Ashish Tulsian

Hi. Welcome to Restrocast. Today, my guest is Wade Allen is the EVP Strategic Growth at Costa Vida Restaurants. With Wade, I saw somebody who comes from the background of data technology and who applied both of these to marketing is somebody who has seen retail and how really data works in the world. Very few in the world, even to today have had the vantage point that, you know, makes world looks like being, you know, revolving around data. That’s not simple. And especially, you know, in the tech world today where data is being called the new oil, I generally tell people that there are only very few who understand how to use that oil. Wade is a technology leader who comes from data and marketing, and he has been doing brilliant stuff at some of the largest restaurant brands in the world. This conversation was enriching to the core. Enjoy. Welcome to Restrocast. 

Ashish Tulsian

Wade, Thank you for doing this. Welcome to Restrocast.

Wade Allen

Good to be here.

Ashish Tulsian

I would love to know, you know, would love to dive in to your early life, but before that, would you like to tell us what is it that you do today? What’s your how do you describe your job?

Wade Allen

The million dollar question, right? Why do I get paid? Well, I would say what I do today. Well, today, just from on a on a on the surface is I’m the executive vice president of Strategic Growth for Coastal View that if you don’t know who coast of media is, it’s a restaurant company that’s really kind of a fast casual model. It takes the flavors of the Baja Mexican Peninsula and has brought them to the US. Smothered burritos is a big one. We do a lot of salads and my role at Coastal Vida is today primarily focused on marketing technology and off premise and leading those divisions to drive incremental sales and traffic for our brand. But I’m part of the leadership group and my focus is really leading that brand to a, you know, to really kind of expand our purpose, which is really around and our mission about creating an amazing experience, one one meal, one guest at a time.

Ashish Tulsian

So Costa Rica, you’re doing what is the burning need of the restaurant industry As of today, it’s the hottest topic. Yeah. You know, so so whenever.

Wade Allen

He comes and talks about like, oh marketing technology in our premise let’s talk, right?

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think I’m going to you know we’re definitely going to, you know, dive deep into it because, you know, I’m curious about, you know, a lot of reasons why suddenly, you know, marketing technology and and all kinds of, you know, ordering experience is being focused on in the industry for the good or bad at the right reasons or the wrong reasons. Yeah. But before that, you know, when when it all started. Tell me about your early years when you grow up.

Wade Allen

So I was born and raised in a middle class home in in Utah, in the mountains of Utah, and had a great child childhood growing up outdoors and skiing and and mountain biking and playing sports in high school and did my undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, which is just down the street from where I grew up. I was I’m also a by faith. I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So I served a mission for my church for two years in Mexico, Veracruz. I learned to speak Spanish and I lived amongst the Mexican people, and it was a phenomenal experience after I finished my undergrad in marketing communications, of all things right Business minor. But what a lot of people don’t know, as I started out in medicine, I thought it was going to be a doc. Yeah, my dad was a physician assistant and he was one of the first physician assistants in the country. He graduated from the second class at the University of Utah, and it was brand new after the Vietnam War because they were trying to figure out what to do with these vets that had come back and had medical experience in the in the in the war. And they weren’t really ready to be doctors because they had to go through schooling that they could be what’s called a physician assistant. So it was kind of a he was kind of one of the first. So that’s what landed us in Utah and that’s where we made home. So I thought I was going to be a doc in college. Yeah, that was a rude awakening. I got to organic chemistry and realized really quickly I got no business being a doctor, so.

Ashish Tulsian

Oh, organic chemistry. Pretty awesome.

Wade Allen

Oh, my gosh. I got totally smoked in that class. Like, I think I. I think I was three weeks in and I was a solid D-minus and I knew I was had no shot at passing. So it was a it was a.

Ashish Tulsian

I used to love organic. Yeah. I used to be a champion. So yeah, well.

Wade Allen

I needed you as a tutor. Where were you 20 some odd years ago? Right? So I came out of there and I realized, okay, I’ve got to do something different. I finished my minor in zoology because I loved animals. So I’ve got I’ve got this weird mix. When I graduate from college at BYU, I’ve got a zoology minor, I’ve got a business minor, and I got a marketing communications major. As I leave Brigham Young.

Ashish Tulsian

How did this switch from, you know, zoology go to, you know, marketing?

Wade Allen

I wish I could say that it was well thought out and strategic. I just needed some good grades. I needed to stay on top of my my education. And so one of my friends that he should try a marketing class. And I said, okay, I’ll I’ll do a communications marketing class. And I loved it. And it was made total sense that I, I was, you know, I just felt like I fit there. And so the more and more classes I took, the more and more I loved in that degree just came natural to me. So after fighting with animal science and medicine for a year and a half, I decided to switch and it made all the difference in the world.

Ashish Tulsian

So yeah, I’ll share a personal story. I, I, I did not want to be a doctor. I, you know, purely because I, I used to feel that a doctor’s job is literally in 24 hours, you know, on the job, I mean, not literally 24 hours, but, you know. Yeah. A doctor on call. Yeah. On oncology, you have to be always there. And I was like, No, no, I don’t think I’m going to do that. I basically want to, you know, do something where, you know, I’m not needed and things can still run. So I was thinking about this as a as a 11th grade. So, you know, but I still took biology, you know, in my 11th grade and only because I wanted to do dissections. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I was really interested in that. And, you know, funnily, that was the year back in India when dissections in schools were banned. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So, so you know, they were only allowed in med college after that. So. So I remember the first day orientation class on 11th grade and biology teacher, you know, she, you know, talked about everything that’s going to happen through the year. And I was like, well, when will she be gone? So I raised my hand at the end when we do dissection, and she said, Oh, you know, good news, no dissections from this year. I was like, Oh, please, I couldn’t wait. Yeah, I mean, because she was like, you know, I’m sure our kids had a hard time, you know, going through that, right? And I was like, All right, I have another question. What is the procedure to change the Glasgow? So, yes, I think I don’t know if I would have been a doctor for a short or not, but, you know, for me biology was like absolute love. I had to really let go of that because I didn’t want to carry on in that.

Wade Allen

Yeah, I know that feeling. I know I found stats in college and that that’s another thing that really I loved. I found I was really going to statistics and I could think like a statistician by that. I think I gravitated toward that marketing kind of technology kind of status element, analytics element.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, I can see how that might have happened.

Wade Allen

Yeah. So it was an easy transition, right?

Ashish Tulsian

Perfect. Right. So, so right on. So you did that in logic.

Wade Allen

So yeah. So undergrad was in zoology was a minor business was a minor marketing comms as the major. And then I decided I wanted to do it. And at the time I was running a startup, I had started it was the late nineties, Internet boom websites were all the rage. And so I read a book called A For Dummies and bought a couple of Java books and started creating websites for local companies. And I thought, Well, I’ll just be an entrepreneur. That’s what I’ll do. And then one of my professors said, You know what? You should really go to grad school. You’ve got this kind of weird, dynamic element of like, you think like a technologist. You kind of understand how program programing works. And I know JavaScript is more scripting, but you kind of understand this new world. You’re kind of a marketing guy at heart, but you need to be classically trained in one of the two. What are you what are you going to do? You should go to No, you should go to graduate work. And so I said, Oh, interesting. And then I ran into a recruiter at Northwestern who was on the campus of BYU and said, Hey, we’d love to have you. You should come apply. I could get real shot to get in, get kind of grades and take the Greer, the GMAT, and then, you know, let’s go see what you got. So I did it, got in and next thing I knew, I was living in Chicago. And at that time I was made with a brand new little baby, have like six months in in a really small Chicago apartment. And I got my master’s from Northwestern and integrated marketing communications.

Ashish Tulsian

Wow. What year was that? You know, when you’re selling websites.

Wade Allen

We so I was building in 98 to 2001.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah I was right in the middle of dotcom boom right when yeah.

Wade Allen

Pets.com was making millions of dollars but losing tons of money. But their stock price is gone through the roof. Right. It was, it was crazy stuff. And I was focused on building local web pages and hosting them for homebuilders and dentists and playground equipment companies and, you know, just people that needed basically an advertising on this new World Wide Web. And that was a ton of fun because it was me and a cousin and a friend who literally were generating, you know, we didn’t have a huge by any means. We were making real money. But for college kids, you know, Yeah. Having a, you know, $80,000 in receivables, we were like high fiving and thinking we were, of course.

Ashish Tulsian

Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Yeah.

Wade Allen

So it was a it was a cool experience and then.

Ashish Tulsian

You know, post-college. Yeah.

Wade Allen

So then after graduate school as recruited by a company called Dunn Humvee, which is a British firm, and if you don’t, you’re not familiar with them. They are the analytical sciences behind Kroger and Tesco. Yeah. Some of these big grocery stores. So I worked for them for years and I was.

Ashish Tulsian

I think it was a it was a Tesco company, right?

Wade Allen

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tesco had part ownership in it for a long time. So actually Clive Humvee, who was the owner of Dunn Humvee, recruited me out of college, came in with Western. I met with him, chance to talk to him and debated with him, challenged him on a couple of questions, and next thing I knew, he offered me a job a couple of months later and I went and worked in Cincinnati office. And for for a couple of years I worked with that organization where I actually wrote the extraction code, SQL code to extract data out of a database. And then I would write SAS code to spin that data into and run statistics on it. And then I would create presentations and then deliver it back to the consumer packaged goods companies on behalf of Kroger based on the segmentation that we had developed.So all of that thinking really sharpened my senses of how marketing and marketing technology can materially impact me and direct marketing can material impact a business. And so that was a lot of fun. You know, at the time it was a steep learning curve, but man, I just my wife would get after me. She’d be like, every time we go to the grocery store and I go, I know what that SKU means in a basket. Like she just read the numbers and I could tell her if it was what type of product it was on a Kroger shelf. And she’s like, We got to get you in your career killing. And then after a couple of years in Cincinnati with that Humvee, I was recruited away to come to Dallas for an agency and Omnicom agency at the time that was called Rap. Collins eventually changed his name to rap, and it was part of the the DOS group of Omnicom. And it was it was a great experience, had met some great people. Agency work is hard, I think we don’t give our agencies enough credit that we work with. It’s a grind. You know, every day. And we were young. We weren’t making a ton of money. We were working long hours. But there’s a lot of passion there. And then they said, I, I with that organization, I went to London and spent I spent two years in London with them. Another great experience with Sainsbury’s and Barclaycard and and a few other boots, many retailers in in London and then came home.

Ashish Tulsian 

As a marketing agency.

Wade Allen

Yeah, as a marketing agency their focus is really on direct marketing and this mobility that had started to rear its head in the US in different places. So that wouldn’t have been in and around like 2006, seven, eight, nine kind of when that happened, I came home from London, had some personal stuff going on in family and we needed to bring home at this time. We had three kids right? We were we were pregnant with our fourth and it was time to come back to the States. So we came back to Dallas and I took a job with a technology startup or a marketing agency startup. And inside of that agency we had a Labs division where we had built a coupon technology solution. And so we were delivering coupons online. So again, another run at being an entrepreneur, right? Loved it. It was a Java solution that was allowed.

Ashish Tulsian 

Like a product. Yeah.

Wade Allen

So basically what it was, is it was a solution where you could companies could deploy coupons on social media and people could go on social media. This is probably 2009 2010 and they could print from their own printer a secure coupon that couldn’t be photocopy, then take to a grocery store. It could be scanned using a barcode or just one barcode, and it would give them the discount on their on their grocery bill. And so and then it would clear coupons back then, had to still have to go through a clearinghouse. It would clear appropriately. So we were cutting edge at the time. Coupons.com was another big one out there. We were kind of democratizing it and putting it into social media.

Ashish Tulsian 

It was called Coupon Startup.

Wade Allen

It was called Coupon Factory. And so really what it was is built for grocery stores or CPG companies to buy a license to our technology. SAS wasn’t a big deal, but we were one of the first SAS solutions that I can remember, especially in that space, to then allow them to put it on their assets, their websites, their social media pages, to allow their customers to get coupons. And we sold that well, that agency and that technology sold to WPP, the agency out of New York in about 20 1413. And that’s when I exited a few months later and found Brinker and and, you know, ten years with Brinker and being the restaurant guy and vice president, marketing and CIO and chief digital officer. And then just this last six months I made a jump to coast to beat it. So it’s been that’s been the early beginning all the way through to Arrium today.

Ashish Tulsian 

Off a lot of questions but but you know one of them how’s life in London?

Wade Allen

I love it. I loved London and again in all things in life, sometimes it’s the stage you’re in, sometimes it’s the age of your kids to, you know, a relationship with your wife, whatever it may be. But but London for me was it was scary and new and exciting, but I just had so much fun. Some of them my best relationships still to this day with, you know, friends that I knew there that I love dearly, that I long to go back. My wife and I still have not been back since we lived there. COVID was our 20th anniversary. We were supposed to go and we didn’t get there. So now we’re shooting for 25. We’re on 23. So we’ve got two more years to save up to go to London. But yeah, that I would go back in a heartbeat. We lived in a beautiful little quaint little town called Chiswick. Americans call it Chiswick, right? But Chiswick was beautiful and I loved it. My kids loved it.

Ashish Tulsian 

I found I find London like I mean, I just love the fact that, you know, the city literally lives, like, through the time. Yeah, right. You can see five, 500 year old building, you know, functioning building. Yeah. Beside, like, a new swanky sky.

Wade Allen

So it was built two years ago.

Ashish Tulsian 

You know. Right. And, and it all just works in harmony and a lot of culture, a lot of depth, a lot of, you know, I think the vibe, you know, London has is, is really, really amazing.

Wade Allen

It is the the diversity is awesome. You can see it’s a it’s a melting pot of the world where people can live and actually get along for the most part and be happy together. And it just shows you that that there is there is hope for humanity. And London is kind of that cultural kind of, you know, microcosm that comes together. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian 

You know, your your switch from retail to restaurants, how much of a shock it was for you to, you know, starting with like you started with statistics done on me data right. Your your your born in the career at a place where you know D800 was was the name of the game And then it come to the restaurant industry which is you know way you know behind Yeah. Retail. What was your what is your first reaction when you when you join Brinker or saw restaurant restaurants not using.

Wade Allen

Data.

Ashish Tulsian 

You know.

Wade Allen

It was a it was an interesting dynamic It was actually kind of tale of two cities. I was actually excited to just focus on guest experience and food because with a mass retailer or a grocery store, there’s just so many SKUs and so many different things. It’s not just grocery, but it’s center store products like toilet tissue and cat food and, you know, all these things. So I actually was super excited about getting super honed in on guest experience around food and the experience that they have in restaurant. The other side of that or the other city of that, right? It’s two cities. The other side was these guys are so backwards. Nobody knows what’s going on. Everybody’s using freestanding inserts in newspapers to do their marketing. What in the world is happening here and how did the world run so far past this industry? Right. But I quickly realized that’s actually an advantage. So now being so I’ll use a sports analogy, right? It’s a little bit like playing on a being a professional athlete and playing on a junior varsity game, right? You walk in and go, What is happening? Why is everybody, my gosh, I think I can dominate this space. Hold on. I might have more knowledge than most people in this area going to start putting this thing to work. And so really, that was one of the that was a thought that went through my head quite often in that was, well, then I can really single handedly make a huge impact.

Ashish Tulsian 

That was there. That was your that’s almost like your organic chemistry to marketing switch.

Wade Allen

That’s right thousand. Wait a second. I’m not over my skis. I’m actually the rock star for the first time. Right. And I’m sure the guys that done humming in grocery store at the grocery guys that I’ve worked with, if I’ve been like good because he was middle of the road there, right? But man, coming into restaurants, I just felt like I could make a huge impact. Yeah, I know data. I understand technology. I understand how this all ties together, how can ultimately benefit marketing and how we can communicate that to the guest. And so it was kind of this weird, eclectic background of websites and startups and classically trained marketer and all this stuff was kind of converging for the first time in my life when I got into restaurants and I.

Ashish Tulsian 

How did you how did you find that kind of footing in at Brinker? And I’m just curious because 2014 is what we’re talking about, right? And I think the way, you know, marketing tech are the need of marketing, the way digital is being perceived specifically over the last four years, you know, just pre corporate and of course, you know, accelerated through corporate 2014 looks like a, you know, Stone Age. Yeah. You know, in that sense, red marketing in the restaurant was still way, way physical. So whenever you fitting in well I.

Wade Allen

Mean I wish I get so it’s a fantastic question I wish I could say it was by design it was dumb luck. I mean, it was dumb luck. And here’s here’s what I mean by that is I had just come out of a startup that was running a Running Labs division out of a startup that was getting sold by WPP. And we were doing some pretty cutting edge stuff using job and a bunch other things. And I walk in to the to become the vice president of marketing because they needed to build a loyalty program and they didn’t know what to do. And once I got in there and realized you need a better web experience in a transaction and you need a website, you need tablets on the table, you need your exposure on your tokenization, are your on your transactions are a mess. But the CEO, Wyman Roberts, who actually was a graduate of Brigham Young University, which is just a weird connection that we had, but he saw me being interviewed and he pulled me aside in the interview process, and he just started grilling me on a few things. And he and we kind of formed this relationship and what it became, and it was nonverbal at first, but then it became kind of it was overt when we talked about it, but it was like, look, I’m going to I’m going to give you an off leash, but you better go find you know, the Nuggets. It was kind of like you’ve seen the movie Top Gun, right? He’s like, I’ll be the maverick. I am the maverick. I’m the CEO, but I need a mother goose who’s going to be my goose is going to be my copilot. And so we kind of had this relationship. He really realized or I realized and I think he also realized was, hey, if I’m willing to fund whatever it is you want to do, I just need you to come with these ideas, vet them with me first and more pace and sequence them over time. Because doing something to aggressive to our customer base could be detrimental. But I do believe we need to move this whole industry forward. And his idea was initially, I need to have a loyalty program that I can track their transact and entice them to come back. So my background with Dunhuang being my background in the agency world was very intriguing to him. I think he quickly realized I also got a technologist and a marketing technologist on my staff who’s using a leadership level and now an officer at the company. We’re going to turn him loose on some stuff. And he did. And look, I didn’t. I wasn’t successful. Most of the stuff you hear about my success is not the stuff that I like. Some of it it came up with some of the stuff I failed miserably. You don’t hear about the failures, right? But he was really good to say, okay, I love that idea. What do you need to get it done? Can you build me a prototype? How do we work together to see if it’s going to be successful? Right. So even at 14, he was giving me tons of room to try new and innovative stuff that restaurants had never done before.

Ashish Tulsian 

So loyalty was your first, you know, project of. BRINKER Yeah.

Wade Allen

Yeah. Building the My Chili’s Rewards program is the first thing that we kind of put our I put my thumbprint on. And second was kiosk the two tablets on the table and the tablets launched before the loyalty program did because it was just more on getting the data together.

Ashish Tulsian 

You had the ask.

Wade Allen

Yeah, yeah. Because the first one we did. So yeah, it is loyalty first, then it was the Zoosk and then we worked really hard to build state of the art app in a transaction engine. That’s when Olo came into the picture you know, we had connected with. Although they were a small shop, we took a risk on them, but they delivered. Right. And we really that kind of set them up for success and they took off. That set us up practice as we were doing, you know, millions of transactions where before we were barely struggling to get hundreds of thousands of transactions through the door on our online ordering. And then and then from there, it just kind of started to build more and more. We had a bigger digital presence. We were one of the first ones to go into DoorDash on the delivery side, our virtual brand, and came to fruition. So we built and launched that brand. So there was there is these hits that you hear about that we want on. But.

Ashish Tulsian 

But I see a lot of I see a lot of bets that you’ve you’ve taken. I mean, I can I can clearly see that. Right.

 

Wade Allen

And they’re connected, right? I mean, it wasn’t like I was just jumping to here. It was one after another after another.

Ashish Tulsian 

I feel that restaurant industry loyalty is is really misunderstood, you know, in the restaurants. And, you know, I strongly feel about it because, you know, a lot of concepts, you know, like loyalty. They come from retail, where the fundamental difference is that I want to go to the same retail store every day. I want to buy from the same place. I want to familiarize myself, you know, with the aisles and, you know, with the stuff at the same retail store. I may get new stuff in that same fashion while in the restaurants, it’s actually quite reverse. I don’t want to go to the same restaurant again and again. I don’t want to eat. You know, I do any restaurant every day unless, of course, your comfort food, like so very few restaurants, you know, actually have a case for true high frequency loyalty, like, you know, coffee places, cafes. Right. Okay. What do you think? You know, where is? Because I see industries struggling, struggling with loyalty in 2023. And it’s almost the same struggle. Almost always the same struggle, right?

Wade Allen

Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian 

What is your opinion about, you know, loyalty in the restaurant space and where do you see the world, especially the brands that go wrong in thinking about their loyalty? Yeah.

Wade Allen

I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think the fundamental head fake, that’s what I’ll call it, that marketers fall for is the program of loyalty. They fall in love with points or merchandise or earn in burn or redemption. So it’s about right. Anybody who understands the value of loyalty understands it’s the data. It’s knowing how often you’ve come when you’ve come, how how profitable you are for us, what your history of eating is like. Where else do you go when you travel towards a restaurant and all that information, that data I think loyalty is misunderstood because they don’t understand the whole value of it is actually knowing more about your guest so it can be more relevant and what they what they get tied up in chasing is these point schemes or these redemption offers. And the day they attract a subsegment of loyal customers who are also price sensitive or also who are chasing this guy discount. Right. Which is bananas, because you and I know as we sit here, there are some some brands that we absolutely love. I’m a huge workout guy, right? I love Rogue Fitness. And if you know anything about rogue fitness, it’s barbells and racks and dumbbells and all that kind of stuff. I’m not a military program. I don’t know if they have a loyalty program. I will pay full price for that stuff because it is a brand. It represents what I believe. And and if if we’re only focused on them, the loyal customers that chasing discounts, we’re missing the real loyal people. And so then the questions always pose back to me. Well, then how do we get information on the most loyal people? And this is where I think where it’s going, where it could go, which is taking those anonymized transactions and truly making them identifiable. Right. And whether that’s true has data or tokenized data, whether that’s through enticement of things, because I now can see the credit card to make way for us or some would want some future way an easier way to have our guests identify themselves. That’s when you’re really going to tap into it.

Ashish Tulsian 

But then, but then what do you do? What do you do with loyalty? I mean, you you you’ve touched upon that point, right? That but at the end of the day, it becomes about discounts. And, you know, even within your own customer base, you start attracting, you know, discount hunters are cheapest, Right? Exactly. Right. The the the wrong side of the curve. Then what do you do with that data? I mean, once you know that okay, I’m a loyal customer, do a Brian what do you think a brand should do to me isn’t discount.

Wade Allen

Yeah no, I think discount is the is the cheapest way of marketing. And I say cheapest. It’s the it’s the easiest way to market. But look at us having a conversation today, right? And we talk about things. We find common points of connection. Oh, you know, so-and-so. I know so-and-so. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we know it. You okay? Great. It was our connections, right? Oh, you like organic chemistry? I hate it. Why did you like it? We make these connections, right? Our guests are the same way. Open a dialog with me about the things that I love. I clearly come to your restaurant again and again because I like something that you’re doing, or I like the food or I like the atmosphere or I like the service or something, right? So rather than just continue attacking the discounts, open a dialog with me about what I enjoy about your organization and if you know how I eat, how often I eat. When the last time I was that I came, did it come with a large part of your small party? Anything else in my my, my portfolio or my my personal life that you can tie back to having a.

Ashish Tulsian 

Relationship to that brand? How I’m interacting with the restaurant.

Wade Allen

I’ll tell you that for me, if Roeg just told me they have a new piece of equipment, that’s really cool. That would help me on my squat. I would be interested. You have to discount it. I’ll pay full price. But I didn’t even know about it.

Ashish Tulsian 

So you’re talking about you know that if you know your customer deeply well, just a communication about, you know, what you’re doing is enough. It does not need to be a discount coupon.

Wade Allen

Right. I think and look, there’s always a place for discounting. There will always be some kind of enticement needed. My belief is most consumers would react positively to having a dialog with a brand about something that they’re either showed an interest for or have an intrigue towards. Equally as well as getting a discount now, the hardest working the hardest working word in marketing is free, right? Everybody knows that the next one is dollars or percent off. But in lieu of trying to maintain our margins in a world that’s crazy right now, right? Our operators in our restaurant companies have jacked up their prices. They’ve run out the outpaced inflation. Now we’re heading into this value conversation. You start to see it all over the news with different companies do in five, four five or three for this or something that or 1099 or whatever it is.  And rather than play this game, just be smart. The people who have to have a discount because they won’t show up because they are price sensitive, identify them and and you can pander to that side of that aisle for the rest of the group that’s willing to pay full price and margins open up a relationship with them and what truly intrigues them to come to your brand and pair that back to them in either outbound communication, in your social, in some kind of medium that they can see. And my belief is you will drive more traffic. You can continue to game higher margins without having to raise your prices and your traffic won’t suffer because of it.

Ashish Tulsian 

Well, absolutely. And and I think what what beats me is that, you know, how many times I will speak to marketers in the restaurant space and you know, they’re not talking about, let’s say, conserving the the ticket size, the average auto value. Right. Because to me, when you discount you and, you know, give discount to a loyal customer, it confuses me because if I’m a loyal customer, I’m going to eat anyway. Right? Right. Yeah. I don’t need discount. Right. So you technically are giving discounts to somebody who is ready to be a full price. You know, I would actually rather, you know, love to see a program that allows me or makes me spend more, you know, and then get a discount. Right. I mean, which want something that raises the average order value, average value of the transaction. And I get more value in the process because.

Wade Allen

I love that idea. Right. Because value people think in the in this industry and outside, essentially the value is discount but values an equation. Yeah right. Right. It’s it’s volume of food or volume of product plus quality of product. Right. All divided by the price of that product. Right. And so rather than just go to the denominator and just reduce the price, that’s that’s an easy and cheap way to do marketing. Think through it. I even wrote in my price and I raised the value to the guest and they’re willing to pay that or more to come in because they can get more value for money, right? That’s the term we often use in the UK, value for money. But I believe that I firmly believe that rather than go the discounting route with everybody, you just need to increase your value platform. And that value platform could be a bundling, it could be an extra dessert, it can be something, it could be a better experience, it could be a table in the corner that’s reserved only for loyalty, loyalty, guests, Right. Whatever it is, increase the value of what they really are after. Don’t reduce the price.

Ashish Tulsian 

But then how do you know for the marketers, how do you not get caught up in this love for the program and points because that is something that is visible out there, right? That is something that you will talk about in the public domain. You know, everybody knows that. Oh, all right. This brand has this loyalty card.

Wade Allen

They have stars and points. I think it’s just how have.

Ashish Tulsian 

You how have you navigated is that an anecdote where you had to either succumb to that in some brand or you had to fight your, you know, made through and say, hey, we’re not going to do points and we’re not going to do loyalty, You know, as as traditionally not. Yeah.

Wade Allen

I mean, we we flipped this points program at Chili’s when I was there, too, just after chips and Salsa and Spark Communications because we were carrying massive point liability that you know, comes back to haunt.

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah that that’s that that’s another thing that you know brands I think only understand once they have that liability.

Wade Allen

Like whoa wait what’s this $5 billion sitting here. Yeah. There’s no expiration there, boys. We get to carry that forever on our books until we actually find a way to get that off.

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah, Somebody has to really, you know, give you a waiver saying, All right, you know, I said into my audience.

Wade Allen

Yeah, I do think it is a little bit lower level thinking to be so focused on the program. I think when and it sounds arrogant, but it’s not. But I think when you come to an enlightened perspective of hold on, what do you think? Why are we doing this right? If the whole goal is to become is to gain more transaction wins or drive check or to gain more traffic and to keep these customers loyal because it’s a lot easier to get a customer back after one transaction than it is to get a brand new customer. Then there’s could be a smarter way here. And in a world where data is we have a plethora of data, right? If we can hold this appropriately and really know what our guest level, then we don’t have to play this discount game, whatever. Who else play the discount game? That’s a low level thinking. Let’s elevate our thinking and truly start to think about data It’s teaching. So you asked me the question when you found yourself in these situations, how do you actually either how did you get out of it or how did you help other people? Right. I get sucked into it too. You get sucked into these designs and you’re thinking about other stuff. And and that’s okay because you kind of sometimes need to develop some of those things, but you have to tell your team there’s a difference between loyalty and CRM. Write outbound marketing. Communication to somebody is not the same thing as building loyalty points, right? Communicating to people about a new a new opportunity or a new experience is different than just giving them loyalty points or throttling some discount. Right? And then as we get to elevate, you’re thinking.

Ashish Tulsian 

Great. On the digital side, there’s a lot of noise. A lot is being, you know, done in the current world, especially post COVID, all the all kind of digital assets that that brands restaurant brands want today. Is this being you know our customers ability to care about a brand’s asset like a brand’s website or mobile app to place an order with a B DoorDash isn’t being or overindexed on R, is it being overplayed? Because as a customer, I actually at times wondered, I run a restaurant company, you know, we do these kind of solutions, you know, for a living, but at the same time I b I keep questioning this that is this really about saving that 25 30% you fee on the marketplaces? Or is it really about giving extra value to the customer by saying, hey, you come to my website instead of a DoorDash or Postmates or are, you know, any any marketplace? What what’s happening here regarding the how does it look like to you?

Wade Allen

Yeah, I mean, I first I have to give kudos to the the Tony’s you know Tony DoorDash DoorDash that Uber guys that what they’re doing over there at Postmates and and favor and a few these other I kudos to them they created a marketplace and they capitalized on a demand that restaurants were selfishly and individually not delivering upon so so I first have to say, you know, good job for them. I on the flip side, I would tell them also is that they they are by nature eroding the brand of our restaurants to some extent. And here’s why. And I know that if Tony was sitting here across the table from eat are you is because he doesn’t believe this but but my belief is the most powerful thing is you look grab some of these phone Android Samsung Apple and look at their apps on their phone and look at the brands that have found their way into their hand. So so the term brand in hand is a very powerful term because once you’ve allowed the brand to be in your hand, visibly on your phone, you have an affinity towards that brand.

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah, that’s I think that’s a costless real estate.

Wade Allen

Absolutely. Yeah, right. So the fact that restaurants are all vying for that, they’re all vying for that phone, right? They want to get into that phone because now the brand in hand and you’re the go to place and like you said, people like to shop around. But the truth of the matter is, is guests have about six or seven go tos that they that they continue there’s a few others they’ll try. But when is their go to they’re going to go to a handful. So we want that brand in hand real estate. We want that mentality. So this idea that they put together a marketplace, the know we’re a commodity, not a brand building opportunity is a little bit detriment to restaurants, a lot detriment to restaurants. We’ve got to do a better job of standing out and just being one more advertisement on Doordash’s marketplace or marketplace. So I think there’s an now and then I’ll talk to the guest part of it. I think that for it’s a great little forum, it’s also very price inelastic.

Ashish Tulsian 

Right?

Wade Allen

Meaning people who are on their are time crunched or pressured and they know that they’re willing to spend a third more to get it because they have to have it the vast majority of consume. And then that is a state that’s, not a person. That’s just the state of which we find ourselves in. I’ve been there. You’ve been there. I cannot physically go somebody. I’m dying of. Hunger. DoorDash to the rescue. Get something here. I’d love it to be. Comes to you. To the rescue. My app on their phone. That being said, we all participate with that. I do not believe that there is a world that will ever exist where people will not in some way, shape or form have brands in their hand. Now, it may not be apps and it may not even be a phone, but it will be something where at their fingertips they’ll have the capabilities to choose and select what brand and specifically restaurant they want to be affiliated with. So while DoorDash has opened up a marketplace, I do not believe that those brand that that grouping of marketplace third party delivery will ever take over the restaurant space. Right.

Ashish Tulsian 

But how do you when you look at from a consumer’s perspective. Right. And then especially, you know, when you are taking these decisions, even at Costco, you know, today from a consumer perspective, I still believe that marketplace is the right answer because familiarity you exactly know that UI, you know that you. Acxiom Yeah. You know you’re already logged on your card is there. Yeah. You know, it’s all predictable and there is a third party in between. It is also protecting your interests in case you don’t receive the food, you don’t receive it as intended, etc., etc.. Right. And when, when I’m ordering directly to a restaurant brand, you know, I’m of course fully exposed to all the risks in between. Who’s going to me to get that in case, you know. Yeah. One of the three things happen from a consumer perspective. What is it that you think today when developing these solutions, when you’re thinking about, you know, putting up a website, a mobile app or any direct channel, how are you that one of the key areas.

Wade Allen

How do you compete with the others? Right. How do you view that delivery space?

Ashish Tulsian 

I think I think no, I think one of the things that you consider are important pieces when you’re taking this decision. Well, what what should be the website? What should be the mobile app? Why should we do it? Why should we not do it? What part should we do? What should we not?

Wade Allen

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think the question we’re in the midst of this question right now comes to being because we’re developing a new web, an app right now. And the whole genesis of that conversation was speed, ease and just make it right. How do I get how can I make it fast? How can I make it super convenient So it’s easy to order one click ordering and then how do I just make sure it’s correct? Because the number one problem with our bodies, our bodies third party is that there’s always some missing item. Missing in the correct is the number one problem in online ordering and generally only running through third party platforms. So for us, as we look at what the guest demands are, they’re like, look, my expectations since COVID are just pretty low. I mean, I’m speaking in general, but I think guests are like, can somebody just get my food right, get it to me fast and make it just make the whole experience just easy, Right. And I and I think that is the new competitive set. Now, whether it’s an issue or not, it believes you set that market. He did right is they set it it’s super easy. You pick million of different restaurants and we’ll get it get it to you to get the right items in the bag becomes a struggle. However, I think that’s what we think about when we do it. Like how do we compete with that? Because the new guest is it’s going to continue to be pressed for time. They just need an easy way to just say, I need dinner. It’s 5:00, I’m headed home from work. My kids are hungry. We don’t have a dinner plan. It’s a Tuesday night. I need something I can just tap literally while I’m driving that will know all my kids. I got a gluten allergy over here. I got a celiac or a or a dairy allergy over here. He doesn’t like this. She wants chicken nuggets. How do I make this all happen? With the touch of a button? And then how do I get it all to the house? Because it doesn’t do any good to do all that. And then the food shows up wrong and my autistic son goes ballistic because he doesn’t have chicken nuggets. And I’m speaking from experience, right? So when we’re developing and building those experiences, it’s really those three three year olds.

Ashish Tulsian 

So you basically are tying this back into your, you know, our loyalty discussion. So all you’re saying is that, you know, the consumer facing solutions need to be, you know, good for loyal customers, customers who are exactly what they want and how they want to interact with the brand. You don’t think it’s a new customer acquisition channel?

Wade Allen

I play to, I generally to the bottom of the funnel. I leave the top of the funnel marketing to our social our our broad based marketing communications so we can talk about the ease and the efficiency and sophistication and elegance of our digital properties and why they should come. But that’s not who I am, who I’m centered around the folks around. Sure, I want to make it so easy from a UX that anybody, the three year old can tap iconography and and you’ll see our new app as we launch it. We’ve we’ve stripped away a lot of the just unneeded descriptions of things people eat with their eyes showing a beautiful picture show what a burrito looks like show them that you’re going to smother it and this and that and put some kaso on it. And whatever people can can click through that. And again, I’ll call out a competitor that’s done a phenomenal job because I’m not, you know, I’m not that arrogant, right? You pull it, kills it. Their visual component still to this day, the work that Deloitte did on that app, which I believe is you built that you pulled the app that did a phenomenal job, right? I mean, it’s just still to this day, it stands the test of time when they first launched it. It’s imagery and people you with their eyes so make the UX so simple that your loyal customers know exactly what they want. They can see the transactions to have it fired and so easy that a new guest doesn’t get confused.

Ashish Tulsian 

And in that sense, I think marketplaces are a great tool for new customer acquisition. Like like more evolve.

Wade Allen

Sure, absolutely. Trial and getting in trying to brand.

Ashish Tulsian 

Trial and people who are, you know, probably just, you know, ordering from you by chance because they’re hungry. You know, you already you’re you know, you’re listing showed up and they’re like, all right, let me show. Yeah, yeah.

Wade Allen

And that is the that is a huge value for having those third party marketplaces. I think restaurant brands that are playing there are crazy that I watch what Darden is doing. And again, I think Darden is brilliant. They’ve done some smart things, but I, I often question one of their things is why wouldn’t they play in those third party? And I get it, there’s margin erosion, but man, you’re this.

Ashish Tulsian 

Is this is what kind of marketing calls. Well, I.

Wade Allen

Would say I would say to think of it as a marketing cost, you’re going to you’re going to pop 100 and some odd million dollars into television. You might as well put some money in that third party place. It actually gets value out of it. Right? So that is one that I constantly scratch my head. It’s not going away. And so it’s a little bit like saying we refuse to do this marketing channel. Well, at some point you probably will come around on that because that’s where people will find their food, right?

Ashish Tulsian 

So from an organization as large as Brinker, why Costa Rica?

Wade Allen

Oh, man, that is a great question. I love Brinker. I loved working for Brinker, the leadership that Wyman Roberts gave over the ten years that I was there was remarkable And and working with those people were fantastic. I think as a woman retired, I realized and had a moment where this brand was was going to go in a different direction with a new leadership team. And it’s probably wasn’t the direction I was ready to go. There were some other things that were lurking in the background that I hadn’t addressed, which was working for a big company living away from my home and my home. I remember I was born and raised in the mountains of Utah, so living away from my home, a very big publicly traded company, really beholden to what Wall Street said day in, day out, how we actually, you know, made our numbers and and I think that was a point kind of a crossroads in my career where I just started to think of something different. I wanted to get back to that kind of entrepreneurial or small feel where I could truly make a huge difference because I made a big difference in a big company. But and then and then I wanted ultimately to have a shot at leading a brand. And so it was clear that that was not the next steps for me at Brinker. And when that came to fruition, I realized I needed to go do something else and as we amicably parted, it was I think it was divine intervention. You know, I think we all have a different view of Providence, but I think there was a lot of direction for me to find. Kosta And literally the next week I spoke at a conference and bumped into the CEO, one of the CEOs of every that, Oh wow.

Ashish Tulsian 

After taking that decision. Yeah. Oh wow.

Wade Allen

Yeah. Week after I made the decision. And, and it’s just a series of events that have had me within a month back in Utah and taking a job with custody that and helping lead that brand. And I knew that brand as a kid. I left that valley in it where I was from, Utah was I call it the Valley, but it’s this bowl area of mountains, right silicon slopes. I left that area and I knew this little brand kind of, you know, it’s kind of over here on my periphery as I left. And I wasn’t thinking too much about it because I wasn’t a restaurant guy yet. So to know and watch it as it’s grown over time now, almost 100 restaurants and to get the opportunity to come back and lead it. I was ecstatic and it was small, it was nimble, great people. It had a great purpose, great mission just just all the makings of what I would call a cult like brand and especially in the restaurant space, Right. The colors and the Chipotle ways of the world type to really create something new.

Ashish Tulsian 

It’s been how many months.

Wade Allen

Mean I got back here I think I started on May 15th, but I didn’t relocate my family until July 24th. So depending on how you count the numbers of when you’re on the ground, it’s been since May. So what, five, six months?

Ashish Tulsian 

Maybe it has. How the life has been.

Wade Allen

I just love it. My commute, 9 minutes, right? It’s like I work with all my buddies. Thank you. There’s all I know.

Ashish Tulsian 

Everybody I saw, I saw your background. That was your office. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah.

Wade Allen

I mean, it’s just amazing. The the lifestyle, the people, the essence of that brand that comes through is just pristine and just amazing. And that to me, is worth way more than a paycheck that big corporate rescues and grants and all that stuff. Right? This is this is where the fun is. And sure, I’m still I’m still a capitalist, so I’m driven by by the dollar. But I think the opportunity for this brand is truly making it the next big brand and are.

Ashish Tulsian 

Enjoying the velocity with which you can move things.

Wade Allen

Yes, I think it needs to be a little faster, but we’re getting there. We can’t we can’t get too fast through the training. Those awful wreck. Right. So I’ve got to take them slow. But I feel good that I know where we’re going. I feel good knowing how we’re going to get there. And now it’s just convincing my peers to take some risks and go get it. But yeah.

Ashish Tulsian 

I need to I need to tell you something about my perception of read either. I didn’t know the brand, you know, but last year when we started in the U.S., I think it was MarTech first one and I saw these four or five IT guy is from Costa Rica, like hopping in from room to room. And I can tell you that, you know, since then I think I’ve seen the same four or five people, you know, hopping on to tech conferences. And I think, you know, I feel that I could feel that the steam is hungry. Yeah, like that. They’re looking there. They’re watching the learning and talking to everyone and like they’re four or five of them, you know, here. And some of the largest companies did not have, you know, even three people, you know, doing the same. So that was that was quite amazing.

Wade Allen

I love that story. I feel the same way. Dave Conger and Alan Beck and Jerry Ernie, the three guys that I interact with on a daily basis.

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah, yeah.

Wade Allen

They’re just.

Ashish Tulsian 

Amazing. The name.

Wade Allen

They’re humble, they’re hungry, they’re super sharp and smart, and they’re going to make a difference. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian 

Shout out to them. Yeah, yeah. So my, my perception, of course every comes from that. You know, I really believe that, you know, companies and, and culture is really about, you know what can you predict about that. Yeah. And if it’s predictable that culture.

Wade Allen

I love it that’s great to hear I feel the same way. So it’s good to see an outside side perspective made.

Ashish Tulsian 

How’s how have you changed over the years as a leader? What’s what’s what are the changes that you perceived are what are you saw in your own self as How is your relationship web, you know, leadership that you deal with and the leader that you are? How how has it drawn its decision?

Wade Allen

Yeah, it’s certainly been innovative. I think early on in your career you’re less focused on leadership and focus on doing. And then as you are led by a really great leader, it’s this moment where you start to pause and you start to question what what is he doing different than my previous boss, or what are they doing different? And I think we’re all a collection of experiences at the end of the day of how we actually become leaders or how we actually become great people. I’ve had some really bad leaders. I just stated for the record, I don’t give any names, but I’ve had some bad leaders and then that’s a really, really good leaders. And that dichotomy, right, that I would never know the really, really good unless I knew the really, really bad. And so it’s those reflections in time where I stop and I go, Well, why are they so great? So my my leadership is is a product of that experience. And I’ve dove in four key things that I’ll share with you tonight. But I firmly believe, one, you have to be you have to love the people that you lead. You have to truly be a servant leader and care about those people and let them know you care about them. That’s the first one. I think the second one is just being super, super clear on what your expectations are for that team. And don’t mince words, right? Being super clear with your communication is is actually super valuable for your get for your team. So be super clear on what your expectations are for that team and for them individually. I think the third one I learned is that you cannot just leave them on an island. You need to go and support them. You need to go and rally behind that. You need to have constant check ins and help them along this journey of leading them and the tasks that you give them. And then the fourth one is truly holding them accountable. I think people in business and people in life and when they know they will be held accountable, will strive to reach the bar or exceed the bar. So it’s really those four steps, right? It’s love them. Let them know you love them. It’s be clear with your communication and expectations, with them. It’s support them. Let them know they’re supported and help them along that journey. Journey. And then last, just hold them accountable for all of that. Right. And I think if you do those four things, what I’ve seen in my leadership, I create great teams. People love that and I feel passion about it. It always love me right in give and take me once in a while because I do give you stuff, but I think they enjoy that leadership and they feel heard and they feel supported and they feel like they can accomplish great things.

Ashish Tulsian 

Those are those are great points. But I think, you know, taking care of them and continuous check ins, etc., borderlines, you know, the perception of micromanagement, you know, being clear in your expectations and communication borderlines, you know, the rude ness or maybe like the feedback that just somebody could not take. How how do you deal with that?

Wade Allen

Yeah, it’s that I hate micromanagement. I think if we’ve been micromanaged, we absolutely hate it. Right? So I’m just deliberate in the way that I approach them to make sure that they that they’re ready for the feedback or they’re ready for the help. Okay. It’s a little bit like and it’s not the same. It’s not the same. But I’ll say it’s a little bit like kids, right? When you’re raising children, there’s an opportunity to allow them the latitude, the freedom to make mistakes. Right. And then help them identify, okay, that was a mistake. But that’s okay. People make mistakes. How do we course correct. And how do you get back on if you have that approach in life? Because that’s how my leaders approached it with me. They’ve let me fail and stumble a few times and get some bruises and some black eyes, but then stand me up, dust me off and allow me to be successful again. You learn faster by having a bad experience than if somebody just takes away your bad experience, right? So micromanages. Don’t realize that they’re just cutting off. They’re just cutting off their own leadership because they just they force people down a path that they know is the quote unquote, the only path to get there. If you let people kind of explore it and they bump around in the dark a little bit, but they get back up, sometimes they’ll surprise you and find a totally different path that’s less traveled. That’s they’ll then be successful. And then you learn something as a leader. Wow, it was the right thing to give them enough bandwidth, enough space to actually find their way. It’s hard because we have deadlines. We have dollars are being spent against it. But I think as leaders, that is the hardest part of our job is to allow people the bandwidth to be successful, but also fail, pick them up, direct them in the right path, and potentially learn something from their own experience. Right?

Ashish Tulsian 

Absolutely. That’s but that’s beautiful. I think I think that that line where, you know, allowing people who work with you to make mistakes or explore, you know, beyond or beside the prescribed cloud, you know, as a leader, it also allows you to discover new things because, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know, right. That these frontline warriors are the ones who, you know, have the most amount of data for the problem that they’re dealing with. And, you know, they have the biggest opportunity to, you know, kind of unlock parts of which or definitely not visible to anybody else.

Wade Allen

So I totally agree with that. Yeah.

Ashish Tulsian 

That’s a great time in the restaurant tech. You know, at MarTech, we can begin to see a lot of interesting sentiment around AI, you know, voice and whatnot. And then all all of that, you know, comes under your, you know, area of impact. Yeah. How are you dealing with and what’s happening when I you know, in your strategy, in your mind, is it all like, what’s the fad and what’s what’s going to stay? What what what do you think is happening.

Wade Allen

Yeah, it’s it’s interesting that there tends to be a lot of hype sometimes around these things. I think there’s some around it. I though I do think I and I’ve said it before is as will create as monumental shift in all industries as the web and mobility was. So I think it’s one of those watershed moments just like mobile phones and just like when the Internet came out like late nineties, mid nineties and then again in 2008 nine when they introduced the iPhone. I think we’re hitting one of those watershed moments again. When I think about A.I., it’s really about how do we just make our staff more productive and how do we extract intelligence that we otherwise couldn’t get to other than just running manual queries over and over and over again to try to extract data? Right? So anything that can help us on that front and I still view A.I. as I wouldn’t say it’s skunkworks, but it’s very it’s un it’s unpolished and unrefined today. But, but, but the work that’s been done on chat ship and some of these other things have been truly pretty remarkable. Right. And it’s it’s not new. People talk about it. It these large learning models have been around for years. Natural language processing has been around. It’s just we have the ability to put massive volumes of data through this now has now allowed us to think differently in a lot to extract some of that intelligence. So for us, specifically in the restaurant space, I think there’s opportunity on. We have lots and lots of guests that come and will make comments or they’ll say things or they’ll do things. We have a hard time responding to every single one of them or taking care of them. If we could use some AI that wouldn’t allow us to be impersonal but could still kind of speak to, Hey, we are paying attention. We are. We are. We do know and we need to respond to you. There’s may I opportunity there? I think there’s some opportunity with our restaurant ops. Is there some I don’t know if it’s computer vision or something that will help us be better at cooking our food before it goes out the door. I think that’s a huge opportunity. The restaurant, the organization that taps the model that allows you to quickly identify if a plate was made within a few standard deviations of the way it was supposed to is going to save restaurant companies millions and millions of dollars because wrong missing items is the plague of our industry today in the to go space and at least in a restaurant you can make it better when it’s going out, the drive through or going out the door. You don’t really get that chance now you’ve had a bad experience. So I think there’s some application there. I think there’s some ops in in our alerting systems with whether it’s oven technology or it’s cloud based computing stuff of problems that are pre-identified would be huge for us on making sure that everything’s functioning so that that’s kind of broad based value.

Ashish Tulsian 

Are you are you trying to force I mean, which bandwagon? Are you on are you the one who’s trying to figure out where to fit AI into the you know, into the game? Or are you just are you on the side which is watching and seeing, okay, as use cases evolve, we will latch onto them.

Wade Allen

Yeah. I think when I was with Brinker it was the former with coast on allowing it to come to me. One of the things I have learned over time is forcing something in place to be the innovator in the industry probably isn’t worth it. Finding the use cases where there’s application is always the best way to do it. I do think we have use cases today that we’re not using, but that’s also about humans accepting it and not not necessary. The guest Yeah, but the support center and the restaurant operators were averse to change and sometimes changing too aggressively can run. People run people the wrong way and build bad experiences. So well, I think there are use cases today and most restaurant companies can utilize A.I.. I think they’re going to give it a little bit more time to kind of quote unquote come to them before they apply those to allow their their support staff and operators to accept it a little bit more and to actually be as open that whole dialog. Right. I mean, the fact that it’s open to the general public, anybody can get on Twitter allows all of us to wind down the road because there isn’t that adverse to change versus if you change that, the otherwise would be there because now it’s accessible, Right?

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah, I think I think tragedy has also accelerated a common, you know, a limited understanding of what they can do right. I think while people are you know, people are still excited and scared, you know, both at the same time. But I think tragedy has done something like it is just educated like billions of people in one charge that how exactly works and I it’s it’s not a it’s not just a techies game anymore right Yeah because because even techies are not even he’s not just writing on an app or on it and they also don’t understand a lens, you know, and All right.

Wade Allen

So it’s interesting.

Ashish Tulsian 

It’s quite fascinating.

Wade Allen

I’m a contextual person so I always watch these moments in history. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s very similar, the way that Amazon kind of, you know, we all deal with the Amazonian effect where I should have push a button and it should be here, I should do something. I should just have it right. We didn’t live in that kind of that world prior to Amazon. I coined them maybe the iPhone, but they kind of created that, right? So we’re kind of there now. Where this? Yeah, it’s going to eventually come. What? I’ll just ask. Whatever. I’ll just ask. Well, 20 years ago, nobody was saying that. I mean Star Trek computer, right? Yeah. So you go, Yeah. So now we’re going to live in a world where our even our kids are going to be like, I’ll just ask Alexa or I’ll just ask Google or I’ll just go to chat and it will just give me the answer. And so we’re kind of living that moment that we lived when Amazon first showed up and now and the expectation now is you can just push a button right soon it’s going to be you just going to speak what you want, it’s going to come back. So it’s it’s interested to watch how this all evolves.

Ashish Tulsian 

So I think and it’s a it’s a it’s a behavioral disruption. And I generally say that that it it’s a behavioral disruption that has already happened. Yeah. You know, how many times in the last couple of years have you really written a full sentence on Google while you you Google doesn’t allow you to complete that. Right. It gives you exactly the right position. And that is that was already happening. We just don’t know that. Right. I mean, if if now I have experienced it myself, if I’m writing something on Google and if the suggestion does not come, I actually yeah, I’m like, oh, am I? Am I the only one setting this? Am I doing something wrong? Right.

Wade Allen

Right. I’ve done the same thing. Yeah. Actually, you first. You’re like, just finish the sentence for me. You know what I’m thinking? All right, That’s so interesting.

Ashish Tulsian 

Well, that was a great chat. Yeah, you know, I am. I’m really excited about what lies ahead of you in Costa Rica. I can. I can clearly see that it’s going to be it’s going to be a right that a brand like Costa Rica is to cherish. Congratulations for, you know, landing it while you already, you know, to jump from brink. And that’s a that’s a great story. I would have never believed that. And it’s crazy, you know, But all the best.

Wade Allen

But thank you. I appreciate it. It’s been a great chat and I couldn’t be more excited about the future Coast of Eden and and would love to connect with you again and do another one of these. This is awesome.

Ashish Tulsian 

Out of us and we’re definitely going to do that. All right.

Wade Allen

Thanks.

Ashish Tulsian 

Yeah.