Chris Demery:

When I was working for the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, I had an opportunity and I got out and decided to leverage my technology career. Our restaurant people said, we have a problem. If a candidate walks in the door and we want to hire them, we can’t hire them for like seven days because it takes too long to process the paperwork. We got a requirement that said, from the point in time when I say hire, all of their information has to be in the system within five minutes. So, we built a cloud-based HR system. If you don’t plan your replacement of your heart very well, things can go sideways very quickly. And at the same time, if you don’t do your due diligence around costs, costs can escalate. I think that’s how you’re successful as a IT leader, as a CTO. One, you have to have a strategy around innovation. Where’s the brand going? What are we trying to do? And second, you have to be able to talk to operators.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What is one myth that you feel, you know, people have about restaurant industry from outside? 

 

Chris Demery:

How hard can it be to make a pizza? 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Hi, welcome to Restocast. Today, my guest is Chris Demery, CTO of Blaze Pizza. While Chris packs you know, great and rich experience from military to Domino’s to Blooming Brands, BF Giants, and now Blaze. The highlight for me in this conversation was normally for technologists in hospitality, but for anyone who wants to solve problems in the world, ask your user. They exactly know what they want and just do it for them. This was a great conversation. I enjoyed every bit of it and came out enriched. I’m sure you will do. 

Welcome to the Restrocast. So Chris, we’ll dive in straight.

You have, I think your career in hospitality spans from some of the iconic brands, you know, you’ve done deep work. I want to know all of that, but before we, you know, even touch that, I would like to know how it all started. What were your early years like and, you know, how did restaurant industry happen? I would like to discover that. Why don’t we start from the early years, growing up years?

 

Chris Demery:

Well, my early years, you know, my parents were in the military or my father was, so I grew up in a military life and thought I would start my career that way. And I did. I had a full ROTC scholarship, four years to college of my choice. I almost picked West point, but I didn’t. And I decided I was going to be a doctor. And so I was going to have the military pay my way to become a doctor. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to stay in the military, as long as you had to stay in the military. Once you became a doctor, because you owe back like three times the duration. So I went in and I became a signal officer instead and found out I really loved it.

 

I worked with tactical infantry troops in Korea, South Korea, obviously. I worked with field artillery units out of Fort Bragg, supported special forces, and I decided I was going to be a general. So I was on the path to be become a general.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What years to what years were these? Like how long?

 

Chris Demery:

I’m going to age myself. So this was so I graduated from college in 79. And so it was 80 through 92, 93. So I spent 13 years. And the reason I got out was while I was in the military, I got my master’s degree in computer science. That’s when I realized there was a life outside, getting up at 4am to go work out and going to bed at midnight because you were supporting whoever you were supporting.

And during that time frame, I got divorced twice because of the military. And so when I had an opportunity to get out and enjoy an IT career, I said, I’m going to make that major life change. So I got out when I was working for the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition at the Pentagon. And I had an opportunity and I got out and decided to leverage my technology career. And I really didn’t know very much technology, even though I had a master’s degree. That’s what I realized.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Why did you? Yeah, I was about to ask you, why did you choose to go master’s in computer science while you were still in the military?

 

Chris Demery:

Because I had a company command, which is the premier job of a young 25 year old person for just over two years. And they said, I said, I want to stay here and I want to keep doing it. They said, you can’t. So you have three choices. You can go support the National Guard in like South Dakota. You could go get an advanced degree or there was a third choice.

I can’t remember what it was. And like go be a ROTC officer at a college. After supporting special forces for, I’m like, well, I’m going to try to further my education. So I chose computer science because I had a little bit of computers in the military, not a lot, but I had one of the first units at Fort Bragg that was technology enabled through computer systems that were, you know, the size of this room.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, I’m sure. I mean, these were early years.

 

Chris Demery:

Early years. The first, I had one of the first GPSs on the East coast with the military and it was the size of a Jeep. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow. 

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah. So to see how far it’s come sort of ages me, but it’s kind of fun to see how technology has miniaturized itself.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So yeah, I mean, I can relate because while I was, you know, much younger growing up as a kid in India, but I think I got my hands on computers as early as 1992.

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And thanks to my dad. So he was just an enthusiast. He had nothing to do with tech at all. He just used to think that, you know, careers is future and, you know, one should learn that. And so I can see, I’ve seen so much evolution of, you know, modern PC myself that when I think about it, I’m like, oh, wow, this is, and I was just watching it as a kid actually, but, you know, people were really using it.

 

Chris Demery:

So yes. Yeah. I mean, if you remember dial up modems, right?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yes. 

 

Chris Demery:

Today you were fully connected to everything in our lives. If you had to use a dial up modem, I think some of our young people would go, what’s that noise?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, exactly. I’ve used that 14 kbps and 28 kbps and 56 kbps modems. And I remember that. So, you know, you came out of military with computer science.

 

Chris Demery:

So I went to work doing program management for a training and consulting company. They call them beltway bandits in Washington, DC. So I went to work for that company and helped it grow about a hundred percent.

And so my thought was I would help run the company, become like a COO, right? And the owner was not fully aligned with my objectives in life because I’ve always tried to keep making my life better. And so while working as a consultant for NCR, the NCR out of Atlanta retail solutions group out of Atlanta said, you should come to work for us and help us manage large projects.

So they gave me, you know, a pay increase. Most people do that. So I moved, moved from Washington, DC to Atlanta and a couple of years into that stint, they said, we’re having a problem with Domino’s pizza program. And so we want you to go up there and help us save the program. So I went up to work for Domino’s pizza as a representative in NCR. And that’s when they were starting out their next generation store solution, NGSS. They didn’t know exactly what they wanted, but we were, we were working down that path. And so NCR helped Domino’s make their selection of their next gem point of sale.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow.

 

Chris Demery:

2000 to 2012. And that’s when we built out the next generation solution called Domino’s Pulse today, and then built out near real-time reporting, pizza tracker, all sorts of great stuff when they only had 140 engineers. Built out the first e-com for Domino’s Pizza, built out the second e-com for Domino’s Pizza, and then it got so big, a gentleman that worked for me, we branched him aside and made him vice president of e-commerce, and I kept all the rest of the solutions.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m curious, and this is, you know, I’ve always believed, and this is also my bias, given that we don’t own a restaurant tech company, but I’ve always seen that, you know, most of the, you know, restaurant brands, no matter how large they are, whenever they started building their own tech, they kind of failed, and they failed not because they couldn’t, you know, I mean, there are great engineers available all over, and they failed because that was not their forte, and that was not something, you know, they just by design, they will always, you know, end up having the suboptimal solution to a problem, because problem is only going to be defined by what they think is the problem, what is their problem, and they may not really think about it, you know, from, you know, future perspective, or future proofing their brand. They don’t know what they don’t know about, you know, what’s going to happen with either pizza, or the deliveries, or right, what was different at Domino’s?

 

Chris Demery:

So, when we went, as part of the next generation store solution project, we did a huge RFP. We looked at 85 different, and our architect, we had architectural imperatives. We’re not going to build from the ground up. We’re going to build on top of an architecture that will support change, and so we went out looking for solutions, point of sale solutions, that could demonstrate a three-tier architecture, because we knew we were going to change over time as we grew, and I think that’s what enabled them to continue to grow, and build, and adapt, because it was a three-tier architecture enables you to replace different APIs, or tiers, as the need evolves.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, this was not the, these were not the days of microservices, or correct, you know, or SOA.

 

Chris Demery:

Right, this is before then, yeah, and I think that’s what enabled them to change, and then adapt, and we went through the whole internationalization process, the whole localization process, all sorts of things, and the franchisee sued us, you know, that’s, we were joking earlier about being deposed. It’s one of my first depositions. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Really?

 

Chris Demery:

Yes, at Domino’s. Yeah, I was, the franchisees sued Domino’s corporate, because we mandated you take on this new solution, and we lost, and then under appeal, we won, and so that’s how, so Domino’s lost the first court case, and then they won it once they went back to court.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow, and I mean, why did franchisees sue? Was it because

 

Chris Demery:

they wanted choice? We want to, we want to pick what we want to pick. You probably understand that, right? It’s like, I know better than you do, therefore, but Domino’s was taking a strategic view of, it’s a proprietary solution for Domino’s Pizza, and it would allow them to expand faster, and solve problems at a scalable level, versus 20 different point of sales solutions across the franchise community. They were the premier, everybody needs to be on one point of sale, versus trying to aggregate data from five point of sales.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, I mean, I believe in that. Right. So, even to today, I think Domino’s is one of the few who actually could do, you know, this globally. You know, not many brands have been able to really do international on a single platform.

 

Chris Demery:

Well, when I was there, we were starting to go global, because the engineering team, the architecture was built for adaptability. So, when we would go into South America, and have to do factura, unique printing for Columbia, or Brazil, or Peru, we could get an engineer down, and within three to five weeks, have a factura printing solution that would demonstrate, and look how easy it is to take orders. The first thing we did at Domino’s, we took off the top level, which is the UX, for order entry, which almost reduced order accuracy to zero, because it was so easy to use, that anybody could order a pizza, or place an order, with, they could learn it within seven minutes.

So, we had bring your kids to school day, right? We used to bring your kids to test day, and we would bring in these seven and eleven year old kids, and say, hey, I’m going to read an order to you, put it into the point of sale. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Nice.

 

Chris Demery:

And they could do it within seven to ten minutes. So, we had kids testing our solution. It was a fantastic experience.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So, that’s a great way. I’m going to steal that.

 

Chris Demery:

This is, yeah, that is awesome. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s actually a great test of, you know, when a company says that, oh, our UX is great, you know, it’s simple.

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah, and that’s when I learned that, while I believe I’m very smart, and I am, and so are you, everybody, but we’re not always the smartest people in the room. So, the people that know how things work, are the people on the front line. And that goes back to the military analogy, right?

Is that, if you listen to the people that are on the front line, with whatever business you’re in, they’re the ones that are going to tell you, this is what I need to do my job. And if you listen to them and build it the way they want it, they will use it. But it also has to be efficient, and it can’t add anxiety to their workday. And I leverage the same thing from a guest experience. If you want your guest to do something, don’t give them something hard. Make sure it has almost no friction.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Now, that’s a great philosophy, and I think that’s true. I think, you know, being a tech product entrepreneur, I can tell you that, you know, how many times, you know, there are on, you know, new entrepreneurs, or, you know, people that say, you know, are behind the curve, they will ask, hey, you know, how do you do product roadmapping? And I would generally tell them that, just go and talk to your customers, and especially people who use your product at your customer.

And they’ll actually write down the roadmap for you. You still need to use your understanding to see what’s strategic for you and what’s not. But they’ll tell you everything.

They’ll write down the roadmap for you, they will exactly prioritize it for you if you want, because they are the ones in the pain. And you, you know, you don’t have a sense of what alleviates the pain the most, right? For you, it’s like five features. For them, you know, they will tell you exactly what, what is needed right now.

 

Chris Demery:

You know, the one thing that I haven’t found a technology company that can solve yet is the ease of putting in a recipe for a product for somebody that doesn’t really understand how important food costs are. There’s not a product out there that I found yet that does that. Like, just put in the ingredients and how much you want of each one, and it distills it down to something that’s usable that you can also track. But we’re still looking for that solution.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

We would love to. I’ll send the notes. This is the lead. But, you know, so 2012, you came out with Domino’s. Why that move and where did you go?

 

Chris Demery:

So what happened is the CIO at Domino’s and the CMO at Domino’s had a disagreement about how to do marketing analytics. And Russell Weiner, who was the CMO at that time, who I think is now president of one of the big parts of Domino’s, he won and my boss lost. So my boss was departed and I was a candidate for CTO or CIO at Domino’s back when they were much smaller.

And the CEO made a decision and it wasn’t for me. Bain Capital, who had owned Domino’s at one point, and then when Domino’s went public, obviously Bain exited. They had just bought a company called Bloomin’ Brands, although it was known as OSI Restaurant Partners, Outback Steakhouse International.

So Bain had bought OSI. OSI contacted me and said, we need a really good technology person to come down and head up our technology team. And I’m like, well, it’s a plane flight. So it was Florida. So I got on a, you know, they gave me more money. I got on a plane, flew to Florida and worked for OSI Restaurant Partners. And I was there seven years. Built out almost all of their above restaurant technology. Did not replace their point of sale solution. Still not replaced. Years later.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What do you mean by above restaurant?

 

Chris Demery:

So we put in a cloud-based HR system. So our HR people, let me rephrase that. Our restaurant people said, we have a problem. If a candidate walks in the door and we want to hire him, we can’t hire him for like seven days because it takes too long to process the paperwork. And by then they want to work, but they can’t work because they can’t be in the point of sale. They can’t be in the back office. Can’t get in. So we got a requirement that said, from the point in time when I say hire, all of their information has to be in the system within five minutes. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh wow. 

 

Chris Demery:

So we built a cloud-based HR system with the requirement that from the button push, it had to be in the restaurant, in the point of sale, at whatever location it’s supposed to be within five minutes. So we used a company called Omnivore. You’ve probably heard of them, right? Now bought up by Olo. So that was my first experience with Omnivore and cloud-level integration near real-time. So we did that. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Omnivore was like a middle layer. It was like Xavier. 

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah. It’s API-based, clearly defined APIs. So I used them for that. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Mike and Mike. 

 

Chris Demery:

Yes, Mike and Mike. And then we built out… We had another problem. Our guests would tell us, you know, I know you have a reservation system, but I don’t know…

When I go to the restaurant, I don’t know if I can get in. And we want to get into the restaurant, but we want to make reservations in advance. So then we built out a guest wait list from a mobile app. So we built a mobile app that would allow people to make their reservations in advance and pay at the table when they wanted to leave. Because at Blumenbrands, nobody wanted technology at the table. They just wanted to get out, have a great experience with the server, and then depart when they wanted to. So we built in guest wait and pay at the table. That was the original Blumenbrands mobile app.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And these were the solutions that you… What is your bias towards building in-house versus buying from outside?

 

Chris Demery:

Competitive advantage. I’m a firm believer that if it’s commercial off the shelf and something works, you should not build it. But if it’s going to give you a competitive advantage, you should build it. I learned that at Domino’s. Back when I was at Domino’s, there weren’t a lot of driver dispatch solutions, mapping solutions, order optimization solutions. They just didn’t exist.

So I learned that you could build that, but you shouldn’t build an HR system. You shouldn’t build a food management system, typically above restaurant solutions. But if it’s in a restaurant, it gives you a competitive advantage.

At a minimum, you should consider building it after you fully vet that there’s something’s not available or it’s too expensive to implement. And so I just build things now that aren’t commercially available off the shelf that would give a competitive advantage. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And then what after Blumen? 

 

Chris Demery:

So I was at Blumenbrands four years as a technology leader and the CEO, Liz Smith, tapped me on the shoulder and said, we think off-premises dining might grow over time. So would you lead that group for us? I’m like, well, what do you mean? Well, we think Carrabba’s and Outback should do more pickup and e-commerce. Like, okay, what about Bonefish Grill or Fleming’s? Oh no, no, those are fine dining experience. Nobody will ever order that for delivery. So built out a self-delivery model for Outback and Carrabba’s and demonstrated, I mean, traffic decline in the casual dining goes down about 2% a year. This is the traffic that was for a while.

That’s what they were experiencing. And so they saw a lot of companies doing off-premises. I reversed that trend for Outback and Carrabba’s. Interesting story. The president of Bonefish Grill, who was a friend of mine, he’s like, Chris, Liz said you can’t touch fish because fish doesn’t travel well. I’m like, why don’t we ask the guests?

See, if we turned it on and a guest ordered it and kept ordering it, then who’s right? The guest or the president? Now we didn’t tell Liz Smith that. So we turned on Uber Eats at a Tampa, Florida Bonefish Grill, and after 30 days had to turn it off because they had $7,000 a week incremental sales. And their bar was so full of Uber Eats drivers, they lost alcohol revenue, which is more highly profitable. So the president said, I hate to turn this off, but I need to go redesign my restaurants before I can turn on off-premises.

And so, by the way, the guests were always right. If the guest wants seafood delivered to them or pickup to take home, that’s what you should do. So my motto became guests deserve what they want, when they want it, where they want it. If you live by that motto, your guests, and you can deliver high quality food, then your guests will come back to you because you do what they want, where they want it, when they want it, with high predictability. So that’s my guest experience mantra. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That is awesome. And this was way before COVID. 

 

Chris Demery:

Oh yeah, way before COVID. I think the off-premises for Outback and Carrabba’s is what saved Bloomin’ Brands during COVID. And the only reason I say that is because they said that during a quarterly year review. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s true. I mean, most of the fine dining, experience-based brands suffered during COVID 

 

Chris Demery:

Because they just couldn’t do off-premises. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

They didn’t know what to do when the world was on.

 

Chris Demery:

So I left Bloomin’ Brands to go to work for CKE in Franklin, Tennessee, because I was contacted by a headhunter and said, we really need a leader in technology. I’m like, well, you have a CIO. They’re like, oh, we know, but we really need a leader. So I went to CKE, and unbeknownst to me, I knew it when it happened, the CIO was walked out 30 days after I got there. And this was part of Rourke group, 3,600 locations, fantastic experience. I was on the track to become a CTO there, because I was the head of IT, and inspire Rourke Capital and put in a CTO from another brand that they wanted to move down. I won’t say her name. And so that cut off that career path for me. So, I mean, my career path is I continuously look for challenges. And I think like most competitive people, you want to move up. You either want more money, you want increased responsibility. I mean, for me, that’s just second nature.

Back to my military background, right? And so when they brought in that new CIO, CTO, PF Chang’s contacted me and said, we saw what you did with Blumenbrands. We’re starting this new small footprint concept. We need somebody that knows technology, off-premises to go build these for us. And so I went to PF Chang’s as head of off-premises, not as a technology role, but as an operations role. And then COVID hit. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow. 

 

Chris Demery: 

Yeah. And so I left PF Chang’s. I got contacted by Blaze Pizza and said, we really need technology at Blaze Pizza because we’re the non-franchisee, or non-franchisee franchisor, and we really need to look at some technology solutions that are scalable because we want to grow. So I left PF Chang’s during COVID.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wasn’t PF Chang’s, I mean, weren’t you there at the right time when they needed you the most?

 

Chris Demery:

Yes, I was. And then COVID hit, and traffic went down in all their locations.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Blaze Pizza, I think you came in Blaze Pizza exactly the reverse of what happened to you at CKE, right? So you came in when private equity acquired them, if I’m not wrong.

 

Chris Demery:

They had been there a year or two, Britwood Capital. They own Blaze Pizza. So they bought it from the founders, and they put in a new CEO. That CEO happened to be somebody. I put in SAP at Blumenbrands. I didn’t mention that part.

You’d ask what above store solutions. We put in SAP financials at Blumenbrands. That senior vice president of finance was the CFO at Blaze Pizza, and then they made her CEO. And she brought me in to do technology for Blaze Pizza. So that’s how I got to Blaze. Long story.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But Blaze was, I mean, I’m just curious, right? Because when you got into Blaze, Blaze was already successful with their growth between 2012 and 2020, right?

 

Chris Demery:

So the way I would say it is, Blaze Pizza, like a lot of other brands, were not positioned well when COVID hit. They were a lunch business, 5% off-premises. So some people would call or order online and pick up. But they rolled out third party. They had to, in order to survive. But they didn’t do it very well. And so they rolled out with Uber Eats. That was it. And the CEO, Mandy Shaw, said, hey, we really need to revamp the technology in our locations because I think we need to go through an entire technology shift so that we can innovate.

And so that excited me. Like, we’re gonna go in and innovate. They had NCR Aloha in all their locations. And we couldn’t innovate. Couldn’t make any changes. It’s too expensive to, you know, it’d take nine months to make a change.So I said, okay, the first thing we have to do is replace our heart. They’re like, what? Well, we’re gonna replace the heart, which is your point of sale solution. And a lot of people tried to say, well, can we replace the arteries and the legs and all that at the same time? So I said no. So the point of sale solution I put in was my fourth point of sale solution rolled out. I don’t think any other CIO can say that. Because I did Domino’s Pulse. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Why is that? Why is that? Why do people generally, especially in the point of sale solution case, you know, I’ve seen that a lot. And I’ve been watching this all over the world, right?

So from my vantage point, I also kind of got to see, you know, how it moved across the world in different, you know, because pre-COVID, world was still at very different places, you know, in their own countries, right? COVID leveled it. You know, COVID was the year when 2020 to 2022, you know, I used to always tell people that, you know, for the first time in 10 years of our company, everybody in the world at the same time won the same thing.

I’ve never seen, you know, I’ve never experienced this before. But why do you think is the, you know, why are you saying that not many CIOs can say that? And I know not many can say that, but why do they know that the heart doesn’t work? They still continue to stick to something that they know will not work.

 

Chris Demery: (32:57)

Because a heart replacement’s pretty hard. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But then, I think business not growing is harder. 

 

Chris Demery:

I mean, you’re absolutely right. If you’re, if you don’t plan your replacement of your heart very well, things can go sideways very quickly. And at the same time, if you don’t do your due diligence around costs, costs can escalate. So you have to put together a good business picture, a good ROI for all the franchisees. I’ll give you an example. Our franchisees are like, I don’t want to put in this new point of sale solution. Like, well, according to our FDD, you have to use the technology solution I choose.

Now, if I can save you money, and it works better, you’ll like it, right? And they’re like, yeah. I’ll say, okay, so pilot it. So one of our largest franchisees had 25 locations. They have 27 now. Put it in one location. And his team said, oh my God, this is so much better than a low, ha. And the president called me and said, I want it in my other 24 locations as fast as you can do it. And it saved $200 a month per restaurant on base costs.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. That’s a quote and that’s great. I mean, as I said, I do wonder that why do CIOs don’t really, or CTOs and head of ITs, they don’t really, they’re afraid of moving to anything that is better. It has always surprised me.

 

Chris Demery:

I think I have another potential is I think a lot of CIOs and CTOs I know have never been in operations. You don’t know how to go to an operator and say, I know you don’t wanna do that, but let’s look at how easy it is to train. Let’s look at how easy it is to manage your food costs.

All the things that an operator’s worried about, people, food costs, technology costs. So if you can’t, my experience is if you can’t talk like an operator, you can’t sell to an operator. And so a lot of technologists can’t do that, in my opinion.

And since I was on both sides, when I was at Blumenbrands on the delivery side, I told the technology team, here’s what I need, here’s how I recommend we do it, and they built what an operator needed and everybody loved it. So the same thing, I think that’s how you’re successful as a IT leader, as a CTO, is one, you have to have a strategy around innovation. Where’s the brand going? What are we trying to do? And second, you have to be able to talk to operators.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You’ve been in restaurant space and I see the journey has been quite organic. 25 years, yeah. But I see restaurant space, and whether you’re an operator or whether you’re running technology, it is one of the toughest space to be in because you are literally, it’s almost 24 seven on your toes. It never stops, you need to be… And technology, you don’t have the opportunity to go wrong even for a day or an hour or for a minute. Anything breaks down, anything goes wrong, operations go for a toss.

One of the toughest positions to be in tech, that’s what I see now in hindsight. When I see my friends who run, let’s say marketing tech products, I’m like, guys, this is beautiful, because your product goes down, nobody cares. It has its own good and bad. But I understand that this is not mission critical. Have you ever, what made you continue in this industry or have you ever thought of, that hey, I need sanity someplace else, some industry, some other industry, you and your tech?

 

Chris Demery:

Well, I mean, it’s a hospitality industry. You gotta be friendly, right? And most restaurant people are hospitable. They’re friendly, they have to be social. It’s a great industry to be in. So I’ve looked at going to other industries. And during, headhunters contact me periodically. They’re like, hey, you have a great LinkedIn background. You’ve done all this stuff, and you wanna go to the finance industry. Well, talk to some of those leaders, and they’re, no offense, pretty stuffed shirts. You go to just anything that’s not hospitality oriented, that’s not me, that’s not my personality. I am a leader of teams, and I try to solve people’s problems. That’s what I’m known for in the industry. And so I just never decided to move away from it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What is one myth that you feel people have about restaurant industry from outside, maybe the tech people or people who are not in the industry, which is an absolute, which is not true?

 

Chris Demery:

I’ll tell you the one that I laugh at all the time, and you’ve probably heard this. How hard can it be to make a pizza? We have, so if you do the math, besides the dough, the sauce, the cheese, we have 43 ingredients. Every pizza’s custom made. Amazon can’t do it. They got out of the food business. Amazon can deliver stuff in two hours. When you order food, when do you want it? Two hours from now or in 30 minutes? And so it’s the full belief that it’s really hard to build a custom sweater in 15 minutes so you can have it delivered in 30. We do that all the time. Whether it’s pizza, any custom ordered food is hard to do.

And a lot of people get into the restaurant industry believing how hard can it be to cook? Well, it depends. You want your food in two days or you want it in 10 minutes? So I’ve seen a lot of franchisees get into like, how hard can this be? It’s pretty darn hard. You don’t manage your labor. You don’t manage your food. You don’t have situational awareness. And what I mean by that is you kind of read the room. You read the group. You read your restaurant. If you can’t adjust that quickly, that’s what makes it hard. So I think there’s a myth out there that the restaurant industry is easy. But yet we have, what, 10,000 brands a year start and fail. It’s crazy.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

As a leader, how have you evolved over the years? And this question is like two parts. One is more plain, vanilla. What is your leadership style? How do you define it today? And my second part of this question is that how has it evolved, especially from military background and you were a decade plus there. And then you come to this industry, computer science, talking to like a very different cohort of people. How have you changed when you look back from that? Where did that empathy come from? Or was it there always? It’s kind of, I mean, you answer it the way you want.

 

Chris Demery: (40:51)

Yeah, I think I would go back to Domino’s pizza days. I came out of the military as a major. Got out. I’m a leader. I’m a technology leader. I know how to build technology. And I had a, so I was building stuff and nobody was using it. And I had a manager, bless her heart. She came to me and she said, why don’t we ask the people in the restaurants what they want?

And so we, and my team won an award for it. It was a Wikipedia page where we connected with people at the restaurant and they could say, I wish I had this. And she would moderate it. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So you had to reply like an internal wiki. 

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah, like an internal wiki, right? And they would say, well, I wish I had this. And somebody, my manager would answer them. It’s like, okay, that’s a good idea. Can you explain a little bit more? So they would give us input. And that changed my team on a dime. I’m like, oh my God.

If we just built it that way, they would use it. And so we started cultivating believers in technology in the restaurants because we were just listening to them. So that’s where the philosophy of, listen to the frontline people. You solve their problem, they’re with you for life. So we actually had Blaze Pizza managers comment to us that we no longer feel like we’re on an island. There’s hundreds of us and thousands of us.

And so that was cool. That’s what changed my mind. And then I realized we were one of the first adopters at Domino’s of Agile. And it is a philosophy, it’s not a process. And so as a leader, when I go into a team, and with all of my partners, if they don’t do Agile, we’re not gonna be successful. And so to me, the philosophy around Agile is directionally deliver what your guests or customers want as quick as possible.

That’s the philosophy. And do not make it perfect because they don’t really know what they want. And if you can do that consistently and then fix whatever issues need fixed, they’ll believe in you forever.

And so that’s the philosophy. I think that’s, maybe that’s number two. I think you asked three questions, but I think number two is I changed my mentality around listening and then I really implemented, and I believe that philosophy as I go into organizations. And I adjust that Agile mentality based on the people that I have. So. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And what, how did that, actually you kind of already answered that, but I actually wanted to touch upon that. From the military, and this is a model and assumption, that that’s where you’re taught or you’re in the practice of doing what is required and you’re of course not asking somebody at the, you know.

 

Chris Demery:

Well, I had a lot of leaders in the military that would say go do this exactly as it is and we would either partially fail or partially succeed. And I learned there that, I mean, literally you’re a team. A one person army doesn’t win very many battles. And so you have to look at all your resources. I don’t hire for skill, I hire for the ability to learn. Because I don’t know what’s gonna happen in three months from a technology perspective and say, you know what, I know what we were doing. I need you to learn this new thing because the environment, the domain has changed. And so I don’t want people that know C Sharp.net. I want people that are willing to learn new things and new technologies because that’s who’s gonna make my team better in the long run.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And that’s a great part. How are you dealing with all the new tech that is being thrown at you every day? And I think in the last couple of years, the amount of different new technology, be it peripheral products, features, you know, running around as products to platforms. Everything is being thrown at you and not all of it is bad. I mean, how are you dealing with this new wave? 

 

Chris Demery:

Of AI?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Not AI. I really want to say that, but no. I think I have a better question for AI, but no, I’m just talking about tech in general, where you know that you’re supposed to continuously evaluate and be ahead of the curve or at least have the pulse of the market. How do you look at it when you don’t have the requirement? You’re kind of settled in whatever you have right now, but you still are curious. How do you look at that?

 

Chris Demery:

So I guess the way, part of my evolution as a leader, I think I know what’s good for the restaurant industry, but I always try to couch it from the posture of the guest. And our guest changes pretty quickly. So you have to understand your guest experience and where your brand wants that guest experience to be. And whatever new technologies come along have to supplement that. Technologies can’t replace the guest experience and they can’t make it worse. The second piece is, technologies have to simplify the job of the people in the restaurant.

They’re really entrepreneurs. They want to be cooks. They want to be servers. Some people love that. Some people just do it in order to get by. But the people get into the restaurant industry, maybe because they think it’s easy, but because they want to innovate. And you put new technology in front of those people and it makes their life harder. For instance, I had a vendor I won’t mention. It’s like, yeah, we can provide you, if you just go back to the computer and run this report, you’ll see the data you’re looking for. I’m like, I can’t do that. My guys are running a shift. They’re dealing with guests in the lobby. We have a new project. It’s called Heightened Time Awareness. This came from Domino’s Pizza, so it’s not something new.

It’s like, what’s happening right now that I need to know that would change a decision I need to make? Do I have more guests than I forecasted? Am I selling more pepperoni than I thought I was gonna sell, so I need to order pepperoni? And this lends itself to the AI models, if you wanna go down that path. And so I’ve had several vendors come in and go, well, I can put it on your iPhone. They don’t carry iPhones in our restaurants.

So, well, how are we gonna do it? I’m like, here’s a concept to deliver actionable information to a leader, and I have two of my partners, QBeyond and Fresh Tech Technologies, that are helping me solve that problem, and I think it’s gonna be a competitive advantage for Blaze Pizza. Now, the way I position it with the vendors is, you do this for us, you’re gonna be able to sell this.

Because everybody wants actionable information for a restaurant manager at their fingertips without having to run a report, look at their iPhone, or their manager calling them and saying, did you realize what’s happening? No, I didn’t realize. So I came up with the concept of AI bots that will tell a shift leader through headphones.

Just as an example. We forecasted your digital sales to be 20 orders an hour, it’s now 40 orders an hour. Should you do something? Now, my technology people are there going, what are we gonna tell them to do? I’m like, you’re not gonna tell them to do anything. They have to make a decision. If they don’t have the data, they can’t make a decision. So give them the data. What if they make the wrong decision? And so there’s this whole philosophy around, if I don’t know something’s wrong, I can’t make a decision. So just let them know something’s going sideways. Because our store managers today are 20 years old. They’re not 35. They don’t have 15 years of experience. They rotate through these jobs. And so part of that is what I call situational awareness. I know something’s happening, but tell me what I really need to pay attention to. So I think there’s a role for AI in that space.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And that’s actually one of the better examples of AI being put to use in a long time that I’ve seen. Because people, like for example, the kind of requests that we are receiving from all over the world, some of them are extremely bizarre and random, where we don’t really blame the one who’s giving the requirement, because we understand that everybody’s in this race of showing to the board that what’s their AI strategy. And we’ve been telling customers, relax. There’s a lot of AI already working in the system. We just don’t tell you that it’s AI, because it doesn’t really matter. We need to give you the ROI. And some of the AI, you don’t really need it, because your operations, your people, your business cannot consume that outcome yet. So for example, like in your case, in case you had asked them to exactly tell the manager what needs to be done. 

 

Chris Demery:

They won’t believe you. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Now it becomes unviable. 

 

Chris Demery:

They’re not gonna do it. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

That’s exactly what I meant, right? That there’s so much that technology can do potentially, which a business probably cannot consume, because it’s not viable, it doesn’t make sense, and the world still does not have that much data.

 

Chris Demery:

So even back at Domino’s, early days, we had something called a ticker that ran across the bottom of our makeline screen. And the ticker would say, because we owned all the technology, you forecasted this many pizzas, products that went through the oven per hour, and you scheduled this many people to handle that, because we had a model of how you did that. 10% low on products going through the oven.

Therefore, you’re 10% high on your labor. Every hour of labor you don’t cut somebody is costing you $7, or $3, or $2. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And you had that at Domino’s? 

 

Chris Demery:

Yes, yes. It’s called the ticker, across the bottom of the makeline screen. And people at Domino’s got bonus on how close to you for managing labor. So interesting fact, every brand is slightly different. At Domino’s, if you were plus or minus 1%, you’re in a sweet spot for food and labor, from your forecast. I go to brands where it’s, well, if you’re kind of plus or minus 10. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One is amazing, actually.

 

Chris Demery:

0.1 is amazing. This was, it’s not one, it’s 0.1. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, wow. 

 

Chris Demery:

So if you got to 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, you weren’t getting a bonus. Plus or minus seven, it’s absurd.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah. 

 

Chris Demery:

Because if you’re more than 60. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

In the customer, that’s what it’d be doing.

 

Chris Demery:

Yeah. I mean, your prime cost, food and labor, if you’re more than 60% all in, you’re losing money, probably. Depends on your occupancy costs, all that kind of stuff. I only know all that because I had to build two brands to do it, right? So you understand all those components. I don’t think a lot of technology people know that. And so, food and labor are the number one thing, so you have to build tools that allow that. You understand it. You build a platform.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Bottom line, efficiency is the only delivery that technology or operations, or both, need to deliver. I mean, otherwise, tools don’t run the business, tools enable the business. Chris, that was fabulous. This is, 

 

Chris Demery:

Thank you. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

There’s so much more that I would love to speak to you about. Pure greed, personal enrichment. But this was great. I mean, a lot of great takeaways. And thank you for being here. Thank you for agreeing to do this. I’m really honored to have you. 

 

Chris Demery:

Oh yeah, thank you very much.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Thank you. 

 

Chris Demery:

Thank you.