more coaches to help me with the program, which is really cool, and then traveling, doing some speaking. So in March, I'll be in New York at the International Food Service show. Nice.

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Chip Klose [00:55:21]:

I take the stage there. I'm going to be at bar and Restaurant Expo in the middle of March out in Las Vegas. If anybody's going to be out there, you can come find me there. I love going to that show. Those are sort of the next big things on my calendar.

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Angelo Esposito [00:55:34]:

That's awesome. Well, once again, Chip, thank you for being here today on the Wisking It All podcast. Chip Klose, host of the restaurant Strategy podcast with over two decades of restaurant experience. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us.

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Chip Klose [00:55:48]:

I appreciate you having me take care.

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Angelo Esposito [00:55:50]:

Feel free to check out WISK.ai for more resources and schedule a demo with one of our product specialists to see if it's a fit for.

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