Welcome back to the Restaurant Rock Stars Podcast. Imagine having a small numbers business. We’re talking low six figures and growing it to a seven figure business Using social media. Social media is the most powerful and most cost effective form of marketing today where you can actually get your.

Guest to market your business for you. Well, today’s guest, Matt Doright, bought an old 70 year plus year business, turned it around, and now he’s got a huge social media following, and he’s gonna give you the keys to doing just that. So you’re not gonna wanna miss this episode. Also, did you know that we’ve taken our popular Restaurant Academy training system and broken it into multiple individual courses?

We have a course on leadership and accountability and building your dream team. We have a course on creating a mug club, but the biggest needle mover of all is our menu profit accelerator, where we teach you how to maximize menu profit. You can’t control labor costs, you can’t control inflation, but you can control your menu profit, and it’s restaurantrockstars.com.

Now on with the episode. 

You are tuned in to the restaurant Rock Stars Podcast, powerful ideas to Rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

 Matt, welcome to the show today. I am so psyched to have you here. I appreciate you having me on. I’m excited too. You have an interesting story and it’s gonna revolve deeply around social media and so few re are experts at social media, so I know they’re gonna have a lot of takeaways.

But first it all starts with you bought a restaurant during the pandemic. Why?

I’ve wanted to own my own business since I was nine, and my neighbor was an entrepreneur and he set me and my best friend up a lemonade stand. And that day we made, we both made $20. And I just remember looking at him going like this is I get goosebumps talking about this is it.

Like I want to do this. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how I’ll get there, but I’ve always been inclined like that. I used to, on snow days, my friends would want to go sledding and I’d be like let’s. Go shovel driveways for a few hours, let’s get some money. ’cause I knew if there was four of us, I can knock on doors and talk to the people and they’d be shoveling the driveway behind me and we just go down the line like that.

I’ve always been excited about that and. I never thought it would be restaurants. I’m probably the only restaurateur that would probably say that hasn’t been my lifelong mission. I started in restaurants when I was pretty young, so I’ve been in the game for 15 years. I started out in pizza like most of us do at least here in Michigan.

That’s a a lot of story with the, the cooks that I know, the chefs I know. And so I did that for about five and a half years in that process. When I was 22, I was on my fifth year. And the owners offered me equity to stay and just take on, I was like learning Facebook at the time, but like I wasn’t really there.

I didn’t know as much as I do now. But I actually turned on that opportunity. I had a gut feeling that even there was five owners. So even if. We got it up to a couple million a year. Like how much would I actually be making splitting it? Five ways? Yes, you can blow up and franchise and I just don’t think that was their mission.

So I I turned it down and I instantly regret it for six months. I was like, you’ve wanted this your whole life. What are you doing man? You should have jumped on this opportunity. But I have faith that if I just stayed patient and I kept putting in the work that. Another opportunity would present itself.

So fast forward, I got out of the pizza game and I started to learn how to cook in more of a family style restaurant. And they took me from the pizza side over to the cooking side in about two days. Once they saw that I had the grasp of things. So I learned saute, I learned char fryers is obviously where I started, but yeah,

you’re versatile.

Yeah, so I just tried to, my favorite job in the restaurant was always wherever they needed me the most. I didn’t really have a, oh, I need to be on Char, or I need to be on saute. I was, as long as I’m here getting the job done, like that’s where I, that’s where I like to be, so what a

great attitude. If every restaurant employee had that, whatever it takes attitude.

Where do you need me? I’ll dive in. I’ll do my best at it. That’s awesome. Obviously you were recognized for that. Yeah. Keep going. It’s a good story.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah I think the same thing too is that’s really what I tried to cultivate with my team is we don’t have titles, we don’t have jobs, we just help each other succeed and we’ll get through this day a lot faster than if everyone was trying to play their role.

Fast forward my brother actually hit me up and he worked in fine dining, so steaks, lobster tails. It was a seven location, corporate restaurant at the time. And, he’s do you know anybody looking for a cook job? And I was like, I guess it’s my time to jump ship. So I jumped there in 2019 and I worked there for about a year and a half.

And then we obviously know, I guess 2018. And then covid hit in 2020, so I. All my friends got laid off. It was me, my brother, my general manager, my kitchen manager weren’t running carryout. So outta 60 employees, there’s four of us left trying to figure out who’s gonna order steak and lobster tail and Togo boxes.

Okay. But yeah, and one day I was again whatever I’m needed, I like to do, and I was vacuuming the vents in the kitchen, the the AC vents and the owner walks in was like. What are you doing, and why aren’t you in a management position yet? And honestly, at the time I was looking for my way out of the restaurants.

Again, I didn’t know what it was. I really wanted to open my own business and I. He said, the restaurant next door red Knapps, about 1500 square foot burger milkshake. Blaze has been around for 70 years. It’s going up for sale. The owners right now don’t know how to pivot. And would you like me to introduce you?

So he really put me in position to succeed there, to get started. I was 26 at the time and I didn’t know how to read a p and l. I didn’t know how to do a lot of the, ownership stuff. Important. Important,

yeah. The important things. Yeah, they’re

very important. Yeah. Systems. Exactly. But I was eager, I was like, this place had been around for 70 years.

I’m just gonna jump on it. And this is the time, like my gut was, told me it was ready. And when I had the pizzeria opportunity, I wasn’t ready at that time in retrospect. And this time I knew that I just needed to get timing started. Big time for sure. Awesome.

Oh, that’s fantastic. So the place was not performing.

What did you do first? Like you bought this place and then you had to obviously triage and decide, okay, what’s next? Was it social media? Was it marketing or was it upleveling? The team? It’s like getting everybody on board. Talk to us about that, those early couple of months when you first bought it.

What did you do first? And then we’ll get into your story.

Yeah, for sure. I think most importantly was I just tried to cultivate a vision. What are we here to do? And my goal was I wanna build this thing up to the biggest we can make it. I wanna make it a $10 million business, is what I said. Awesome. 1500 square foot burger day. Good goals. Yeah. And so I got really excited and I think it excited my team. So I’m very grateful that 90% of my staff has been with me for the last five years. We’ve cultivated something fun and exciting there where. My goal was to create a place they wanted to be and not where they had to be.

’cause I’ve worked too many jobs where I was just like, I gotta be here to make a paycheck, and I didn’t want to do that. But I also knew the importance of social media. Before we got on this call, I told you I did audio before this, so I may not had any video experience, but I understood how to cut audio and so I was like, okay.

I know 2020, everybody should be on social media and I gotta figure this thing out. So I created a series to get Gordon Ramsey’s attention because I saw that he was roasting people’s food online. He is oh, you donut, you idiot sandwich, da. So I was like, all right, if I can get him to call me a donut, then we can do something fun here.

How’d you get his attention? You got my attention. Gordon Ramsey

needs no introduction For sure. Without a doubt. Yeah. What I did was I was like, okay I need to create a daily series ’cause I need to be posting every day. And I see he’s, roasting people’s food. So I’m just gonna start out like this.

This is day one of getting Gordon Ramsey’s attention by putting weird stuff in burgers. So I started every day just putting cotton candy and gummy worms and all types of just what are you doing? Type of food into burgers. And was that for post you were actually serving your guests all this stuff?

No. That was literally just. For me. Okay. Thank you. Thank not a waste of food. Gotcha. I would eat it too. And so Oh, gotcha. Awesome. I didn’t wanna waste it. But it called, it cultivated an audience over that timeframe. People were so excited about this crazy mission I had that they would tag Gordon Ramsey every single day.

So we had these huge list of comments of people tagging Gordon Ramsey. And then on the 63rd day, I’m sitting there scrolling on TikTok and I see his face pop up next to mine and I’m like. Whoa we did it. This is crazy. Like we got his attention, his video did 11 million views on his page, and that was our first 50,000 followers, was just by doing this daily series of something that almost seemed outta reach, wow.

Now is that different from the milkshake guessing game? ’cause we want to hear all about that too.

Yeah, so what’s funny is like at the beginning, people will come in and ask for the spaghetti burger I made and people really knew me as like the Gordon Ramsey guy, right? Uhhuh. Yeah. And nowadays, like people know me for the milkshake guy.

But in between over the last five years, I’ve had 22 different series go viral. So I’ve done a lot of testing to see what works, what doesn’t, storytelling through food, getting famous people’s attention like and when I finally came up with this game that was like. Nobody else is doing this.

This is something that is me, uniquely me, and it’s like from my own mind. And so the milkshake guessing game it’s had people come out from all across the country. And like I told you before, like we’ve had someone come out from Australia, they were here for a wedding, but they had to stop by and come say something and say they watched the videos and they got a meal and everything.

So we’ve been able to take this and now a 75-year-old restaurant into a global brand in a lot of ways. Awesome. And it’s pretty cool.

Take on a life of its own. Yeah, absolutely. This is, yeah, this is like genius. Like you captured lightning in a bottle with this. This is awesome. So you’ve had amazing success with social media, but you’re a content guy, right?

So let’s talk about content, because I think we started by saying, not everyone is a social media expert, but what would you suggest and what’s made you most successful? And maybe it starts with the content, but it’s also the unique ideas in your delivery and what to do and when to do it. All that.

Tell us the whole, yeah, give us the whole background on that.

Honestly, like I know like in a lot of my videos and even doing these interviews, like people have a hard time believing, but I’m naturally an introverted person, so like I would never guess that putting myself on camera like was terrifying.

Like I’m a kitchen guy, so like when I open naps, like I. I was in the kitchen, but I also knew that to create a great restaurant, I had to be in the front of the house. So I had this small hallway where I’d, me and my brother would cook all the food and then I’d hurry up and be like, and then I hype myself and I walked through this hallway like, you gotta talk to people.

You gotta just go say hi. Go say hi. And so like I had to work through that. And really it was the same thing with the content. I never saw myself as being like a public figure or anything like that. I just knew that I had to figure out a way to create content from my restaurant to get people’s attention.

Because attention is the new gold. It’s the new when technology boomed it’s that now attention is where you need to be if you wanna, have a successful restaurant. ’cause you could have the best product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, then you’re just.

Sitting there waiting for people to show up. It was the same thing, like I would one of my early viral series was I had this red igloo cooler and I would just walk downtown Rochester and I would ask people to try milkshakes. And at the beginning it was like, Hey, do you wanna try a milkshake?

And then people just looked at me like. Dude, no, thank you. And they walk away and going back to the social media thing, it’s like I realized that I needed a better pitch or in social media terms, a better hook, right? Yeah. First, I love the word hook.

Yeah. We use that in restaurants all the time.

What are your hooks? What makes you, set you apart from the competition? Unique, special, different. Yeah. So that’s your hook. Yeah. What was the hook? Yeah,

my hook originally was, do you wanna try a milkshake? And then I realized I should probably introduce myself. Hey, my name’s Matt. I own Red Knapps right down the road here.

I’m just having people try some samples. Would you like to try a milkshake for free and give it a rating between one and 10? And as soon as I changed the hook, nine times outta 10 people said yes. And so I was like, I. Boom. Now I can go get 30, 40, 50 videos in a few hours timeframe just by walking around.

And it was really when I was in Target, which is a random place to ask people to try your milkshakes. But that video ended up doing 6.5 million views and like people started coming in. I saw that Target video, I saw that Target video. So I was like, okay, there’s something to this. And that series went great.

I don’t necessarily do it anymore. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t because I know that it works. But the benefit of the milkshake guessing game is people come in and ask, I only gave the first one away to create the video. Yeah. And so I passed, I was like one of my regulars. I was like, can you just try this video idea with me?

And there were gracious enough to say yes. And that video did 3 million views on Facebook, which I never had a video go crazy like that on Facebook before. And I was like, okay, there’s. Definitely something to this. I just need to do more. But I just waited for the next person to come in and ask about the green milkshake thing.

And at the time it wasn’t even green milkshakes, they asked about the milkshake guessing game. It has evolved over time, right? It, again, going back to hooks, it used to be, I. This is the milkshake guessing game. If you can guess the correct flavor, you win a shake and a prize. Now, if you watch my videos it’s shortened.

It’s just, if you can guess the correct flavor, you win a shake and a prize. And why that’s important is because what we’re telling somebody in the first two seconds is, this is what you’re watching and this is what you get if you watch until the end of the video. If you can guess the correct flavor, this is what you’re watching, and you win a shake in a prize, that’s what you get.

If you watch to the end of the video, if somebody accomplishes that goal. So chopping it up and reiterating it, and again, they weren’t grained before. I had a guest come in, wanted to play, and then she’s like, why don’t you dye them like a different color? So it was harder to tell and I was like, oh man.

So the community helped me evolve the series and doing more reps in it helped it evolve uhhuh. Cool. And yeah.

That’s a wild story. Yeah. So what do you do now to promote your place and what social media I know you’re a big follower of TikTok and Instagram.

Are those the platforms that are, that you found to be most successful, not only for your restaurant, but you’d recommend them to others?

I argue you should be everywhere. Okay. I post on a, I post on a platforms every day. And the reason why is because I was stuck at 350 followers on Instagram for almost three years.

And I just kept showing up every day. Showing up every day. And then what happened when TikTok got so successful with organic reach? The rest of the platforms realize oh, we need to play that game if we want to keep. People’s attention. So although my videos were doing really successful on TikTok, I wasn’t growing on Instagram until they made that algorithm shift.

And then my videos doing well on TikTok also did well on Instagram, right? It’s the same videos posted everywhere. What used to take me 40 hours a week to like edit and film seven videos. Now it only takes me 15 minutes a day, and now people are coming into my restaurant versus me walking to Target or Oakland University or Right.

We get about 300 new people every single month just for coming in to play that game. And a lot of times it’s it’s either someone my age that wants to come in and play or it’s like a younger person that forces mom and dad to take ’em out to dinner and you got a family of five, that ticket average is way better.

So I really look at it as a marketing expense. That dollar 82 milkshake that I give away in these videos, ’cause it’s free either way. I monetize off the videos that video does a hundred thousand views. I made a hundred bucks on it. And they paid for food, so like I made money on that too.

So really a dollar 82 to acquire a new customer is a pretty good deal. And obviously Yeah, that,

that makes sense. Are these all short term video short format videos, like really quick? And if so, what’s the first thing you do to really nail ’em, get their attention and hold that attention for so many seconds or?

Not lose them. That’s the

key to it, isn’t it?

Restaurants, sell tons of fried food and your customers love it, but the hassles, hazards, and mess of fryer, oil, cleaning hoods, and all that. Grease, well, you can forget all that with restaurant technologies. They deliver your oil filter, it monitor usage. Collect and recycle your waste cooking oil. Their Auto Mist system automates your hood and flue cleaning.

Eliminating the fire risk as a restaurant Technologies customer. You’ll also save 10 to 15% in your insurance premiums. Plus, get a bonus for new customer referrals. Get at rti-inc.com or call 8 6 6 3 9 9 3 6 3 9.

Listen, don’t lose birthday business to your competition. People celebrate birthdays seven days a week. The check averages are high, and when they have fun in your place, they’ll come back again. Talk to my buddy Dyson. He’s an operator also just like you and me. But now he runs a done for you birthday club.

Go to jointhebirthdayclub.com/birthdayrockstar. It’s a piece of cake.

Oh, for sure. Without a doubt. It really goes down to your first two seconds. Like I said, if you can say everything they need to know in that first two seconds, they’re gonna decide if they wanna watch a video or not. And I. If we decide something’s good that doesn’t mean it is like the market decides what is good.

And that’s what I found with my video series is yes, I’ve had to tweak some things to help them, stay consistently viral. But the reality is if the video concept itself is good and the market decides it’s good, then you know you’re gonna have traction with it. So I’ve came up with probably a hundred different series that I didn’t execute on, but I wait for that one where my gut’s yo, you need to at least try it and just get out there and see what happens. And generally, when my gut tells me it’s a good idea as long as I’m consistent with it, then that’s a key thing. ’cause a lot of people don’t realize if you’re not posting every day, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Most people spend seven to eight hours a day scrolling on their phone.

So if you post one video every three days, you’re lost in hundreds of thousands of videos, potentially in that few day span from someone just swipe. So really to keep the most attention, like I try to post my, my best, growth has happened when I was posting four times a day consistently for months.

Okay, so if you’re posting every single day, multiple times a day, is it a combination of things? Are you showing photos of the food? Are you showing photos of your guests having a great time? Is it a shock value thing? Is it a laugh? You laugh at the beginning of it to why is this guy laughing? It’s I heard that was a key to doing something like what is, how do you stay consistent yet uniquely memorable when you’re posting so often without getting old and tired?

Do you keep coming up with new ideas all the time? Do you repeat things like there’s a whole strategy to this.

For sure. Like I said, I’ve had 22 different series go viral over five years. So right now people know me as the milk shit guy before they knew me as the burger guy before they knew me as the guy with the red cooler.

I think where you’re at in life is where you should be. Like if I get excited about a series, I’m, I have no problem being consistent because here’s the thing is like. If we think it’s drawn out and we think it’s too many, the chances of somebody seeing more than one video in a day is probably pretty low good enough.

So if I’m posting four times a day I’m just out there more, right? I pretty much gave people no choice but to see my videos by posting this often. But again, the reality is like if someone likes it, they’re gonna follow along. If someone likes it, they’re gonna wanna watch another video. And if they don’t like it, then.

They’re not the person for you. And maybe they’ll like the next video series. But the reality is I try not to think about what other people like too much. And I like to think about is this fun and exciting for me? So most of my video series stopped when it stopped being fun for me. So I was like, okay, now it’s time to cultivate something new.

I want something that’s different. I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while. Maybe I give it a try. I don’t think you can post too much there. There’s a, Mr. Beast is. Yes, I’ve heard of Mr. Beast, but tell us, okay. Yeah, so Mr. Beast is the largest YouTube creator in the world. And he recently collaborated with the largest India channel YouTube India channel.

And he, he showed Jimmy Mr. Beast, his TikTok, and he’s we post a hundred times a day. Jimmy’s are you serious? That’s a lot. And he’s yeah, but look, we do 9.2. Billion views, right? So no matter how many times you think is too many times a post, those guys are doing it at a way higher level and they have proof that this stuff is working.

So I try to just look at the people doing it at the highest level and just try to emulate. Those things. The reality is when I was passing out milkshakes on the streets, like I didn’t come up with that. Costco was doing that way before me giving away free samples. That’s all I was doing, except I was videotaping it.

And then I was getting a real life Google review in a lot of ways because people were telling me if they loved it or they hated it. So like I just fused those two things with that idea. And I know most people aren’t, and restaurant owners aren’t gonna be wanting to be running around the streets and target and passing out samples.

I, I get that, but that’s why you can story tell through food. I, one of my most recent videos, I was like, you know what, I gotta just test some things in. I made a sloppy Joe and I started with the hook is most right. You probably won’t see a sloppy Joe on most menus. And then I went in to say that because when I first took over, the sloppy Joe was on the menu, but I was like, who’s gonna order a sloppy joe?

Until people literally started walking out on me because they wanted their sloppy Joe back. So I brought it back on the menu and people showed me why they wanted it so much. So like I didn’t show my face. I showed me chopping up some beef on a grill and throwing some sauce in there and just putting the burger or the sloppy joe together.

But I just storytell through the food and so my hook was, you probably won’t see a sloppy Joe on the menu. I. So it gets people thinking like, have I seen this hoppy Joe on the menu? And then if they, if the story’s captivating enough, they’re gonna watch to the end of it. But that probably put up half a million views across platform and going back to the whole platform thing.

Instagram and TikTok are my most popular, but YouTube’s just a little bit behind it and we’re having good growth on there right now. And also too, I have 22 followers on Twitter or X and I ask people when they come in ’cause they’ll, they’ll say oh, I watched the videos. They’re so awesome.

Things like that. And I’m grateful when people do that or they’ll, when they’re playing the game, I ask like, where do you watch on? And I’ve had multiple people tell me they see me on Twitter. I. 22 followers. So I’m like, if I’m not showing up there, that person may not have came in because the reality is people use one to three platforms.

My buddy Michael only uses Twitter. And then there’s some people that only use Instagram, some people that only use Facebook. So if you’re not everywhere, you’re not reaching everybody.

That’s great advice. What about a budget and a spend? Like you gotta boost these posts to get the maximum number of eyes on it, or tell us about monetary spend and how important that is.

It was important for me, like I took over in 2020 and I came from working in restaurants. My parents don’t have money, so like I really bootstrapped this thing. Like I started the entire business with 30 grand and that was like terrifying ’cause oh crap, I gotta pay people six grand this week.

And then I, and I gotta get money coming in. That’s boots scrapping for sure. Yeah. And so I was like, and I can’t have anyone in the dining room, so I did things like I, we. Downtown Rochester is where I’m at, and they do these lights, it’s 1.5 million lights. They decorate the entire town and there’s always a lot of foot traffic and especially ’cause like people wanna be out during covid.

So there’s, I took hot chocolate and donuts outside and I sold stuff outside, so I had a second source of income. But as far as like cost, man, I have shot everything to this day on an iPhone. I use a free editing software called Cap Cut. I did invest two years ago into Pro, so outta the five years, two years ago, I’ve been using Pro just ’cause I like the captions feature.

But it’s 89 bucks for the year, so you want to started. That’s cost effective. Wow. Huge. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And all my videos have just been cost of food. So we know as restaurant owners, our $11 burger isn’t costing us $11. Yeah. Food cost. So basically that’s all I did is.

When I made free samples, that was my dollar 82 milkshake, every green milkshake, dollar 82 that I give away for free. But it generally comes back on average to about $146 in food bought in-house, not including, I get paid from my views on TikTok, so if that video does a million views, that dollar 82 just brought me in $1,100.

So it’s, that’s like my big thing is like I haven’t really had to invest any money and I was pretty intentional about not doing it. Yeah. Smart. I want to elevate my content so like I am coming out with a podcast to, with a crazy intention, just like Gordon Ramsey getting his attention. But to get Michigan a Michelin rated state, I wanna get them to create a chapter out here.

And I think if I create a video-based podcast where I’m highlighting the best foods in the state of Michigan. Based on how they judge I’m gonna be able to accomplish that goal. And I think that’s something, going back to content is that’s something fun and exciting for people to get excited about.

This guy actually do this. This seems like farfetched. That’s a crazy goal you

gonna do.

Yeah. And I really hope so. And the cool thing is, when I started doing my research for this is. Michelin was actually in Detroit and gave the Shinola Hotel a key. And that’s like a huge step towards, you know what I’m doing here.

So I’m like, if they’re already here sniffing around, yes. I can just bring the views to it and gotta foot the door there. Wow. Exactly.

Yeah you know it’s funny, you’ve come a long way ’cause you talked about being an introvert and you’re not a shy guy and clearly you do the things and you put yourself out there, you get yourself in the room.

I can see you being like a celebrity TV guy, doing restaurants. Someday, but this is awesome. What about algorithms? This is something I’ve never understood. How often do algorithms change on different platforms, and how does that affect you delivering content when once it was effective and then all of a sudden something flips upside down and it’s no longer gonna work?

That’s something I don’t understand, and maybe my audience doesn’t either.

No, for sure. I try not to focus too much on the algorithms because then you’re gonna go crazy. I just try to make really, like entertaining or educational valuable content that somebody might be interested in trying.

The algorithms are gonna change regardless, right? So like I said, for almost three years I was posting on Instagram with 300 followers and no growth, no nothing. But when the algorithm shifted. It blew me up. It brought me to a really cool spot, and I’m grateful for what it did. But here’s the other side of it.

The algorithm changed again, and most people aren’t growing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, but absolute He, everyone

is.

Yeah. Another, he’s another Gordon

Ramsey, but not necessarily in this space. But yeah, for sure. A hundred Such an influencer, such a powerful media guy. Yeah.

Yeah.

And he recently was on where somebody was like, oh, I’m getting good views, but I’m not growing on Instagram. Yeah. He’s I’m not growing either. I’m losing a thousand followers every week. And he said, it doesn’t matter. He said, the reality is if you’re providing value you’re gonna get across the board.

And I believe the same thing because, I’m still, like I said I’m having 300 new people come out to my restaurant every day, whether the Instagram algorithm is going hot or tiktoks hot, my my cousin or my wife’s cousin, he runs a page called Vanguard Motors and they do classic cars and he’s been doing it since 2013.

So he started off and just grind it. Grind and grind. This organic region didn’t happen till, 20 20, 20 21, and 22, somewhere in that pocket. Regardless of the matter is he built up an audience of 8 million people across platform and. He says the same thing. It’s just you just gotta keep going.

Sometime Instagram’s going crazy and sometimes TikTok takes a lead and then YouTube goes crazy. But the reality is just like they’re gonna ebb and flow as long as you just focus on creating good content, which I. Good content shouldn’t mean a $3,000 camera and the lighting set up and no good content is something that people wanna watch.

Like you’re not selling anything on organic. So focus on just entertaining and educating people instead of come to my restaurant and buy my thing. Save that for the ads. If you’re running ads like that’s. That’s definitely the move to do create a good proof promise plan guideline for your ads.

That’ll work. But for organic just try to have fun with it. If you’re not having fun, no one’s gonna have fun watching it, if you’re just trying to make money off of it people are gonna smell that. And that’s why like my content, I try to not sell, like it was mainly brand awareness for the longest time.

And now with this milkshake game, like it’s entertaining. Like people like watching it and like I’ve, I had a lady in her seventies come and play. She didn’t want to be in a video. But she’s I watch you on YouTube and I think this is a great idea. And I’m like, this literally reaches everybody right?

And I. That was my biggest problem when I opened Red Maps originally, is like my main demo for the first year was 65 and up. And I’m like, that’s not gonna last forever. It’s not sustainable. A good idea is when you’re creating content, think of who you’re talking to, right? And when I needed to talk to somebody younger, I went to Oakland University, that was like a mile up the road a couple miles up the road, and I went there to the university to talk to college students.

My goal was to just sit there and have them try milkshakes at the time. But the reality was, is. That started getting shown to the people like, oh, I see, oh, that’s my friend. I, or I have a class with them, or, oh my gosh, this. And so they started sharing it to that community. So really our main demo now is, families with kids.

And it wasn’t that before. And so I created an awesome kids menu that was like super affordable compared to like where we’re at. So take a little loss on that to get people in the door, but. Everybody ends up buying a milkshake, $8 milkshakes cross the board. Like I said, the ticket average goes it, it always works out

fantastic. You’ve just given us a crash course in content creation, social media, standing apart, hooks, all those things are super powerful. Let’s talk about some other things that make it successful. Are you focusing in on training your teams and finances and KPIs and all that kind of stuff? What else are you doing besides the marketing piece?

’cause it’s all important for operations.

Yeah, see. My thing is when my team is, I had, I knew I was hiring a younger team. This is like a younger place to work, high school, college. But I also wanted to be intentional with my kitchen. I didn’t necessarily want to have high school and college kids come in, although everyone around me was telling me, oh, you need to have lower wages in these young kids.

And I was like. No I’m gonna take my friends from fine dining that want to help me build this thing, I’m gonna pay them livable wages. Nice. And we’re gonna figure this thing out. So my kitchen is very well versed, 14 to 25 years of cooking experience per individual and mostly in fine dining, so they know how to execute.

Shoot a burger or milkshake, sounds like the Bear. You watch that TV show. I love that. That was a great show. Yeah, absolutely right.

It’s, oh my God, there’s so many similarities there, right? The fine dining piece to the sandwich shop and it’s yes chef. And it’s wow, there’s so many key learnings there.

And it sounds like you’re doing a lot of that yourself. Keep going. It’s great.

Yeah. And with my younger staff, I knew that they weren’t gonna be around forever, right? A lot of these guys are gonna be graduating high school, going off to college, or in college locally and moving on. So with them, instead of really trying to teach them restaurant stuff, I really tried to inspire them to look at this timeframe as an opportunity to learn how to be successful in other industries.

So I really gave them a lot of free range to be themselves, but instead of them. Teaching instead of me teaching them restaurant stuff, I tried to teach them more life stuff. Think about investing and setting up a Roth account and like my mom’s. Life skills. My mom’s big, like exactly. And stuff that I know that, when they move on, they, a lot of these guys have a strong work, work ethic.

And I, they just fell into my lap, really. It just, I got really lucky with my team. So I was like when we need to operate at the highest level, every single one of them is just locked in. So I made just more lax rules, like when there’s downtime, I’m not gonna have you on the floor with a toothbrush.

We keep the place clean, we have our cleaning list, we hit our core stuff. Our number one compliment for the entire first year was how much cleaner it is compared to what it used to be. And it was just a simple, checklist of things that we knew on to go. So as far as training, like I, I just wanted them to really be themselves.

Like we have our hooks when we talk to a table, but then I’m just like, just be you. If you’re having a bad day, you don’t have to tell ’em you’re having a bad day, but they ask how you are. You can say, I’ve had better days. And you know what, that almost always translates to a great, it’s genuine conversation.

Exactly. And so I don’t know. That’s my approach. And maybe thank you. Maybe I’m not right on it, but

yeah, it’s working for you. You’re doing a lot of, you’re doing a lot of the right stuff. This has been fantastic, Matt. I love speaking with you today. Thanks for being on the show.

Of course. I appreciate you having me out.

Fantastic. Thanks for being with us and thanks for being on the show. That was the restaurant Rock Stars podcast. Thanks so much to our audience for tuning in. Thanks our sponsors this week. Can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Stay well, stay tuned and I will see you then.

Listen, what would it feel like to lower your operating costs? Double your sales, lower staff turnover, create raving fans and design a menu that literally prints money. Our online restaurant training system will teach you and your staff to rock your restaurant and transform your business. Head on over to restaurant rock stars.com.

It’ll take you less than five minutes to get started. You’ve got this.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Rock Stars Podcast. For lots of great resources, head over to restaurant rock stars.com. See

you next time.

I.

Learn How To Make More Money In Your Restaurant: https://restaurantrockstars.com/sp/restaurant-profits

Restaurant Courses to Rock Your Restaurant: https://restaurantrockstars.com/shop-courses

The Restaurant Academy Training System – Everything you & your team need to know to CRUSH IT in the restaurant biz:  https://restaurantrockstars.com/joinacademy

Connect with us on Social Media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-beaudoin-21590016

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restaurantrockstars/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/restaurantrockstars

X: https://twitter.com/RestaurantRock1

Subscribe to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast:

iTunes – https://apple.co/2WaKyqV

Spotify – https://spoti.fi/3xGuOd0

Google – https://bit.ly/2VM10P1

Stitcher – https://bit.ly/3iFGAAb

Soundcloud – https://bit.ly/3lYBhho

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@RestaurantRockstars

Ask Roger a Question or Share a Restaurant story with us:

https://www.speakpipe.com/RestaurantRockstars