Ashish Tulsian

Hi, welcome to Restrocast. Today with me is Justin Skelton. He’s a senior V.P. and CIO at Dine Brands. Justin’s journey is not only a long but an extremely fulfilling and enriching one.

I think Justin is somebody who achieved peak in each part of his career. I actually looked at three peaks while talking to him, right from Allstate Insurance to Bank of America to CVS and now to Dine brands. Justin worked, contributed to four different industries and contributed in each of them at the top. This conversation was really enriching for me. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too. Welcome to Restrocast.

Justin Skelton

It’s good to be here.

Ashish Tulsian

Thank you for allowing us to do that. Justin, can you tell us what is your day job today? What is what is your role today? And then we will dive into, you know, the personal side of life where it all started.

Justin Skelton

Sure. So my role today is senior vice president and CIO, at Dine Brands global, and I run all of I.T., all things I.T. That’s a combination of restaurant technology. So any technologies that occur inside the restaurant. I’ve got a good amount of that accountability, you know, and I say a good amount because there are actually systems. For example, some of the back in H.R. systems in the restaurants that we don’t directly decide upon, although we obviously look at where there’s an opportunity to leverage our scale to get the best prices. So. But in terms of the back of house and the in restaurant front of house technology, I’ve got accountability for that. In addition, the off prem technology we use, the website, mobile app, all the business intelligence capabilities. I have teams that drive that as well. And then finally, I would say the corporate systems, anything that takes place or supports our or our corporate employees or dine employees. I’ve got you know, that that also falls within my purview and also the infrastructure right cloud, these technologies, etcetera, also fall within my remit as well. So that’s my day to day. And then, in addition to that, also sit on the executive team. So I report into the CEO and so matters any discussions around kind of corporate strategy direction of the company. I participate directly in those conversations.

Ashish Tulsian

And how like like, you know, like in 30 seconds on how large is Dine brands.

Justin Skelton

So Dine brands. So Dine Brands from an employee base perspective, we’re at about 5 to 600 people. Right. Give or take. But the difference with our company, because that seemed that may seem kind of small, but when you think about it, we support all the franchisees as well now, because we’re what we call asset light. We’re 100% franchise now. We don’t have employees that sit inside of the restaurants. Right. The franchisees. Mm hmm. Or accountable for those resources. So it’s one of those things where the numbers look relatively small, but the impact from example, from an I.T. perspective. Yeah. Is broad is huge because it not only deals with all the technology in the field as well.

Ashish Tulsian

And how many restaurants.

Justin Skelton

So we’ve got we got about 1600 in IHOP, roughly the same amount in Applebee’s. So another six, 1600. And then for Fuzzies, we’re anywhere between I think we have close to 200 locations. This is where we’re at for Fuzzies right now. And growing.

Ashish Tulsian

So that’s like 3400.

Justin Skelton

Oh, yeah. Yep. So, yeah, So. So you’re talking you’re talking of close to 4000 restaurants. Yeah. Well, that’s 3200. And then you’ve got another 200. So not, not that far shy of I think 4000. We’ll just call it 4000. Sounds better.

Ashish Tulsian

Perfect. Perfect. Justin so you know, we’ll dive into the personal side of the story where it all started. Where did you grow up? How was the early life?

Justin Skelton

Sure. Well, it’s a it’s a it’s an interesting story for for a lot of different reasons. I always find it hard to me, it’s a little bit boring because I talk about myself a whole lot. But word started. I’m a I think you have to express it. I’m a military brat. We were called military brats. And that’s where, you know, your father or mother is was a was a service member and was a career service member. So we grew up moving around the life I grew up in outside of Boston, Massachusetts. We moved around. I think I counted I think just even being part of the military, I think we lived in five different states, lived overseas, lived in Germany for three years. We were there. And so basically, I would describe my my childhood as being one of continuing to move around like nearly almost every three years.

Ashish Tulsian

You know.

Justin Skelton

You’re you know, my case, my father would come home and say, you know, we’re we’re off moving to the next place, you know. And so it was a bit of an adventure not knowing where you were going to end up. And so that’s why I would that’s how I would characterize my upbringing. I’ve got siblings. So knowing it wasn’t just me and not an only child, but we would actually, you know, so all of us would would go through that same experience of having to pick up, move to a new place, meet new friends, right. Get adjusted to the new environment and adapt to whatever was going on wherever you were going. And so so yeah, that was how many.

Ashish Tulsian

How many siblings?

Justin Skelton

So I’ve got I’ve got three brothers and one sister. Yeah. And I’m and I’m the second youngest. So in the pecking order.

Ashish Tulsian

And how did how did that shape you, you know, moving around and almost you said every three years.

Justin Skelton

Or so, Right. Every three years. Yeah. I think the I think the biggest thing is you have to learn how to adapt. Right. I think you’re always subject to changing environment because, you know, you could live in the same state and never had moves and have to deal with change just because you’re you’re going from an adolescent to right into a teenage years and to, you know, you know, high school years. But when you have to move around, you don’t have the luxury of having and knowing that having friends that go back to elementary school, who you’ve gone all the way through the the your through your adolescent phase and graduating high school was so the way I would the way I would characterize it would be really having to really adapt to change because that change was being thrown at you. I mean, to give you a perfect example of it, when we were we moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Bonn, Germany. And if you can imagine, if you think about a cultural change going from the, you know, in the desert, right. Yeah. The great Southwest and moving to a whole different country and moving to Germany. You could understand how you have to adapt that.

Ashish Tulsian

It’s not only culture, it’s weather, it’s the food, everything.

Justin Skelton

You know, the whole thing. I mean, you’re right. I mean, it’s the weather was different. The the language was very different. I mean, we lived on an American community. So you had other Americans around you that spoke English. So it wasn’t like it was you’re being thrown into an environment where you didn’t speak the language. I mean, where people around you didn’t speak the language.

Justin Skelton

But but certainly when you left the confines of the military installation and you went out into the we call it the German economy at the time, oh, you know, you had to learn how to get around. Right. And so it was a complete, completely new experience. But it’s one where you had to really adapt to change. And in addition to that, you are exposed to in the military, you’re exposed to a lot of different people and different people of different backgrounds, different I mean, if you you know, you could live in the U.S. and, you know, as they say, a lot of people never live outside of five miles from where they grew up. Right. So but when you’re when you’re in the military, you got people from different parts of the U.S., different parts of, you know, different countries even. And so that was the other thing I think that changed me as well, or at least influence the person I am today.

Ashish Tulsian

Change you. How do like on a day to day basis or in life, where all do you feel that change or where you feel that okay I’m different from probably, you know, people my peers, how they react to situations versus you react.

Justin Skelton

Yeah. I can’t speak for them because I don’t know.

Ashish Tulsian

No. For your own right. I mean, you know, where do you see your reactions are different?

Justin Skelton

Yeah. I mean, I what I, how I, how I feel about my background and how it relates to how we interact just in my personal life and business, what have you, is one of a great deal of tolerance. I think, you know, just because I’ve, I again, experience different things growing up and different cultures, different, you name it. Right. And so, you know, my level of interaction is one of of of of tolerance listening, you know, you know, teamwork. You know, I also come from a sports background and, you know, partly being in the military, military is one component of it. But also playing sports growing up, I mean, so a lot of it was just around team play. And, you know, you win as a team, You operate as a team. You can’t you can’t win a team as an individual. So I think those things we I would characterize would be the things that actually influence how I interact today. Right. And and how it translates to business right throughout my career, as a matter of fact. So I like to think that those things had a very positive impact. Again, just in terms of how I’ve operated, whether whether it’s a Allstate insurance company when I work CVS, Bank of America, now, I potentially believe that those things translate really well.

Ashish Tulsian

So how was the what, the early career? Where did you go to college and how did the first job happen?

Justin Skelton

Yeah, so I went to. So my my, my undergraduate I went to Cal State University of San Bernardino Small School, small city school in California. I got my MBA from University of Illinois, Chicago. But when I when I started after I graduated, quite frankly, I was looking for a job, you know, That was it. I needed to I need to earn some money. I needed to eat. And so, so, you know, when I left, when I left, when I left college, you know, just looking around for different opportunities and then look through the want ads back in the day, right, you just little want ad sections and different things. And so an opportunity to become a, you know, supervisor at Allstate insurance company. I was living in California at the time and and that’s how I kicked off my career.

Ashish Tulsian

And that is that is a long one in the insurance and eventually in banking.

Justin Skelton

Yeah so so again I didn’t you know a lot of people they think that hey you had when you thought about insurance you were you looking at going into insurance. And I was like, no, I mean, I could have any industry could have approached me at that point in time when I needed to pay my bills. And I certainly would have I certainly would have been open to to any opportunity, any industry. But I also knew when I when I started, when I joined in the insurance business, I also the company had name recognition with me. Everybody knew who Allstate was, right. So so to me, it was there was some comfort in knowing I’d be joining a company that had that wasn’t just a small company that I didn’t really understand it didn’t have a background with. So. So yeah, that’s how I started. And it started with Allstate. After Allstate, I was there for 19 years. So I started here in California, was, was here for a good chunk of my career, you know, just like any other, you know, business. There’s always some change going on, you know, like we talked about, right? Change. Growing up here, you started to adapt to change. The function I was in actually was being consolidated. So we had offices being consolidated. And so the question was, what am I going to do next? So what’s the next opportunity for me? So I was newly married and wanted to start a family. A good deal of my family actually live in Arizona. My my parents at that time had moved from California to Arizona. My dad was planning to retire and they wanted to live there. And so being that being newlyweds, right. And wanting to start a family at some point in time, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to be close to the family. So I took an opportunity to to to move to Phoenix. And even though I started my career in I.T when I moved to Phoenix, they didn’t have an IT role because it was more of a regional or small office environment.

Ashish Tulsian

In Allstate

Justin Skelton

Yeah. So I went into underwriting actually. Oh, it was an interesting I know and that’s what I thought too. I was thinking, well the only opportunity there is is in underwriting so I was an underwriter for about two and a half years.

Ashish Tulsian

Mm hmm.

Justin Skelton

And great experience. I mean, I always say if you’re in the insurance business, the three best departments you can work in to really understand what’s going on. Obviously sales, claims and underwriting. And when I was in underwriting, I learned a lot about, you know, just because I interacted directly with the Allstate agents, I learned a lot about just how you manage risk, right? How you think about, you know, when when customers, when you’re assessing whether a customer is, you know, a potential customer is a good sort of prospect, the prospect that turns into an insured, you know, you really got to apply some critical thinking. It’s not just, for example, they can have another policy or two policies. You had a long term relationship with you, although the policy they’re bringing to you on the on its on its surface may not be the best risk.

Justin Skelton

So being to look at risk holistically and bring that to the table. So I was there. They figured out pretty quickly, I’m an IT guy. So within that building they were really, you know, at that time we really building a department around technology. And so I was thrilled when at that time the president of the region, I was in the regional the regional vice president came to me and it was kind of more of a passing thing where he said, oh, by the way, you’re you’re going to be moving to a different apartment. And I said, what you talking about and I didn’t necessarily have insight into what I would actually have to be doing, but I think it was it was it was widely known that this guy knows technology. We’re building technology. He really needs to be over there. He’s going to be the biggest benefit to us. So I worked over there, did a range of different responsibilities, but the headquarters of all state was in Northbrook, Illinois. And so mostly if you wanted to advance your career, you’re going to have to relocate. So when I was working in Arizona in this newly formed department, I was it was my title was technology division manager. There were multiple technology division managers around the country. So each regional office had one of me in their offices. So I get a call right away. Are you interested in coming to Chicago, coming to the big house? Right. And coming in, doing much broader things that impact not just the region you’re in, but across the entire company? To which I said I couldn’t pass that up at that point in time. I was really interested in growing my career. So moved to Chicago, moved to Chicago metro area, and worked in a variety of different responsibilities there, you know, finished up, graduate school and was really, really happy with my career progression. I felt really good about how things were progressing. I felt. But there was there was a there was a point at which I was deciding, what am I going to do? Am I going to stay here and get the quote unquote, gold watch, or am I going to start really thinking about my next moves outside the company? and just giving it some thought. Right. I saw where there was sort of a trend where a lot of people were moving to different companies. You know, it used to be back in the day, you stay with the company, right? Then you retired with that same company. And I saw where, a trend was emerging because we were bringing people from the outside into our company where versus just everything being kind of an internal promotion. So, you know, these kind of things start to have an impact. You start to really start to think, you know, perhaps my, my, my best days are really going out and exploring what’s in the marketplace. Before I could do anything, I just finished up my my, my MBA. I get a call from somebody who used to work I used to work with who was in worked at the Auto Club Group, which is triple-A. And the person said, hey, remember me? I’m looking for a chief technology officer or a CTO. And I said, okay. And things moved pretty quickly. And the next thing I know, I’m joining Triple A as a chief technology officer and out of Dearborn, Michigan. So I was in Michigan and a great company, much smaller than Allstate insurance companies. So sort of the sort of before I was, as they say, a small a small fish in a big pond. Now, I became a sort of a big, big fish in a small pond. But the but it was a great experience for me. And I was really, really looking forward to really having that broader impact as an executive at that point. You know, making the technology decisions. Yeah, is really what I was interested in doing.

Ashish Tulsian

What year was that?

Justin Skelton

That would have been that would have been 2000, 2006. And I was there and I was really I was really happy with, with the job and with the role with the company. But I had some aging parents on the West Coast and I and I was and I was, you know, my my father was sick at the time, and I found myself, you know, traveling back and forth on a regular basis. And I just said, you know, well, I can’t really I don’t think we can. I can’t really sustain this. And so I had an interest in and in coming back to the West Coast or to Arizona, to either Arizona, California, there was an opportunity that came up. And by the way, my background there was strictly insurance, so I hadn’t had any restaurant experience or anything else in my my whole sole career was in the insurance business. And even the triple-A, you know, triple-A does towing, but they’re effectively the biggest the largest part of their of their their revenue comes from selling insurance. So so there was an opportunity working for Countrywide. So most people and some people forget about Countrywide, but actually Countrywide, the big mortgage company in the U.S. and it was right around just before the global financial crisis, the GFC. And I got a call that Countrywide was looking for a CIO to run their insurance services group. And so so I knew there were, you know, interestingly enough, I mean, it is a small world. The insurance business can be a relatively small world.

Ashish Tulsian

And it’s a pretty defined vertical.

Justin Skelton

Very defined vertical. So you find that a lot of people you probably crossed paths with at some point in time or you know them and they or, you know, people that know them. So so I interviewed with them. They’re based in Southern California, based in Irvine, California, at the time and interviewed and joined with Countrywide Insurance Services Group, which was a phenomenal experience. Right. But, nothing good lasts. So it was it was an interesting thing. Bank of America at the time had even before I joined, they had acquired they were they were in the process of acquiring Countrywide. So even during the and even during the interview process, not only do not only that, I had to interview with people from Countrywide, I also had to interview with people from Bank of America.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh, oh, the acquisition was underway.

Justin Skelton

Was underway. Yeah. Okay. And it was moving pretty quickly as I was going through the interviewing process. So the minute I thought, okay, this is great interviews done a time out, you got to interview with a whole lot of other people, you know, So it was a fairly lengthy process of interviewing with them with with Countrywide slash Bank of America at the time. So I joined up to Countrywide and Bank of America and ran all the combined insurance services group for for for Bank of America. So at the time, there was know property and casualty and not to give a lesson around insurance, but, you know but there were multiple divisions that was were part of the combination of Countrywide and Bank of America. And so so I was there. I so I ran that function. I reported into a kind of a dual reporting relationship to the to the overall CIO of all the consumer bank, which included insurance. They had a dotted line to the CEO of the of the of the insurance services group right there. So I was there. But again, a lot of change happening at the time. Bank of America wasn’t really interested in continuing with the property casualty business. insurance vertical is a very specific you need a very specific skill set. It’s a it’s a very unique business. You have you have claims in in in the banking industry. You don’t have much in the way of volatility around revenue and claims you just don’t. Right. But insurance you do you have something called catastrophes, right. You’ve got a lot of risk you have to manage and and at the time also, you know most banks were trying to had a capital preservation requirement or a capital reservation need to have right to be able to to to demonstrate to the federal government that even though that you weren’t too big to fail, you know, you had.

Ashish Tulsian

To especially after the crash.

Justin Skelton

Crash. After the crash, it was like everybody was saying, non-strategic assets were being sold off. Hmm. So it wasn’t core to your to your your business model those assets needed to have. So you could you could you could basically, you know, bring in the money to actually have the right capital reserves. So the insurance services group was was one on the on the chopping block or one to be sold as it is better put. And so I had a decision to make was I going to stay with the insurance component or was it important for me to stay with the Bank of America because that decision was going to be critical if I stayed with insurance, if if it was sold off, then I was going to go with with the company that was that it was being divested to as part of the divestiture. If I stayed with Bank of America, then it would be I’d become now officially I’m officially now in the banking industry. Yeah. So that was sort of a that was sort of an inflection point from at the time my kids were still middle school, elementary school. So the first time in my career I basically said, I’m not willing to move. I’ve got to get my kids through, had them give them some stability in this whole process. So I made a decision to stay with Bank of America. I became the chief technology officer for the the mortgage and the insurance and what was remaining from the insurance business. So I ran all the I ran all of the I partnered with the CIO of that same organization, but I ran all the infrastructure, all the architecture and all that. So I did that for a while. And then, of course, a lot of changes and you’re all thinking about your next move. Typically either you’re thinking about the next move or the company’s thinking about where they can put you right, where they have a need for you. So I went into, after that I went into data management. So I really was interested in learning more about data. So even though it’s part of a CIO function or a CTO function, you’re going to get exposed to data. But when you get to when you want to do it, sort of in that particular vertical and that domain across the company, you’re going to get a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge. Yeah, And so I went into the data management under enterprise technology in function there for a while.

Ashish Tulsian

In Bank of America.

Justin Skelton

At Bank of America. Yeah. And so, so company was changing. I was still I was one of the last remaining officers in California. A good could not relocate. I was not in a place where I could work and make that move. And so so ultimately, I made a decision to figure out what my next job was going to be. One of the one of the individuals that I worked with at the insurance Services Group that I mentioned for the Countrywide Insurance Group. He was a chief operating officer there. He had gone to work for another company that was that was based in the US, but they had acquired a specialty insurance group in out of London. And so he calls me up and says, Hey, I could use your help. We’re bringing these two companies together. You know, you’ve got a you’ve got you know, you’ve proven that you’ve got a great background. We he and I worked really well together. He says, I want you to consult with me for about nine months. And I said, Great. And I said, What am I going to do? He says, You’re going to do. You know, I got I got a ton of things for you to do. And when those things are completed, I also need to do some research right around things like, you know, autonomous vehicles and some of that, some of the things that would be more innovative. So I was really excited about that. It was probably in my career I have say that was one of the most fun opportunities I had because I had never been on the 1099. I had never been an independent contractor, I didn’t even know what that was. I’d always been sort of a corporate a corporate employee. So that was a great experience. Plus, I could I could just throw all these different ideas out. It came to me as me what my thoughts were, perspectives were, and it was just a great arrangement.

Ashish Tulsian

Got a chance to, like, think freely about technology.

Justin Skelton

Exactly. Exactly. Hey, did give me your thoughts around this. Right. And you weren’t you didn’t have necessarily a team where you had all the administrative duties you got. We had team meetings, running team meetings, etc.. So it was me just working as an independent contractor and again, having the freedom to be able to offer perspectives, put together presentations the whole bit, you know, was was really when I look back on it, not to mention I was living in London for nine months and that was an experience in and of itself. So I so I worked, worked. I did I worked with him for nine months. My contract was coming to an end and I was trying to really trying to figure out what I was going to do next. So my next assignment was working for CVS Health. I never worked and never worked in retail, never worked in the health care business. Right now.

Ashish Tulsian

These are two beasts combined.

Justin Skelton

These are two beasts, exactly so I work so so I joined the CVS was was based in Scottsdale, Arizona. It happened to be a location that I was comfortable with. Yeah. And at that time, my kids were my kids were sort of off doing doing their own thing right, off to college and all that. So I had the flexibility and freedom to start to the broaden out of it. I mentioned to you I got family in Arizona, so it was a perfect fit. So yeah, went to work for CVS Health, was there. Huge company. You know, I tell people about when you think about acquisitions, I always tell people when you work for a company that size, I mean, I think we were before the acquisition of Aetna, I think I think we were probably about Fortune ten, Fortune 11 Massive massive company.

Ashish Tulsian

Though. I didn’t know that.

Justin Skelton

I’m sorry?

Ashish Tulsian

I didn’t know that. I never realized.

Justin Skelton

That. Oh, yeah, it is all it is predominantly all domestic United States 11,000. Now it’s like Fortune three or four. Yeah, man.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. Wow.

Justin Skelton

So it’s this big company, I think. I think revenue was about 300 billion, give or take. It was just insanely large. But I had an opportunity to to again, to work there I was I was an executive there. We did a lot of transformations at the company. So did my time there. And very similar or a similar experience where you where you’re thinking about, okay, are you going to have to relocate? Because after the acquisition of Aetna, a lot of those individuals were actually on the East Coast. And CVS is based in Woonsocket  Rhode Island. So so, you know, you really start to figure out what do you want to do next in your career. Long story short, I love CVS, and I was thinking about my next opportunity and that’s when Dine Brands comes into play. And so.

Ashish Tulsian

That. How did that happen?

Justin Skelton

That Well, yeah, the way that happened, the way it happened, quite frankly, is I had left CVS and I was looking to say, okay, what do I want to do differently? Right. What I want to do? And just like anything else, you’re sort of looking around and saying, you know who you know, you know what what companies or what companies are doing what? And a recruiter got in touch with a recruiter over there. And and and she started the interviewing process. At that time in my career, what I would say would be I was I felt like I had done everything just about I wanted to do. I was already had already had this you know, I had the CIO title, which of course for me, from my humble beginnings, I was I was delighted that I reached the level of CIO and reached a level of CTO. I was really happy with that.

Ashish Tulsian

And that too with the largest companies in their sector.

Justin Skelton

Exactly. I mean, divisional CTO, even those the divisional CTO, divisional CIO, these are large companies and even those groups are fairly large. So for me, just to be able to achieve that level, I was I was delighted. I mean, so for me, it wasn’t about I want to go to become a CIO again. At that point in time in my career, I was really looking forward to how can I help companies if they’ve, you know, my interest there was just saying, let me take let me take my experience and, you know, it could have been it could have been, quite frankly, a project manager. And I was prepared to say, let me just help the company out. You know, I was I felt like I already like I said before, I felt like I had accomplished my main goals that I’d set out. And I was delighted. So I joined the I joined the company. I was running the cloud based technologies for Dine at the time I relocated to to the headquarters is in Glendale, in Glendale, California, and I was happy to relocate again. My kids were already off doing their own thing. I had the flexibility to move. It happened to be these in my geography that I had a preference of being in. And so a lot of friends, my my, my two of my kids are in California. So it was to me, I think.

Ashish Tulsian

Perfect. Yeah.

Justin Skelton

And then and then and then the pandemic hit, which was just like most people.

Ashish Tulsian

You joined and you joined in 2019?

Justin Skelton

Yes, I joined before the pandemic. I joined in 2019, but the pandemic was like in 2020, 2019, 2020. So all of a sudden the whole thing changed on the dime, right? We we went from I went from, okay, I’m, you know, sort of getting an understanding around how the restaurant business works and how in Dine Brands to, oh, my God, you know, you know, restaurants are closing down. Right. We you know, there’s no there’s no in-restaurant dining. What is it going to mean? Now, the course, of all of that, my predecessor had moved on to a different company. And I get a call from then the CFO saying, how are you doing? And I’m like, I think I’m doing okay, you know? But this is all during this was when when everything was getting really crazy with the pandemic. And he says basically, hey, we want to we want you to come in and be the CIO. And he said, What do you think about that? And I said, I said, I’m in because I what I decided at that point in time was it was either I was going to take the CIO job or somebody else was going to come in outside and take the CIO job. Now, because I already had the experience, I felt like, Hey, listen, I’ll go ahead and take the job, because I at that point in time, I felt like I can make the biggest impact for the company. So I took the job. But during that period of time, it was it was a challenge because, you know, we needed to make very difficult conversation or very difficult decisions around how we were going to fund the IT portfolio. Right. It was going to be.

Ashish Tulsian

So you’re talking about and just to I think I missed that, you’re talking about taking the CIO job at Dine.

Justin Skelton

Yes, Dine. Dine Brands. So it was during it was it was during the it was during the pandemic.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh, you you took that up during the pandemic.

Justin Skelton

Oh, yeah. So the pandemic. So I joined the company in 2019.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah.

Justin Skelton

Right. And then what happened to the and then what happened as the pandemic began to really.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh, the role was different.

Justin Skelton

Yeah, the role was different all given role at the time. So I ran in and I was running all the cloud technologies. When I first joined Dine brands and I reported in to the CIO. And so when the pandemic hit, the, the then CIO took a different job and then I was elevated to take the role.

Ashish Tulsian

I got it, got it.

Justin Skelton

But during that period of time, we were we had to make some decisions around personnel decisions because overall we were in a we were in a very it was a very difficult situation for all the restaurants, for all business. Yeah. The restaurant business was impacted. Hospitality was impacted more greatly. And so at that time we were, you know, we had decided that, you know, listen, we’re going to have to potentially reduce our staff were in reduced overall IT portfolio and so that was a that was a very difficult period of time kind of being new in the in the role. A lot of people like taking the role when everything is good, right? You got a big portfolio, you got a lot of money to spend. But this was a situation when I took over. It was a bit of a crisis during a very difficult time. Again, across all industries, everybody.

Ashish Tulsian

But even more so for the restaurants, because the visibility was also poor for the restaurant, especially the dine-in formats, right?

Justin Skelton

I mean. Exactly. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

I mean, the world could not believe that dine-in is going to come back in the same form.

Justin Skelton

Exactly. Exactly. And our big pivot was we needed to really in to survive and we had to really go off run. We had to really look at the digital, you know, where we were from a digital perspective. But really what it did was an accelerated a lot of work. We had contemplated. We needed to accelerate that because that’s how a lot of people wanted to engage. I mean, it was, you know, I mean, for example, you know, paying-n-go right, you know, bring your own device or pay on your own device, you know, these are things that, you know, being able to see the menu and, you know, the pulling out your phone and pulling it off a QR.

Ashish Tulsian

That as a as a restaurant, I mean, I a restaurant tech company. And I can tell you that so many solutions over the years, which we were kind of ignoring. But, you know, even restaurants when they were asking for it, we were like, all right, are you going to deploy it across the board? I’m like, No, no, we’re just trying. Digital Menu. We were like, Guys, we’re not you’re not here for experimentation. You’re try it from somebody else. Let us know. And as soon as pandemic hit in next two months, all those solutions were like not, we are not only supposed to release, they got deployed.

Justin Skelton

Exactly, exactly right. And we went through the same thing. And so that was our experience. And so it was one of, you know, restaurants, restaurants were being impacted here. You know, consumers and guests have a different way to engage you. And a lot of them needed they were going to do it through DSPs, through DoorDash, you know, Uber eats, et cetera. And so we needed to make sure we adapted our strategy to support that, to support where the customers were going to be. So, yeah, that was a very that was a very challenging time. We had a new CEO then that came in and before he came in I was reporting to the CFO. When he came in, it was a it was, you know, coming out, starting to come out of the pandemic. But a recognition from him as well as from me having had just some time in the role that we were we were really behind in our technology stack. We were really.

Ashish Tulsian

I have I need to ask you that. And before you share exactly what is your conversation with them, I need to ask you, from your perspective, coming from insurance, banking, you know, retail, health care, Right. What do you want? How shocked were you when you saw how behind restaurant industry is on tech?

Justin Skelton

Well, it’s interesting. It’s interesting. I wasn’t entirely shocked because, you know, you would think that the bigger the company, the higher the investment in technology and the more forward looking technology is. But in fact, I wasn’t entirely surprised because it would be more surprising that companies with bigger names are as far behind as they were is the way I would characterize it.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. Okay.

Justin Skelton

So so I think I think we tend to think that, you know, Fortune ten companies have all the best technology out there, but that’s not always the case, particularly in the retail segment, because, you know, the margins are different, retail is different. Margins. And when you think about how you invest in technology, you know, that has an impact. However, if you look at like a like banking technology, you know, particularly around just the wealth side of the business, your technology has to be state of the art. If you if you if you missed trades, yeah. You know, you cost billions right on the on the on the CVS side of it as it relates to the pharmacy component of it or the pharmacy side of the business, it also has to be state of the art. But it doesn’t mean that all the other technology is is as current or as up to date as you would think. So so when I came into the.

Ashish Tulsian

And that’s that’s a fair perspective. Yeah.

Justin Skelton

So what I hear within the restaurant of business, I wasn’t entirely shocked by it you know, so but, but you know as an IT person, you also look at that as a challenge.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh yeah, the opportunity is is brilliant. Yeah.

Justin Skelton

Because if you come into, you know, a lot of technology people, if you already go into an organization that’s already got all the current technology, what’s left to do. You’re just on maintenance right? There’s, there’s the excitement lies with organizations who are behind in technology but are willing to spend the money to to get to a level of currency in terms of the technology stack. So for me, it was a for me. So I looked at it as a great opportunity. I just needed to have a partner who agreed that capital so new capital investment in technology was a good thing and it worked out really well.

Ashish Tulsian

So you’re talking about your conversation with the CEO?

Justin Skelton

Yeah, we had a we had a few he joined the company. We had a few, you know, sort of introductory one on ones and and talks about just different perspectives and points of views around it and he had to two critical points of views that I aligned or three that I aligned 100% with. One was we need to invest more in technology. Well and to me it was like, okay, this is great. You know, we had already developed there was already a 3 to 4 year roadmap. But having on paper is one thing, knowing that you got an investment or investments are going to be made, to be able to bring that to life is a whole different thing. The other thing, you know, the decision that was made was having me report directly to him and that really spoke to the fact that we see IT as a strategic partner. Yeah, we see how critical, you know, technology is going forward into the success of our business. So therefore, it made sense for me to be part of those discussions. So any time you talk strategy, you can’t talk strategy, business strategy without a technology component, right? And so so to me, that was a that was a big win. And the other thing I think that took a lot of pressure off of us was that technology should be brand led. And I think that, you know, I think as technologists, you know, it puts a lot of pressure on your teams where you’ve got to come in with all the answers using technology and at the end of the day, in order to get any technology implemented, you need to have sponsorship. You know, you need to have business sponsors who are who are aligned to your strategy. If those strategies or those ideas around the technology are misaligned at any level, the initiative gets stalled.

Ashish Tulsian

Absolutely.

Justin Skelton

So in particular, when you’re dealing with restaurant technology, because in our case, we’re asset light. As I mentioned, we are 100% franchised. There’s a lot of buy in and support and sponsorship and of just getting everybody on the same page to take something like a point of sale and be able to take it all the way through the system and actually start deploying it.

Justin Skelton

It’s a it’s a massive undertaking, very different from when you have a when it when you with all of the in the case of, for example, CVS, all those all those stores are owned by those are corporate stores. So if there’s a need for technology, the level of buying you need is limited. It is limited by the fact that, you know, you don’t dealing with individual business owners who have to make sort of financial decisions.

Justin Skelton

Right. How much they how much cash they have, how they want to invest or their dollars, etc., etc.. That’s more of a broad base sort of enterprise project that’s done at the corporate level.

Ashish Tulsian

By working at franchises all together, like you’re dealing with so many different other business owners who are going to, you know, question every dollar that is going to go in.

Justin Skelton

That’s exactly right. And so so anyway, that that that was that was that sort of the journey is to getting us to the point where we are now.

Ashish Tulsian

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That’s fascinating. I think. And your perspective on, you know, why you were not shocked looking at the restaurant tech. It’s very interesting for me because because I generally look at it as that retail had such high stakes and such low margins and high cost of capital and, you know, square footage, you know, and so on that retail was much more tech mature, much early restaurant, you know, kind of remained very callous, you know, in their approach, I would say, because high margins, cash business. Sure. Low cost of capital involved at least you know, once you made the restaurant rest of it, you know kind of can run on credit. So, you know, the the margin profile changed significantly over the last couple of years. Exactly right. And that that has actually also forced restaurants to think of tech as an efficiency, you know. Exactly. Partner And not really just a utility.

Justin Skelton

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and that’s how we tend to approach it, too. You know, it’s not enough to just bring in technology that’s going to cost them more if they can’t see the ROI, the returns, then it is going to be problematic. You know, you just going to be difficult. And I think that can contribute to why certain industries are a little bit far behind because of the of the amount of effort it takes to be able to get the adoption of the technology. And sell individual business owners on how this actually is going to make their rules a lot better, right. Improve guest experience, improve efficiency of their of their of their server, of their server and restaurant staff members. So so yeah, but so wasn’t I wasn’t shocked. The good news is we were using technology. You know, we had points of sale in all of our restaurants. We it so it wasn’t like we, we, we didn’t have any some, some level of technology.

Ashish Tulsian

That I of course I didn’t mean that. I just meant like you know how you know probably at a cloud infrastructure level you know how how synchronized you know the world is today, how the seamlessness that is expected and acquired across across products.

Justin Skelton

Yes.

Ashish Tulsian

You know, is very new to this world.

Justin Skelton

Exactly. Well, even even to your extent, even even like data management, understanding your customer, your customer preferences and everything else. I mean, you’ve got you’ve got other industries that have been doing this a lot longer, right, around loyalty programs and whatnot. You know, you think about the airline industry, you know, they know loyalty exceptionally well. And think about when you think about the hotel industry they know loyalty really well. And so, you know, we just deployed a loyalty program. A lot of that. It’s a you know, a function of also having people that work in different industries that join, that joined our company, who understand how to deploy a loyalty program. Hmm. So so absolutely.

Ashish Tulsian

Justin this is a this is, you know, what a journey. Fascinating. You know, at so many levels and especially, you know, the piece where I think you you started reinventing when you reached the top, like one peak, second peak. And probably, you know, this is this kind of should I count it as a third peak or you’re you’re in the next.

Justin Skelton

I think I think you count this as a third party for sure because I think that I think I think that’s a way to characterize it. It was an unexpected third peak. And it wasn’t one that I was hoping for. It was literally a I felt like I’ve done everything in my career that I wanted to do. I always felt there was probably more I could do.

Justin Skelton

So I would definitely say this was sort of a sort of a sort of a another. I like the way you said it’s another peak in the in the story.

Ashish Tulsian

In the, you know, in restaurant tech, the entire industry is quite new. I still feel that restaurant tech is in its infancy. And then especially last couple of years, I think a lot of trends that COVID accelerated were there. A lot of things were brewing up, you know, post I think 2015, 16, you know, until 19 and COVID just accelerated. So many of them. There’s all there’s a there’s so much new tech, I’m sure must be getting thrown at you or, you know, it must be coming your way right. As a CIO, how do you, you know, how do you evaluate the tech today? Like how do you look at that when you when you look at a partner? Is it about features? Is it about the shiny new stuff? Is it about the robustness, credibility? What what is that priority order and how what do you wish that New Age restaurant companies should know?

Justin Skelton

Yeah I mean, I think the way we evaluate technology is there’s so much technology out there. There is so many different vendors out there and it’s a crowded field of different providers out there. I only know because my inbox is pretty full with different things that I get, you know, where where, hey, we’ve got this technology that does this that for us, it starts with what’s the business need? Do we because because we have limited capital, we’ve got limited time, right, to evaluate everything. So we’re going to have to make in place bets on certain technologies that are really going to enable the business. Right. But part of you got to understand before you even do that, you got to understand what the problem you’re trying to solve is. So, you know, we’re going through this thing right now where we’re doing time and motion studies within the restaurant, you know, because we’ve we’ve we’ve always toyed with different technologies. We have a little we have a robot running around the building. Yeah, we, we did before like, like we did and we you know it was just really to we want to exercise the innovation muscle, right? We want to we want to still keep a pulse on how this stuff works. And they’re interested too. Right. They’re interested. Hey, you know, we’re in a we’re going to loan your robot. You know, we will show you how it works. And and so we should always keep the door open to that. Right? So I’m always in favor of, you know, as these different firms have come up with technologies that they think is value add in looking at those technologies. But again, you have to be smart about how much time you allocate to those conversations because the other business of I.T has to continue to move forward. So so what we do is we want to understand what the problem there is to solve. So for example there’s an interest in deep fry stations, right? Because we know that there are a lot of competitive routine tasks that you perform that we believe may have a benefit there. So we believe that that’s an area of the back of the house is where there’s a big opportunity for us. You know, we’re familiar with front of the house and we’ve deployed fry-up, for example. We’ve got we’ve we’ve converted, you know, thousand 15 stores to the new point of sale. We’ve got 6200 tablets. We’ve deployed out there within these stores. So we’ve got a down payment swiping capability, not 100%, but a good percentage of them. They can actually take the payment right there. And we know that those things are going to help with with table turns, orders. So it’s critically important. But we want to see where the next where we go next. So the way we evaluate technology is not just that we’re evaluating the technology that’s in front of us, but more about what problem we’re trying to solve. So as we understand where those where those pain points are, that’s how we’ll think about the technology. We are also looking at, for example, our general managers, you know, the general managers or the core of running a restaurant. Yeah, we just have them. We have three general managers meet with the executive team a few a couple of months back, and we want to hear directly from them around some of the challenges, the challenges that they’re facing. But that’s how we think about it. That’s how we think about technology. And then and then we have to work with the business to figure out, okay, you know, every business has budgetary constraints, where do we want to make those investments? Right? And so we have to prioritize. Also, some things fall above the line. Some things will fall below the line. It doesn’t mean we won’t do them, but perhaps that’s a two or three year time.

Ashish Tulsian

How do you how do you reset that budget? I mean, what but my, you know, assumption and understanding is that, you know, with the franchising business and given that you’re 100% franchised, there is a budget allocation sometimes with percentages and most of the times with dollar value, you know, given to the franchisee and, you know, getting another dollar out of their pocket is, you know, if not impossible, must be equally tough. How do you reset that budget and do you even reset that budget, given the new kind of technologies are just flowing in and probably the percentage of investment a restaurant makes in tech needs to change and increase?

Justin Skelton

Yeah. So for us, we work, we work closely with our brand partners. So Applebee’s, IHOP and Fuzzies Taco. So every year we go through a process of budgetary planning. We sit down with them, we want to get a feel for, you know, by the way, before we even go there, we have a strategic roadmap. We have a roadmap that we build that says these are the areas we need to invest in technology. These are the business processes, right? These are we we’ve laid that out. And so basically what we’re saying is, is that we’re starting to fill in the blanks. These are technologies that we are missing, right? These are gaps we want to fill. So we have a roadmap that we’ve laid out. And then every year, you know, we have to sit down with them and figure out, okay, we know what the roadmap looks like, What are the things what are the things you want to invest in from a brand perspective? Now those things bleed into over into the franchisees, right? So if we go with a new point of sale, we have to budget. What are the things and how we’re going to contribute funding and investments in support of the franchisees. And then, of course, as we get closer, we need to start having conversations with the franchisees as well in terms of how they need to start preparing for that technology. So it really is more of a it’s a collaborative approach for it. Of course, everything is governed by how much budget you have, right. There’s not an unlimited amount of money that you have to spend. So that’s where we’ve got to place bets on what we’re going to invest in in any given year based on with the roadmap, based on how we define the roadmap. Now, with the pandemic, of course, blew everything out of the water. So we have plan to do these things. And of course, that’s like, well, you can’t do those things now. You need to redeploy capital to do the off prem, right? The digital, the mobile app, all the things that we need to we needed to to do that pivot on. But that’s how we go through it. We have a roadmap. We have we have annual planning that we go through. We have we have budgetary constraints. There’s a lot of communication has to happen. As you know, when you’re contemplating technology, if it’s going to impact the franchisees, you need to be having those conversations like a year or two in advance. Mm hmm. Right. And so there’s a lot of comms, so they may be for example, when we start looking at a point sale, it may not be that you’re going to go you’re you’re going to roll out that point of sale in the next year. We have we have proof of concepts. We do, right? We have pilots that we run, and that gives us an opportunity to really understand what the financial and what the capital impacts are going to be in the year, which you’re going to do a full roll out.

Ashish Tulsian

And that’s why that’s why enterprise sales are painful.

Justin Skelton

Exactly.

Ashish Tulsian

You know, how many how many entrepreneurs, including me, you know, take time to understand that. All right. There’s going to be a three year process. Exactly. And then things are going great. Exactly. And everything is just lining up for you. It may take one and a half to three years, you know, for it to happen.

Justin Skelton

Right. And that’s when all the stars align. And in many cases, when you’re rolling out something that big, the stars will not always align the way you like them to. Right? Any hiccup, any delay, any problem incurred when you’re rolling out a technology of that magnitude can stall the plan. And we’ve had that, too. We’ve had we’ve had to we’ve had to reset.

Ashish Tulsian

What’s what’s your view on, you know, the new age young companies versus legacy systems who are trying to innovate on cloud. Right. Because because I, I continuously see this this very interesting thing that like some of the large legacy players who have really done a great job back in the day. Right. You know, when they have a cloud strategy, even their cloud strategy. So legacy. Yeah. You know, the thinking of cloud is so, you know yesteryear’s that I’m like, wow, like, you didn’t get it. You didn’t understand it fully. But then at the same time, I also appreciate I have come to appreciate it the last few years, the security compliance, you know, those pieces, the credibility of the system, you know, those kind of pieces. So I also see the point. Yeah, but but that does not really absolve them from using the cloud wrong. So it’s kind of a you know, that dichotomy sits. Yeah. You know what’s your, how do you experience it?

Justin Skelton

Yeah. It’s a tricky thing. It’s a tricky thing. And I’ll say why. Because, you know, these young companies are coming in, you know, they’re starting with a clean slate. They’re coming in almost like the, you know, you could use the Teslas in the world, right? That they can disrupt. They can be they can come in highly disruptive.

Ashish Tulsian

They don’t have baggage.

Justin Skelton

They don’t have baggage. They don’t have legacy thinking behind it. So they can they can start with a clean slate. And so if we want to think about how we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it this way without the without the bureaucracy and the oversight. You know, so these younger companies, if done right, they have an opportunity to be highly disruptive because because they can they can they can think that way. And so when you think about like a cloud strategy is if they’re not taking a cloud strategy, it’s not like, you know, yeah, you know, it is it is truly a cloud strategy. And so and so that’s one of the things I think, that, you know, younger companies bring they bring that mindset to it. Now, the bigger companies, as you pointed out, you know, they have that stability. They they’ve had the maturity of process. And those things also add significant value. The younger companies don’t always have that. So, you know, so they can move quickly. The smaller companies can move quick and they can do that. But that also has its risks associated with that, too. So you’re right, there’s always that you strike in that right balance between the young, innovative company who’s bringing a lot of fresh new ideas to the table and the stability of an existing a legacy company that that has benefit as well.

Ashish Tulsian

So are you already taking a lot of bets on the new ones? Are you taking a lot of bets on the new ones?

Justin Skelton

Yeah, we’re taking some we’re taking some bets. We you know, we we again it for us it goes back to we’re probably trying to solve job requirements and what the individual needs are for our company. If we feel like these younger companies, smaller companies working in conjunction with our team can scale to support a larger enterprise then then. It’s a hill to climb. But but we feel like if this is our longer term benefit, that will take the whole place still.

Ashish Tulsian

That is so cool.

Justin Skelton

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian

Justin this was a great conversation. I loved your story. I loved, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s so many things that, that, you know, to reflect on. I’m sure whoever is going to listen to you is going to be inspired. And thanks for your candid conversation on the world of restaurant, you know, tech as well.

Justin Skelton

It’s good to be here and I appreciate the time. I’m really excited to be here and share my story, but also, you know, how the restaurant business has made an impact to me, right? It is that third peak, as you say. And but thanks a lot for the opportunity.

Ashish Tulsian

Thank you.