Scot Turner [00:00:00]:

We use a three stage process. We listen, we analyse, and we observe. So we go in first. And before we do anything, we speak to the stakeholders. Now, the stakeholders are owners, leadership group, general managers, f and B guides, chefs. More importantly, we speak to the breakfast waiter, we speak to the bar guy, and we get all this wealth of experience and knowledge and opinions in the business that can really fuel what we do moving forward.

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Angelo Esposito [00:00:34]:

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 Scot Turner, the founder and managing director of Auden Hospitality. Scot, thanks for joining us.

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Scot Turner [00:01:03]:

Angelo, thanks for having me on the show. I've listened to some great people on this previously, so hopefully I can live up to that today.

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Angelo Esposito [00:01:10]:

Sure you will. I'm sure you will. I mean, with two decades of experience, I know in the f and B space, I'm sure you have a lot of knowledge and wisdom to share. So maybe just to kick things off, can you share? Actually, you know what, before we get into your story, let's just share high level. What is Auden hospitality?

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Scot Turner [00:01:28]:

Yeah, so Auden hospitality is an f and B consultancy, but we're a little bit different because we focus on food and beverage restaurants and bars in hotels. That's where we play our game. We operate independent restaurants because we have a real mindset that restaurateurs on the high street think very different to hoteliers when it comes to food and beverage. So we want to keep one eye in the game when it comes to the high street. So we operate some restaurants in London, which is where we're based, but we work across the world with hotels, getting them to think a little bit differently about how they run food and beverage.

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Angelo Esposito [00:02:04]:

I love that. I love that. Well said. And one thing that always interests me, and I'm sure you've heard this in the other podcast, but it's genuinely just the way I love to start, is I'm always fascinated with how and kind of like why people got into the hospitality space. So going back, you know, 20 plus years, what got you started or what drew you to the industry?

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Scot Turner [00:02:24]:

Do you know? I'd love to tell you a really beautiful story about how it all started, but I'll be perfectly honest, and it was the best pain job in my hometown, which is Leeds in the north of England. When I was 16 years old, and the kid over the road who already had a job doing silver service, waiting in the biggest banqueting hotel, was like, you should come and work with us. So that was the reason why. But the reason why I stayed in the industry was very much because, you know, I just loved the hustle and bustle of working in busy hospitality environments. The hotel where I worked was extremely busy. I worked in banqueting. We had big banqueting halls. You know, I started in kind of September time where it's like big banquet season, lots of events at the time.

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Scot Turner [00:03:08]:

Then it went into Christmas, and I just loved the adrenaline, I loved the chefs shouting, I loved the music, I loved the parties that were going on. And I just, I just. From that moment on, I kind of got stuck with it. And I kind of still love those things about the industry today, that kind of hustle bustle, the vibe, the energy is still the thing that keeps it going.

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Angelo Esposito [00:03:30]:

That's awesome. That's really cool. And I know, I know you've worked it something like across 14 countries and worked with a really kind of prestigious brand. So I love to know, like, how does that influence, you know, your style when it comes to autumn hospitality? Right, having that under your belt?

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Scot Turner [00:03:44]:

Yeah, it's, um, you know, it's really funny. So, yeah, I've worked in 14 countries that ranges from, you know, the UK, obviously, which is where, where I grew up, but we also worked in New York, in the US, the Middle East, Europe as well. And I. I think what it's taught me is to listen. It's really easy when you go into different countries, different cultures to kind of assume everything works the same way as it does back home. But you quickly kind of understand that you need the people on the ground and you need the people who you're going to be working with to really help you understand what the local market is like, because hospitality runs the same way. Ultimately, it's all about making people happy, serving food, serving drinks. But the culture is very different across the board.

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Scot Turner [00:04:33]:

And I already kind of had that training by working in hotels. And, you know, I worked in luxury hotels where we had guests coming from Dubai and Saudi Arabia. We had people coming from China and the US. So we already kind of understood. But it's nothing like when you first go to kind of live in a foreign country and then go and work in a foreign country is very different. And I always tell a story about how we opened a hotel in Montenegro, and it was, it was like a lifestyle hotel. We were doing the restaurants and bars. And we were part of the opening.

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Scot Turner [00:05:09]:

And when it came to opening week, we, you know, as you do all hours in there, you want the team in there with you and you're doing it. We opened the hotel at 12:00 on the Friday at 06:00 the f and B director came to us and he basically went, have a great weekend. I'll see you on Monday. Hope it goes well. And we were like, what's going on? We've just opened, literally 4 hours ago. We just opened. And they have this labour law in Montenegro where you work 40 hours, you don't work over 40 hours. And we didn't realize we hadn't got to understand the market and all the rest.

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Scot Turner [00:05:44]:

So he did his 40 hours, clocked off and went for the weekend. And some of those lessons just teach you some. The hardest learnings are often the best lessons and that was definitely one of them. Yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:05:58]:

Wow. I can't imagine. I can't imagine, like being able to, like, walk away on the opening, you know, just being like, yeah, that's almost impressive that he can do it.

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Scot Turner [00:06:06]:

Exactly.

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Angelo Esposito [00:06:07]:

Yeah, that's crazy. I was gonna ask you, like, I'm sure there's a lot of similarities, like you kind of alluded to. Right. There's kind of the core of hospitality, of just the guest experience of making sure they're happy, period. And then how they're happy probably differs a lot and this and that. So what are some things that maybe come to mind? I know it's probably been a while and you've been to so many countries, but what are some things, when you look back, you could kind of maybe share some anecdotes of, like, man, you know, the way they handle this in Dubai or in China or whatever it may be, do you have any anecdotes to share? I'm always curious to learn about, like some cultural differences.

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Scot Turner [00:06:40]:

Yeah. Do you know when. When I first went to Dubai and I was there for five years, what's really interesting about Dubai is it's a very different workforce to what you find. Definitely in the UK and the US, people are working there for very different reasons. People are often away from family for two, three years at a time because their focus is in how they can send money home to build houses, send the kids to school and things like that. So their motivation is very different. What drives them is very different. And when, you know, I hate the word when people say we're one big family sometimes in hospitality because I think it's just overused, but over there because everyone was away from families.

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Scot Turner [00:07:24]:

You're all kind of expat together. You do feel like you're creating a family away from home, and it's really nice and you become really vested in people's success because of it, or I certainly did. And, you know, silly things like six day weeks out in Dubai. We were really passionate about going with five days a week and really improving conditions. But a lot of these guys don't want to be off because when they're off, they spend money and they don't want to spend money. They want to send it home. So actually, we went in there and was like, guys, everything. We're going to give you five days working weeks, two days off.

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Scot Turner [00:07:59]:

And the guys were just like, we'd rather work. We don't, you know, we get fed at work. We don't spend money. We can send it home. So that, that's like some of the, it's really interesting, isn't it, how that, how that comes around? And I think, you know, the best example of kind of hospitality, I think certainly from what I picked up in Dubai is I used to travel quite a lot when I lived in Dubai. We were working between London, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait at the time. And I spent a lot of time on Emirates airlines. And one thing about Dubai is their message is we have to make it as bigger and better as we can every single time.

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Scot Turner [00:08:37]:

And the way Emirates have that journey from arriving at the airport to kind of getting on the plane and landing in your destination is down to a t. And I think how they make it really easy for people to travel is just a great example of hospitality. You know, whether you were going on with your kids, they'd always make sure you were looked after when you were going there on business. That whole thing around queuing and security and checking desks and things like that, they just made it really seamless. And I always think that's a great example of how people have taken what is a really process driven environment and really looked at how they can make it streamlined. And I use that example a lot when we're working with hotels in particular who love a process like these guys live off red tape and process. And I always use that example of, look at how airports now with, you know, seamless check in bag drops, fast tracks, scanning your phone as you go through boarding pass gates. You know, sometimes.

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Scot Turner [00:09:39]:

I went to Saudi Arabia last week and I didn't show my passport until I went to get on the plane. And I think, you know, when you look at that frictionless journey in a process driven environment and how they make it so easy. I think a lot of hoteliers can, can learn a lot from that environment.

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Angelo Esposito [00:09:54]:

Interesting. That's really cool. That's really cool. And I'm curious, you know, when I think this is, like, my point of view, but I'm curious to get your thoughts when, when I think of, you know, the, the more traditional, you know, old school FNB outlets and hotels, I think of, like, they built it for the guests, you know? But obviously that model has changed, right? It's like you're not really relying on the guests. It's like people go to the FND outlets that are not staying there. I'd love to know, like, how do you think about that and how has that kind of evolved, you know, being in the hotel industry over 20 years? I'm sure you've seen that evolution. And what does that look like today?

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Scot Turner [00:10:28]:

Yeah. So I left hotels in 2015. I opened the intercontinental in London, and I was hotel manager. I was number two. And I just realized that I loved doing restaurants and bars. I didn't want to be a hotel GM. I moved, I left hotels, went to go work in independent restaurants. That's when I moved to Dubai.

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Scot Turner [00:10:46]:

At that time, hotels were a destination, you know, and this sounds scary to think with it only being 2015, but, you know, Zoom calls weren't a thing. You know, like, remote working wasn't a thing. So when people had to go meet, they went and met in hotels. That was almost like a statement of, we're doing well to come and have a meeting with us in a hotel because we're going to pay a bit extra for the tea, the coffee and all the rest of it. And you didn't have to worry about tables for working and great Wi fi and all of this stuff. So I think hotels had it all their own way and it was really easy for people to go and use hotels and consume from it. The best chefs were in hotels, if you remember at that time, you know, people like Gordon Ramsay and what have you, they were creating restaurant empires in hotels, right? And then over that time, as the evolution of coffee shops have happened, as the evolution of independent restaurants, funding has become even, it's become easier to get kind of investment to open restaurants. All of a sudden, the high street started to have this boom, and now hotels have challenges.

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Scot Turner [00:11:54]:

The difference with independent restaurants and the high street is these guys can be much more agile. They're opening up much quicker than a hotel would open, so they can be on trend with what's happening in the market, you know, much cheaper to run. There isn't the expectations, potentially, of what you would have in a hotel. So all these little bits make it much more fluid to run an independent operation than it is in a hotel. And I think, you know, and you probably speak to some hoteliers and they'll agree with me in this, but I think some hotels just haven't realized that they've had it all their own way. And it's slow to move on sometimes because of the scale of the f and B operation. It's really hard to put capex into places, to kind of bring it into the. Into the current day.

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Scot Turner [00:12:42]:

And, you know, the way we've always done it in hotels has been restaurants, bars, lounges and meeting rooms. And that's the way we do it. And we don't. We've been trained and ingrained that way, that almost doing something different is scary. Right, people. And it's risk. There's a risk to it. And I think that's ultimately what's holding people back, is people are just a little bit scared to maybe do something a little bit different or that just don't have the funding to do it, or someone just doesn't want to put their neck on the line.

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Scot Turner [00:13:14]:

And it's interesting, we were working with a business called Wondermart, looking at breakfast concept that could roll out in hotels. We were having a joke around, what should the marketing ploy be? And it should be essentially everything that's changed over the last 20 years in the world. IPhones, computers, internethood, and then the breakfast Buffy in a hotel has stayed exactly the same.

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Angelo Esposito [00:13:39]:

So true.

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Scot Turner [00:13:39]:

So there's all this evolution happened. And actually, in hotels, we haven't at all. You know, I was in a top five star hotel, international brand the other week. I posted it on LinkedIn the other day and walked in there and, you know, there was still a pianist in there at 03:00 playing boring classical music to people who really didn't care whether there was a pianist there or not. But because we're hotels, we feel like we have to do it. It's like we have to put a grand piano in the middle of a lounge and we have to play classical music because that's what we are. And I just think it's that evolution that hasn't happened. And, yeah, it's interesting.

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Scot Turner [00:14:15]:

It's funny when you start really thinking about thinking about it, it's amusing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:14:20]:

Yeah, I mean, it's funny because you look at certain industries and I guess it happens in every industry, but you get comfortable until it starts getting disrupted. It could have been, let's say, Airbnb stuff and then maybe FNB stuff and then maybe co working space. So it could be a combination of things. But definitely, you know, there's always, there's always a niche. I'm not saying, like, five star hotels are going to be replaced, but it's. It requires you to stay sharp because, you know, maybe you haven't been touched in a hundred years, and now it's like, damn, okay, like, we're suffering here, we're suffering there. So I think it forces people to kind of step up and think different, which I'm curious to get your thoughts on thing different, because I know, you know, you were very much in that luxury hotel world, and then you went into, like you said, independent restaurants, among other type of locations. But what was that transition like? I'm sure you had probably faced some challenges, right.

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Angelo Esposito [00:15:11]:

It's kind of a little different. I'm sure you took a lot, but I'm curious to know, like, what was that transition like?

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Scot Turner [00:15:16]:

Um, yeah, it was, um. It was. The reason I'm pausing on this is there's. There's two things that stick to mind. First one was when you're in independent restaurants, there's no one coming to help. So when something breaks, a toilet blocks, a handle falls off, you know, someone. Someone drops a drink on the floor. There's, you know, there's no maintenance, there's no housekeeping, there's no security department.

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Scot Turner [00:15:40]:

There's no, there's none of this. You have to kind of fix it yourself, or you have to have a great telephone book of people you can call quickly to help. And I think, you know, that whole piece around ownership is what I really found different. I wouldn't say I struggled with it, but it was a shock sometimes where you're still looking for your phone to kind of go, mister maintenance guy, can you come and help? Mister it guy, can you come and help? So that was the first one. That was kind of different. The second one then was when I first got the p and L for the. We operated a restaurant out there. It was a british pub, and we got the p and L at the end of the month, and it had this really weird section on it, which was fixed costs.

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Scot Turner [00:16:24]:

And in those fixed costs, there was rents, there was business taxes and insurance. And I was like, what are these things doing on the. These things don't belong on a p and L. They sit somewhere else in some bigger, like, that's nothing to do with me. And I remember my boss at the time, who I knew for a long time, so it was like, it was more of a joke than anything else was. And he just looked at me and he was just like, yeah, welcome to the real world. Welcome. Real people have to pay that and it's got to pay rent.

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Scot Turner [00:16:54]:

Genuinely. Yeah, genuinely. It was the first time I'd seen rent on a p and L and those things really stuck out to go, do you know what? I'm making 20% IBFC. But actually, when you take all those things off, we're not doing that great at the bottom. We need to start moving in hotels. We'd have been patting each other on the back at a 20% IBSc and really happy because the rest of it didn't matter. Room size that out. So that was probably the biggest, the biggest difference in there.

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Scot Turner [00:17:23]:

And it's something that I. It's funny, we're doing an f and B report at the minute and we've taken data from hot stats, which is a global benchmarking platform. So we've built it around the first half, 2024 results for the UK and for the US. And what we've looked at is, okay, it comes up there on the results saying GOP. And the GOP, on average, UK and the US is 21.6% for food and beverage in hotels right now, when you put all the associated costs in, so things like marketing, utilities, maintenance, it not even looking at building costs, that 21% ends up at negative 4%. So actually, the outlook right now across the UK and the US, if you look at it like for, like against independence, on average, hotels are running at a loss in food and beverage. And I always encourage hotel is now that we work with to start issuing p and ls that have associated costs, because it really makes your team think differently when they're playing a portion of the overall hotel reserve and not in a silo. Yeah, exactly.

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Scot Turner [00:18:36]:

Yeah. Because they just ignore all of that that goes on and makes sense and if they can see it, they can take ownership on it and then they can look to drive forwards and help really contribute to the overall hotel profitability.

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Angelo Esposito [00:18:49]:

Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. And I'm curious, like, what. So, you know, obviously that transition happened, but what inspired you to start aud in hospitality? Right. Like, you were, had good stuff going on in the luxury world. What made you then say, okay, I want to, you know, consult and help these independent businesses. Yeah.

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Scot Turner [00:19:06]:

So, so I talked about when I got to a certain level in hotels and I pivoted my career because I realized I didn't want to be a hotel GM. The same thing happened before I set up Auden. I was working for a saudi investment business. I'd been there seven years. I was COO. I was responsible for 16 brands, 85 restaurants in New York, London, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And what happened was, and this happened to me before in hotels is, you know, you did well, you did a good job. You got promoted.

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Scot Turner [00:19:40]:

I'd been vp ops and then COO, and I just found myself back in, you know, a beautiful office in the centre of London in Mayfair, just down from the Ritz. I was spending more of my time with the CEO and the chief investment officer, talking about how we grow and exit brands. I was talking to the legal officer about governance, which is always a dry conversation anyway. And I've kind of moved away again from what I truly loved, which was building brands, being on the floor with teams, making a difference to brands, to restaurants, to groups, creating concepts as well. And it just got to that bit where, you know, I went home and I said to my wife, I was. I've been there seven years, you know, really good relationship. And I just feel like I've stopped making an impact and I've stopped doing what I really love. And for the first time ever, I didn't have a job to go to.

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Scot Turner [00:20:33]:

And I just thought, it's the right time to go now before I end up hating the job and falling out with people who I have a lot of respect for. So I left. I left the business all intending to kind of go get another coo job or graduate, you know, a scaling brand to help with that. And for the first time ever, I just thought, you know what? I've built operations for people before. I've built businesses. I've scaled businesses, certainly with the investment company. And maybe you should try and do something for yourself and see if you can do it in your own terms. So it was more of that kind of stubbornness in me to go, can you do this on your own? And I didn't have the funding to set up a restaurant, so consultancy was the natural kind of thing to go into.

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Scot Turner [00:21:24]:

Now, I always knew I wanted to scale the business. That's why I called it Auden. I didn't name it after myself. There's no association to me in the name. Arden actually means oldest friend.

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Angelo Esposito [00:21:34]:

Okay. I was gonna ask where the name came from.

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Scot Turner [00:21:36]:

Okay, yeah, I'll tell you. Yeah. So I'll tell you that story after. But I always knew I wanted to scale it. I always knew I wanted to be a business that wasn't just a flash in the pan and a job offer had come across and I'd take it because it was well paid and I always wanted to stand the test of time and grow a great business. So, you know, as you do, you set off on your own and do things on your own, taking projects, doing everything involved, and, you know, a couple of great clients that came and kept getting repeat business and two and a half years on. It's funny, I was with a new client two weeks ago. We were having a conversation and I was talking to him about Auden and he said to me, oh, so you've been two and a half years now? I said, yeah, yeah, you know, it's going really well.

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Scot Turner [00:22:20]:

And he said, so you're established. And it was kind of a penny drop moment for me to be like, okay, actually for the first time, I've probably realized that we've moved from being freelance consultant, might get a new job to actually being you. Serious? So it was a really nice moment to be there. So. So, yeah, two and a half years on. Yeah, we've got a couple of people who work with us and we've got an amazing network of freelance chefs and bar people who we bring in depending on the concept that we're working on. Specialize in that concept and, yeah, all systems go.

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Angelo Esposito [00:22:56]:

That's awesome. That's awesome. I want to get more into that, but as a quick segue, because now I'm super curious. Tell me a bit about the oldest friend. Tell me a bit about the name.

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Scot Turner [00:23:04]:

The oldest friend. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't actually, it was one thing that I always avoided when I was in hotels was naming, because it's just, it's so emotional. Everyone has an opinion, right. There's no fact, there's no data to back it up. Yeah, exactly. So it's just like, it's just, yeah.

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Angelo Esposito [00:23:23]:

It'S just who can sell it better?

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Scot Turner [00:23:25]:

Yeah, exactly. Always ends up in debate. So I opened four hotels, never got involved in naming once. And it was the same with Auden. I didn't know what to call the business. All I knew is I didn't want it associated to me in any shape or form. Back to that point, I knew I wanted to scale. And if it's under my name, you almost feel like you have to be involved in every project and that's not possible if you want to scale.

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Scot Turner [00:23:49]:

So, yes, we had a branding agency who did all the branding. And I said to Misson, I don't know what I want to call the business, I need you to come up with options. I don't want to be called after my name, and I don't want anything cheesy to do with food and beverage. So off they went. They came back. There was a few cheesy ones on there, but there was this last one, which was Auden. And I was like, okay, tell me about Auden. And she said, it means your oldest friend.

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Scot Turner [00:24:17]:

I said, okay, I still don't, I still don't get what this has to do with what I'm doing. She said, well, who do you turn to in your time of need? It's your oldest friend. And from the minute she said it, I was like, that is perfect. And it was just one of these bits where if you have f and b now that maybe isn't working, you know, it needs a bit of a push, someone to come in that you can trust to give you the right answers and the right advice. Someone who you can trust to take on a multimillion dollar project and deliver something that's exceptional. It would be your oldest friend. So we really keep those values close to what we are. And, you know, we have this amazing mantra that we put together that really talks about all those things around.

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Scot Turner [00:25:00]:

You know, we're honest, but we're not cocky. We don't have an ego. Our success is the success of the project. We don't do things for ourselves or to put on social media. We want our clients to walk into their restaurant and their bar, and we want them to go. We want to invite as many people to this as possible because we're so proud of it, and that's what drives us. So, you know, back to that oldest friend. Your oldest friend takes joy out of your success.

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Scot Turner [00:25:31]:

And that's what, that's really what we're about. And what we try and keep is that kind of humility around the whole thing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:36]:

That's nice. I love it. That's really cool. That's really, really cool story. It's funny because it started off with, like, I don't even name it. And then I'm like, oh, wait, there's that. You tied it nicely. That's.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:46]:

That's really cool. Yeah, yeah.

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Scot Turner [00:25:47]:

The end. They end the cash. That's for sure.

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Angelo Esposito [00:25:50]:

That's awesome. And so I'm curious to know, obviously, you guys go in what are some ways, and I know it. It can depend. But, like, just to give our listeners some perspective, you go into a independent restaurant. Let's take, like, a maybe classic f and b. Full service restaurant. Yeah, they're struggling a little. They reach out to you.

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Angelo Esposito [00:26:08]:

What, what do you typically help with? Like, what is, I guess part one. What does a process typically look like? And then maybe an example of, like, things you could do. I know it's obviously dependent on the exact scenario, but that will maybe help them. Just a yemenite, paint a picture for people listening in?

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Scot Turner [00:26:25]:

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, so we always start with, we have two sides of the business, essentially. So the first one is where we develop brands and we grow brands, as in concepts and concept development, or we go into existing operations and we look where there's opportunities to improve. The second side of the business is we work with brands that are scaling to help them put process and systems into place. So operations manuals and things like that. And, you know, we're working with a huge department store in London on that process. We're working with a global hotel brand that everyone would know of on that concept as well. We're working with a restaurant group in the Middle east who have 16 brands to do the same thing.

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Scot Turner [00:27:14]:

So we go in there, we develop the operations manuals, but we don't do operations manuals that people put on a shelf and never read. We make them very interactive. We use lots of video, lots of kind of visual aspect to it, to create it, and then hand over a digital library that people can put into their training systems or onto the phones and things like that. So that's one side of the business. Back onto the project side. We did a project for a six strong hotel group here in the UK called the New Forest Collection. They just had a new hospitality management company take over and they got in touch and asked us if we could help them create a strategy for food and beverage. So essentially, when that comes about, we go and spend time in the hotels and we follow a process that I've shared on social media before.

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Scot Turner [00:28:05]:

But we use a three stage process. We listen, we analyze, and we observe. So we go in first. And before we, we do anything, we speak to the, the stakeholders. And the stakeholders are owners, leadership group, general managers, f and b guys, chefs. More importantly, we speak to the breakfast waiter, we speak to the bar guy, and we get all this wealth of experience and knowledge and opinions in the business that can really fuel what we do moving forward. So what we're looking for is things like, what's, what are the biggest frustrations, what are stopping them delivering great service for the guest, what drives them crazy, what makes them happy, what works really well, what doesn't. And we really try and build up a picture of what the team think, and you'll often find a lot of businesses, they think everyone thinks differently, but it's not the case often.

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Scot Turner [00:29:02]:

It's very aligned with what the great points are and the bad points are. It's really interesting because you'd think there'd be much more diversity, but quite often there isn't. So we do that, and then we get as much data as possible to back that up. So we sales mix, inventory mix, purchasing reports, reservation system, anything we can get our hands on, we will take, and we'll delve into, and what we'll try and do is match up the first bit with the second bit, and. And we've got fact to back it up. And then we start creating patterns. And then finally we go into the operations and we watch. We go for breakfast, we sit in lounges, we sit in bars, we watch events, we watch how the chef works, and we take the listening and the analyzing and put that with the observing, and then it almost finishes with telling us what the issues are.

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Scot Turner [00:29:56]:

And then from there, we go and create plans where we can tackle them. So, you know, this hotel group in particular, you know, on purchasing, for example, there was no central purchasing, so they were buying 32 different types of chips, six different types of water, and you get the picture. So one of our recommendations was like, let's align the whole group with purchasing. Put the purchasing power together, drive price down, drive rebates, and we'll get it in. Other stuff is, how can you automate? So, if we're seeing manual inventory, if you see a manual payroll, all that type of thing, we really look at how we can automate it so that we can get people back on the floor and out of offices, because that makes a huge difference to guest experience and people's kind of sanity and things like that. So, yeah, there's stuff as granular as that. But then other areas is when we have concepts, what we often find in hotels, restaurants that aren't potentially performing is they've lost the story of what each outlet is about. So we kind of look at and go, okay, what is the story? What are the non negotiables? What's the principles? Let's create pillars for each individual venue that you then, as a leadership group, can use moving forward.

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Scot Turner [00:31:18]:

So, you know, for this hotel group, we got every single restaurant. We defined what it was. Was it a brasserie? Was it a pub? Was it a bistro? Was it, you know, just a bar and lounge? And then underneath that, we go, okay, well, is it british or is it super local? Or, you know, like, one of them was micro local, one of them was british. And, and then what we do then is we have pillars, so anything that we build out from that has to tick these boxes. And it's funny, I went to do a food tasting the other week with the same hotel group six months after we did the strategy, and they all pulled out this strategy document with them. And as the chef was saying, the menu, they were kind of going, okay, well, is it micro local? Is it british? And they were almost ticking things off. And, you know, you just sit there and I just looked at them and I was like, this is exactly what, what this should be. So, yeah, that's, that's a bad moment, for sure.

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Scot Turner [00:32:08]:

Yeah. And it's just nice to see that, like, what you're doing is, is having an influence on a business. So that's, that's kind of building a strategy. And then the other stuff is kind of concept development. So, you know, we'll go in and we'll do market research. We'll look at what the opportunities are. We'll really look at the setup of the whole space that you have and put forward potential concepts of what you can do. Generally, we'll try and push the boundaries, especially in hotels.

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Scot Turner [00:32:39]:

So, you know, we were doing a british manor house concept development. We put forward a persian classic, traditional british hotel. No one was really using the rest restaurant outside of the guests. And we were like, I think we just need to niche down what it is. We need to niche down the concept. So actually people can connect with it and it gives them a reason to come. So we recommended a persian and like a greek islands, some more eastern mediterranean concept and kind of went, you know what? You don't always have to do british brasserie. Let's niche it down.

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Scot Turner [00:33:12]:

Let's do something different. It's unique in the market. No one locally is doing it. So we try and push the boundaries a little bit. And, you know, we always find that hotel is sometimes rein us in a little bit, so then it's easier to come back than it is to try and go forward. So, yeah, we, we try and push the buttons on that one. And, you know, we say we've got a team of thinkers and doers, and I think this is sometimes where we are a little bit different. I don't want to sound too salesy, but we're a little bit different to everyone else, which is, you know, what I always found with consultants, especially in my hotel days.

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Scot Turner [00:33:48]:

And it's something that really used to frustrate me is consultants would come in, they do these strategies, or they do action plans. They'd tell you how bad things were or where opportunities were. They'd leave you with this action plan and they'd hand it over to you and go, that's what you have to implement and you'll do great. The reality is, in hotels, you're busy doing the day to day. You're always firefighting. You generally don't have time to do like, big sweeping changes. So actually nothing gets done. So I really vowed I didn't want to be one of those consultants.

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Scot Turner [00:34:19]:

So this is why our in house team, the people we employ at Arden, are the doers. They're the people who implement an operations background. My ops director worked in McDonald's shake Shack by Chloe QSR concepts. So he's very process driven, very good at, like, implementation. So we love to do the implementation and the boring bit to help hoteliers implement and succeed and not just hand them over a nice manual or a nice document. So the thinkers bit is like the guys who come in who can create great concepts, can write great menus, and then the doers are the people who then take that and we help and we handhold and almost white glove approach our projects all the way through to opening day and beyond if they want us to. So, for example, we have one hotel, the same hotel where we're doing the manor house. We did a cafe concept for them first.

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Scot Turner [00:35:14]:

I still approve the menus nine months on and I have the final approval as almost like brand guardian, where they send it over to me first and you're like, yeah, okay, that's not quite there. That's not quite in season and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's just back to that old friend bit. We really want them to succeed, but if we, you know, hang around afterwards where we're going back in and we're working with a team, we're showing them where things might need to improve. Keeping an eye on social media, approving menus, that's what your oldest friend would do. And that's what we don't just want to kind of drop and run. We want to stick around to be part of the success.

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Angelo Esposito [00:35:54]:

Love that. That's really cool. It's funny because a lot of things you're saying, like, we have very similar values, like we do mainly the cost side, so inventory and all that. But I feel strongly. So I'm like, I'm loving what I'm hearing because one of our philosophy is exactly that. Like most people get into the restaurant space for their love and passion of hospitality and guest experience, but then they get sucked into these really boring, tedious, but important things and end up spending more time on excel and on the computer. And so it's like how can we give them that time back so they can focus on their passion and they can do those things as they need to do them, but it's like, maybe not spend half the week on these things. So I'm with you and I love the idea of like the white glove service.

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Angelo Esposito [00:36:35]:

And again, something we do. Not to make this about wiz, but just quick analogies, like, you know, part of being on boarded with inventory and whatever is getting all their invoices in and then doing their recipes. And one thing we do that not a lot of people do is we tell them, send us your recipes. We don't care if it's a picture, if it's on word, whatever, we'll enter it for you just to get you going and then we'll show you how to maintain them. That's the point of the software. But let's just get you set up because to your point, if not, people buy software and then it's like good luck setting it up. It's like inventory is a pain. And recipes and sub recipes and yields and, I mean, I don't have to tell you, you're a restaurant guy, so, you know, but it's, it's pretty tedious.

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Scot Turner [00:37:13]:

Yeah. Do you know, it's funny though, the amount of hotels I go into and they don't have inventory systems and they've got this huge stock holding and they've got once a month, if they're lucky, where food and beverage guys are spending three or four days doing stock, it's a real pain. There's no trails because it's on excel and, you know, and a lot of them are scared of how much work it is to put a system like that in. And you know, they all start thinking big picture. So it's like, oh, yeah, but you know, housekeeping has to, it's just like, no, like think of how much value you have in the seller. In most hotels, it's significant amounts of money. Like get that sorted, worry about housekeeping later. Like if they're not an issue, like just for what the, what the price of platforms are.

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Scot Turner [00:38:01]:

And it's amazing how many times you come across that. And it's that people being scared of implementation, I think, you know, offering that white glove approach where people are busy just helps, helps take some of that pain away, doesn't it?

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:15]:

Yeah, big time. And I think. And I was wondering, because with hotels we sell into mainly, like, full service restaurants and bars because we're heavy there. But a lot of that ends up being, like, f and b outlets in hotels and on the hotel side. And you nailed it earlier in the como. But the two things we see is, one, they're slower to make decisions, and they gotta get many people involved. So it's like, you have a meeting and a second meeting, and you have five people, and then there's the banquet manager, and it's like. It's just like, guys, do you want to do this or not? You know, there's so many, like, people involved, which is fine, but it's part of the way.

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Angelo Esposito [00:38:43]:

But. But the biggest thing. I see, and I think you nailed it with the. I always knew this, but when you crystallize it, for me, it's like they kind of work in a silo, like you said, and they're not worried about the other pictures, so that there's less of that urgency, because it's like they do it once a month because they have to do it. But there's not that urgency of, like, an independent restaurant. That's like, looking at their p and l every month. They're like, yeah, I got to cut this down. In a hotel, it's almost like they're in their world f and b.

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Angelo Esposito [00:39:07]:

They dread that. Once a month, like you said, takes two days to count everything in excel. But it's like they'll just. It's just part of the job. So sometimes, like, they get stuck there kind of thing.

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Scot Turner [00:39:16]:

It's funny, I was in a. I was in a five star hotel in London, and we had this problem. The guy was spending four, four and a half days. The stockholding was like 35 grand, something like that. So what's that? Probably about $45,000. And, you know, I sat with the finance director, and I was like, you guys need to get an inventory system. And she was like, yeah, but, you know, the beverage cost is good. And I said, okay, how do you know it's good? She said, well, because it's at 22%.

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Scot Turner [00:39:47]:

And I was like, right, okay, but how do you know that's good? Yeah, well, because generally, we think the market's around 22%. I said, but what if it was 19%? You don't know. Like, you don't have actual theoretical. You don't know exactly what your salesmate should be doing. You don't know what historical data has been like, apart from you have this number on the p and l, you go back to, you know, you can't look at variance reports. It's like, you might think 22% is good, actually, it might be really bad. And you should be at 19. And I think, you know, it's these type of things where you're right.

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Scot Turner [00:40:22]:

Independent restaurant. We were counting beverage once a week, every Sunday night was the job to do. And we were analyzing it on Monday. We were reporting it by 06:00 p.m. monday night. If anything was wrong, we were going back to it. And, you know, we were using legacy tech, we were using micros in the Middle east, so materials control and things like that. Right, okay.

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Scot Turner [00:40:43]:

Which was painful, but we were doing it once a week. So it always amazes me when hotels don't put enough effort into it because there's so much opportunity to help the bottom line.

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Angelo Esposito [00:40:56]:

Yeah, I always. I always say it's like, at the end of the day, there's a million and one things you do in a restaurant, but, like, the main thing, your main controls are prime costs and your prime cost is labor and your cost of good. So it's like, yeah, sometimes people like, oh, there's so much tech out there, I don't know where to go. I'll say, look, just take a step back. Forget about the tech. Just in general, focus on labor. And that could be many different things. It's not just cutting staff.

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Angelo Esposito [00:41:18]:

It's being smart about it and predictive, whatever, and then focus on your cost of goods, which, again, it's not just, how do I make this dish cheaper and put less chicken in it? More than that. It's like you said, purchasing power. It's. It like there's a million one things I can go in ordering more efficiently, doing my inventory, less wasted. Like, it's not just, you know, as easy as cut. Right? But those are probably the two biggest things, because when you look at an average p and l, obviously depends on the style of restaurant, this, that. But average, average generic restaurant, let's say 30% cogs, let's say 30% labor, again, depends on the industry, the market, this, that, whatever. But on average, let's say, 60% of your.

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Angelo Esposito [00:41:53]:

Of your, you know, revenue is attributed to those two things. It's like I always tell people, don't you think you should at least start with focusing on those? And then you could get the nitty gritty and think about loyalty and this and that and every other app in the playbook. But I don't that's the way I think. I think like hit those two to start and then things will come out of it. I know it's not, you know, it always, it's a case by case basis obviously, because it's sometimes people might have like the goose that maybe a branding problem, maybe they're too generic so nobody good. So you got to get traffic. So there's different scenarios. But at the cost side I was tell people labor cost of goods.

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Angelo Esposito [00:42:26]:

Like if you're not focusing on those, then what are you focusing on?

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Scot Turner [00:42:29]:

Yeah, 100% completely agree with you. And I think, you know, the other thing that I talk to people about as well is, is, you know, like when people start setting targets on food cost and beverage cost against budget and things like that, it's just like, you know, it's just the wrong metric to be chat to be incentivizing people on. You know, at the end of the day they can't control what consumers buydevelop. And you know, actual versus theoretical is the metric to be targeting your people to achieve because if they don't make decisions around pricing and purchasing and think you can't expect them to hit budgets that are unachievable. So I think, you know, yeah, the other thing with that is absolutely inventory cost and labour cost is key. And then make sure you're challenging your people on the right metrics rather than, rather than budgets that people can affect or has been written into a budget to make the bottom line look better or that type of thing.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:24]:

It's true. Yeah, you nailed it. And we see it. Sometimes people will ask us, hey guys, you've been in the industry ten years. What's a good beverage cost? It's like, look, I can give you an average number if you're in Vegas versus Montreal versus Miami, but at the end of the day that number doesn't mean much. It's like it's actual versus theoretical. And the closer you are, the better you're doing and the tighter ship you're running. But, you know, for our listeners, one thing I'd love to share and then I'd love to also just wrap up with hearing about like where people can find you, your podcast, newsletter, all that good stuff, but for people listening to just give them a little extra piece of advice.

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Angelo Esposito [00:43:59]:

You know, I know we spoke about maybe focusing on labor and cogs and we spoke about maybe some branding, but from your point of view, what are some like easy wins? And I say easy with a quote because, you know, it's rare that there's easy wins. But working with, I think, over 40 clients, I think 40 restaurant openings, I believe in hotel projects. Right. You obviously got a lot of experience under your belt. What are things that, or maybe low hanging fruit to get to the question that maybe some of our restaurant operators and listeners can listen and say, oh, that's actually some good things. Of course it's going to be dependent case by case, but at a high level, any kind of nuggets you can share?

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Scot Turner [00:44:33]:

Yeah, I think, yeah. For me, like really look at tech and really invest time in what tech can do to help your business. I've been using tech in restaurants since about 2018 properly, as in diversifying out of epos, inventory and payroll into data analytics and QR codes delivery and things like that. I've been doing it for a long time. It's amazing how many people don't choosing the right reservation system, one that can build profiles, it can integrate with your epos. So you starting to build like serious knowledge on your guests. You can start personalizing communications so that then all your marketing becomes much more effective. That's really key.

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Scot Turner [00:45:24]:

I think looking at how tech can make processes more efficient or can take away manual labor, it's amazing how many people still have manual flash reports and things like this coming out that people are spending time on. All this can be automated now with simple solutions that can, can help, you know, how do you get your teams off back of house? You know, like automatic fridge temperature records and digital checklists where you don't have to start going and inspecting binders and things like that. So I think tech is the first one that can, you know, I always say about tech is tech should enable your team to be on the floor. So it should take away process, it should take away inventory, make inventory counts easier. It should, it should automate payroll calculator and, you know, all that type of thing. And I think with AI now, certainly back of house on certain bits, I think you're going to be able to start automating a lot more request things from employees as well. So I think really look at how tech can help the business. So that would be my first one.

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Scot Turner [00:46:26]:

My second one would be, I've put this as part of our f and b report, as one of the actions I would do for next year's budget. I would build videographers into my marketing budget because I think there's, there's some real examples now of where really building on YouTube and TikTok and creating content like three or four times a day can drive covers to your business. There's a restaurant in London who as a full time videographer, his bookings. Now he's making more bookings through YouTube and TikTok than he is through third party. Third party booking engines, like open table. Yeah. And it's just driving. It's driving covers.

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Scot Turner [00:47:10]:

So I think, you know, get people that don't have these agencies who come in once a month, the stage it with two people from the sales office and stuff like that. Like have someone there every day in your business, being your chef's best friend, the bartender's best friend, you know, natural content and really producing some serious stuff. So that would be my, my second one and then my third one would be really look at where you can potentially invest capex to make operations more efficient. So what do I mean by that is there's amazing things you can do. Now. We worked with a hotel group called the Social Hub, and we looked at kind of systemizing their kitchen as part of what we were doing. We did a cost calculation on how spending a little bit extra, I think it was 10% more on capex, could have a 35% saving in annual operational costs on things like utilities and payroll and stuff like that, just by considering workflow. So things like taking out gas, putting all induction in there so the ventilation requirements were less, so that you needed less power and things like that.

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Scot Turner [00:48:26]:

I had a massive contributor really looking at workflow and how certain equipment could mean that you didn't need as many people on shift as possible, or you could bring them in for shorter time periods, and then things like, you know, how the quietest shift could run as efficient as the longest shift. Because workflow meant that people could do it with one person on a Sunday night, but, you know, equally three people could scale up on a busy night as well. So I think really looking at how equipment's evolved, how you can really start investing in certain things to help with consistency, can help operationally down the line as well. And, you know, the best examples of this, we always get our ops director from QSR on it, because these guys like, people like chick fil a, people like McDonald's, you know, all process, even just like how they control chips being consistent, fries being consistent. It's super clever. So I think, you know, I always encourage hotels, guys like go do tours of McDonald's and QSR concepts and really see how these guys deliver serious volume between a really short period of time, twelve till two, and still deliver quality and consistency and the service is good. And so, yeah, I really think you can use equipment to really drive operations.

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Angelo Esposito [00:49:47]:

I love that. Those are really, really good pieces of info. So I'm happy you shared that because it's super valuable for a. Yeah. Listeners. So thank you. So I got one last one for you. And then, like I said, I want, I want you to plug away so people know where to find you and all that good stuff.

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Angelo Esposito [00:50:01]:

But last one, I like to always ask and, you know, we kind of touch on in certain areas, but where do you see that maybe the future of the hospitality industry going? Any kind of trends that you think are going to, you know, like, let's say, I don't know, three years from now, four years from now, you know, what do you see being the biggest difference when we look at the hospitality space?

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Scot Turner [00:50:22]:

I think the more and more Gen Z become the primary consumer, I think more and more experience is going to become important in the industry and kind of niching that down even more. I think personalized experience is going to become more and more important in the industry. So I think we have to start looking now at how we can, you know, back to building guest profiles and things like that. But also, so when the go place is, they want to look for experience. That's why now they're staying in Airbnbs and things like that because they can get into the nooks and crannies of, like, local areas and things. And I think, you know, people need to start thinking about how they adapt to the new generation coming through as consumers. Otherwise they're going to get left behind. We had this conversation the other day, actually, we were talking about meeting an event and, you know, again, just like the breakfast buffet, you know, I was in a, in a, in a conference center the other week, and it was exactly like what I left in 2015, carpenter floors.

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Scot Turner [00:51:23]:

You know, maybe the led, like, tv had changed from what it was before. It was plasma when I left hotels, but it was the same. And when you look at offices now and how they're being built, you know, with town hall theater styles and zoom pods and, you know, interactive walls and things like that, and you go in a hotel and it's a carpeted floor with no windows and thing, like the new generation just won't come to you. They'll go up, they'll go elsewhere because they're looking for an experience, whether that's in a, in a meeting or whether that's in a restaurant experience. So I think that would be the one I'd have on my agenda.

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Angelo Esposito [00:52:02]:

That makes sense. And to be honest, like, I agree with you with the Gen C thing. And it makes me think of what you alluded to earlier with the videographer. But just in general, like becoming that personal brand, people like that authentication, authenticity, less and less of those like commercial commercials and more of like just behind the scenes. And that difference between, you know, having a videographer just capturing the day to day versus staging a commercial. And I think that that'll be more and more prevalent. That that's awesome. And last but not least, look, a lot, a lot of great advice was awesome having you on the show.

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Angelo Esposito [00:52:32]:

I want people to be able to find you. So again, Scot Turner, Auden. Auden hospitality.

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Scot Turner [00:52:37]:

So.

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Angelo Esposito [00:52:38]:

So plug away website, podcast, your LinkedIn, whatever you want to plug.

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Scot Turner [00:52:44]:

Yeah, so the website is audenhospitality.com aud. So that's the place to go and learn all about what we do. There's some case studies on there we're going to be bringing out, releasing an f and B report that's being done with data from hot stats. As I said, UK and us, and it's very regionalized, so it's not collective data. There's a section on the US and a section on the UK. So especially if you're in hotels right now, download that, it goes into some pretty granular detail, and then we offer some solutions on how to come out of the other side. So yeah, there's that. That'll be released soon.

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Scot Turner [00:53:21]:

So the best way to keep an eye on that is to go on LinkedIn, check out my profile and follow. I post on there every day as well. So yeah, we try and give as much value as possible. And then, yeah, finally, hospitality huddles is the podcast that we have. So every Tuesday we do things like this. We speak to really interesting people about topics that can really influence food and beverage operations in hotels. And then as of next week, every Friday, we're doing like a ten minute episode which really niches down on topics to do with f and b. And it's not just me talking, but there's our Ops director and our designers talking about the conflicts between operations and design.

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Scot Turner [00:54:02]:

For example, in one episode we talk about purchasing, should it be in house, should it be outsourced? So we go like really granular for ten minutes on certain topics and people can email in to us and tell us what they want us to cover. But yeah, that's quite fun because a lot of the time it just ends up with us joking around and ribbing each other and adding some value where we can. So it's been quite fun recording some of the episodes. So. Yeah, check out that it's on Spotify Apple podcast.

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Angelo Esposito [00:54:30]:

But, well, I love it. Well, for everyone listening, once again, you're listening to Scot Turner from Auden Hospitality, the founder and managing director. Scot, thanks for joining the WISKing it all podcast. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

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Scot Turner [00:54:44]:

I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.

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Angelo Esposito [00:54:46]:

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

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