Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: It seems that everybody is talking about catering these days. know lots of different brands as I talk with them, walking around the shows, ⁓ really struggling to understand ⁓ to do catering right. ⁓ if you can learn how to do catering properly, ⁓ a huge game changer for you. ⁓ can continue to ⁓ grow big orders ⁓ appropriate ways. ⁓

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. As I like to each and every time, I know you guys have got lots of choices. So thank you guys for coming in hanging out with me today. Today is going to be kind of a cool topic because it keeps coming around. And the more and more I talk to restaurant operators, the more I realize that there is no one size fits all on the way that people are dealing with this. so going to ask our guests to introduce themselves real quick. Let's talk a little bit about your background. How did you even get into the technology space? And then we'll dig into what you guys are building at Rally.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: If you understand the value of catering and quite frankly, it's one of those things that I think as you're opening your doors to know that you've got a certain amount of sales already booked is huge. Elias from Rally Catering has developed a digital system through the years of understanding how businesses run and trying to help restaurant owners to get to a place. They've got a really innovative solution that can help.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Sounds good Jeremy. Hey, thanks for having me here. It's great to be here. name is Elias. ⁓ am the CEO of App8 and Rally Catering. And little bit about myself. I'll start with that. I didn't grow up in hospitality. I'm a and business transformation guy as a background, but I had to earn my way into the space. ⁓ I'd say hard way. ⁓ Over a decade ago, I just spent a ton of time with operators, learning what happens behind the counter, building with them.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: you understand what are the things you need to be thinking about when you're going to launch a catering program, how to accelerate it, how to manage things like allergens and repeat orders. And what are the different things that people are looking for when they are going out to the catering world? It's not really just about the software that he and his team have built, but it's the whole systemized process on how to launch catering and make it a game changer for your business. If you don't know me, my name is Jeremy Julian.

Elias @ Rally Catering: it was my curiosity that started it all. when it all started short story here is, one my business mentors owns a few owned ⁓ still a few restaurants. And it was him who brought me in behind the counter and kind of opened the veil on what happens in a restaurant behind the scenes during and after. And that the beginning of the, the foray and him and I worked together. It was just like one location. It was.

Jeremy Julian - Restaurant ...: I'm the chief revenue officer for CBS Northstar. We wrote the Northstar Pwnus Sale software for multi units. Please check us out at CBSNorthstar.com and now onto the episode.

Elias @ Rally Catering: like near the campus that I went to college in and we were just trying to find ways on how we could marry the stuff that I learned and I have and him, what he has and bring solutions to making things ⁓ easier to do, better guest experiences, ⁓ friction in the operations. And that's how it all started. Which kind of fast forward to today now at ⁓ Raleigh at App 8. What we do is we help food service brands and restaurants. more orders and move them through faster by making the entire process digital. So ⁓ the moment a guest places an order, all way through to when the kitchen preps it and then fulfills it. ⁓ So whole flow happens digitally. ⁓ today we're happy to say, you know, we work with hundreds of locations across the U.S. and Canada. I mean, catering was such an interesting space, such an interesting part of that. Because once I got close to operators that were doing catering, and that was a few years ago, where catering really started to unlock the value of that, I started to understand where the opportunity was in there. Jeremy.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: ⁓ huh. It makes me laugh because I actually say it often on the show I think all people in the US and really I guess in Canada should probably work in a restaurant at some point because I think there's all too often I think people go ⁓ no no super simple I'm just gonna take grandma's recipes I'm gonna start making food and everybody's just gonna show up and and for those that are on video they're watching you chuckle I've been doing this for a long time and I look at it and go dude

Elias @ Rally Catering: ⁓ yeah. Ha! Ha

Jeremy Julian - RTG: It's a really hard business. And once you dig into it a little bit, it's not as easy as putting a sign out on the, can have the best food in the world, but if you don't have a way to get it out to the consumers and deliver the quality, if you don't have good service, I mean, there's so many different parts and pieces that go into running a restaurant. So I think it's kind of interesting that you found your way to restaurants through a mentorship. But I really think, I mean, I've got my teenage kids, I'm like, you got to go work in restaurants, man. You got to go figure this out because it's just, it's a different world, is it not?

Elias @ Rally Catering: ⁓ yeah. It 100 % is, and I married someone who worked in a restaurant for years. so it kind of those two things are totally independent, but it just happens. So when I was going on the business venture with, with Rallik Kitten and with app eight, I was married, I got married to her and then like, well, before we got married at JLs, she was sharing all of the kind of like, here are the hardest things that happened that no one really knows about. and so like, Some of it is administrative, but it's the business pressures. It's what happens. It's what you have to do to make the thing work. people don't see that, right? People don't see that.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah. Well, and people look at it, go to that business, that restaurant's really busy. I wonder why it closed. It's like, well, cause the margins also suck. You know, restaurants, if they're making double digit margins. And again, a lot of our listeners are operators out there. They know this pain and suffering. I still think I could be a multimillionaire if I just started a counseling service, psychological service for extra restaurateurs trying to get out to sit and talk with each other, some kind of, you know, 12 step group or something like that.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Ha Yeah, well you're doing this, so that's helpful, that's helpful. It's good.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: no, for sure. ⁓ talk to me a little bit about catering. catering? Why do you think catering is ⁓ a, know, and I said it at the onset, it is very much an untapped market. And I think there's a lot of people ⁓ leave money on the table in the way of catering. And so ⁓ guess talk me through the challenges that you guys encountered. Take the app out of the equation. We'll talk a little bit about how you guys solve that problem. ⁓ why do you think so few people do it? And even those that do it don't do it super well.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah. I'll start, start to share a bit about that, but I actually want to tell you a story about how it started. like what was the, the unveil of like, wow, catering is very different, but the reality is that catering has different, very different I'm going to break it down and then you might be like, ⁓ I get it now. Then ⁓ having a restaurant for one catering for the most part, you're kind of dealing B2B not B2C. So your customer. Well, if you're doing corporate catering, depends if you're doing wedding catering versus corporate catering, but I'm going to, I'm going to mix it up a bit. So I'll talk a bit. I'll, I'll, I'll mix it up. But if you're getting, get into corporate catering, which is, which has a lot of repeat business behind it, has a lot of potential on all of success. You're dealing with businesses and B2B and there's a lot of opportunity there. But the things that catering customers look for are very different than the things that restaurant customers look for someone who's coming and is interested in a catering order. they're most likely ordering for a whole bunch of people, even if it's 10 other people, it's usually 10 plus 10, 25, 30. You know, if you talk about like a relatively small or average size catering order, they want to make sure everybody's happy. They want to make sure it's on budget and they don't want to make sure it's on time because and that if someone has an allergy or something like that, they don't mess that up. Like any one of these things goes wrong. It's actually major damage control versus In a restaurant storefront situation, I'm not saying errors are bad or mistakes are bad or those things are non-existent, but when you're pushing an order at a time out the gate, you have the ability to kind of react to that. But in a catering land, things happen in advance. The timelines are totally different. The menu structure and what people look for are different. And so one of the common mistakes is, hey, I run a restaurant. This kitchen makes food. I can make food for more people. So I'm going to go and... and do that and try to do that. And then you trip up and fail at one or it was really hard and you're like, I don't think I can do that like 20, 30, 10 times a week. then, ⁓ we end up kind of pulling back and ⁓ back. So that's what, that's a common thing that, that, ⁓ that we hear.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Well, and the other thing, guess, so you talked about a couple of thoughts that I had is the ability to produce the food, the ability to manage all of that. other thing that, again, ⁓ hit on is ⁓ preference. ⁓ then there's also the allergens of just, could get somebody sick and I could really hurt somebody. ⁓ are all really big pieces, especially when you're feeding large ⁓ swaths of people. When you are an individual and you have an allergy, you're directly with the brand and saying, I've got a peanut allergy. I can't have any peanuts. can't have, ⁓ know, or it's a preference. And ⁓ in catering, typically, especially in a B2B catering world, you're catering at a macro scale and ⁓ now ordering for 30 people. You might know that that person's got that allergy, but now ⁓ back to the brand that's producing that food, ⁓ got to also, ⁓ know, either ⁓ a separate section in their catering that says, hey, this is the food that didn't touch this.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Or in general, design a menu around that. Is that kind of what you found as you dug in a little bit to catering?

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah, it's more, it's more the communication than designing an independent menu. Cause menus can say, Hey, these are, these are, you know, peanut free or whatever. can have entire menu items, but a lot of times the in catering. Allergens will get identified at the order level or at the item order level, whether it's over the phone by email quote, you know, form or online, but that's kind of where it happens. Cause usually it's a small handful of people that have specific algorithms. then then. The onus is on that little piece of information that was probably communicated at one point in time during the intake process must make its way through multiple stages ⁓ span of multiple days, ⁓ the way to fulfillment to the time when the thing is fulfilled ⁓ factor in some, some buffer, you know, give or take buffer when you're, doing that order. So breakages along the path. That's where there's fear and that's where.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Uh-huh, yeah.

Elias @ Rally Catering: things happen and sometimes it's not even on the establishment. It's just because there's a reliance on good communication on the customer. Right? Right.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yep. Yeah. No, and I love that. You said something that I guess struck me a little bit and I'd love a little bit more digging in just since you live in this world of catering. I would have assumed that catering, oftentimes the menu might look a little bit different than it does in store. ⁓ guess from my perspective, certain food travels well. ⁓ food can be migrated from on property to off property. ⁓ know, again, ⁓

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: you've got a certain experience in the store that you don't always get in catering. ⁓ so ⁓ would, ⁓ guess my assumption, I'd love for you to ⁓ a little bit. How often do you find that people ⁓ ⁓ towards having a different offering? might be the same ingredients, might be ⁓ but it's not a build your own sandwich. It's a, ⁓ is on the side versus.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: the lettuce, tomatoes, the mayonnaise might not be on the sandwich, it's going to be on the side. So I'd love to walk through kind some of those organizational and operational things as to what you've seen. Because again, think, know, ⁓ upon who your business consumer is, ⁓ may or may not want to do that. And so guess I'd love for you share a little bit of that.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure thing. When it comes to catering, there's, there, when it comes to catering menus, there's a few different, I'm going to focus on two, bigger buckets, bigger buckets that you've got like a wedding catering situation or in a, a large event catering situation where you probably are going to white glove it. You're probably going to sit down with someone and actually you're going to carte blanche, you know, Tell me about what your vision is and we're going to get into that and you're going to talk about your show. If you're to have something there, but it's going to be, you're going to be a bit more flexible. It's a multi hundred event. And then you have ⁓ repeat catering business, corporate catering business, small private event, catering business, where you want to have some menu structure. And so when you have a structured menu for catering, it is different because even optionality, someone seeing packages, that are well defined with ranges of how many people it feeds and gives them information that makes them feel confident and safe that if I order this, I know I have this many people, so I need two of these, three of those and four of those, and I have enough confidence in this menu that I'm gonna be able to meet the needs of all of the people that I am ordering for in catering. And so that's where the menu changes. And so we've seen most successful catering menus

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Uh-huh.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Again, it depends on the concept because it comes down to who you are and what your offering is. But corporate catering concepts where they actually say, hey, this is a package, it's feeds five to 10. And we have one that feeds 10 to 15. And you have kind of that optionality. And you can kind of very easily see what it includes and all of that. But you're not building it yourself. It's very crystal clear. Maybe there's some information on what it's good that accompanies it or what it includes and doesn't include. That way someone can order with confidence. Getting the customer to order with confidence is really important because they're ordering for tons of people.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah. And they're the ones that get egg on their face if it shows up. And you talked about timeless, you talked about budget. One of the things that you just talked about, Elias, is the whole idea of bundling. You're bundling in, you know, again, the soda, the sandwich, the chips, and the cookies. And again, I do a decent amount of both ordering of catering, as well as go to places where it's like, hey, there's going to be food in the back of the conference room. You know, you got 15 people that are having a meeting.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: It's just going to be there. And this whole idea of catering in that way, bundling those things together so that, that, ⁓ I guess you can probably drive up, drive up the price where your margin stack doesn't necessarily change too significantly. I'd love, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about kind of that theory, because again, this goes into menu engineering. This goes into guest experience.

Elias @ Rally Catering: ⁓ yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: outside of kind of the white glove, hey, we're going to do the chicken and the steak at the wedding and we're going to do mashed potatoes or rice or whatever those things are kind of at the corporate level. You talk about this business to business catering, which I think a lot of our customers are looking, a lot of the listeners that are out there like, I need to figure out how to do this. It's 1 % of my sales or it's 2 % of my sales, but I know my margin stack is a lot higher. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about bundling and what does that do to create safety and guest engagement, I guess.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah. Bundling is so interesting and the power of bundling, will, let me just put it this way. If you think about ⁓ you're the caterer, but if you're like actually the attendee of a catering, you'll start to notice it. You go to a ⁓ or dinner and you're normally not served with just a main or like a salad and a main. You've got, you've got something extra. You talked about the bag of chips. You talked about, juices and drinks, the coffee, the cookies like

Jeremy Julian - RTG: at the end.

Elias @ Rally Catering: All of those things are massive upsell opportunities relative from a price point relative to the price of the main, it's smaller dollars. So it's like, Hey, I do want cookies with this. The, the, the, biggest challenge becomes how do I make sure that in the purchasing process, I can put these offerings in front of people so that they don't forget to like say, yes, I want this. Like, so if you're doing it,

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah.

Elias @ Rally Catering: paper style, you need to make sure that that's well communicated. With digital solutions, now, mean, Rally Catering was one that does this well, there's like two or three opportunities along the buying journey where customers can have the ability to check like, yes, just one click button add-on, you're adding $3 per head or $5 per head. And all of a sudden you've just kind of increased your revenue by 10%, 15%, 20 % with a few clicks with the essentials. And you also, it's a feature, not like a money grab because buyers want that. They want the coffee, right? They want the cookies. They don't want to forget it. They don't want to forget it. So a lot of times it's a forgotten things like, no, last minute. ⁓ I got a call. We need to get cookies going on. Make sure they don't forget it.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, they want the cookie. want their guests to be satisfied at the end of the day, right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. I love that. So talk to me a little bit about margin stack. ⁓ part of what I find amazing when I talk to restaurant operators is just that, ⁓ you know, their margins ⁓ in a food cost, you know, for a single table of four are lower a percentage of total overall, you know, your cost per person might be lower in catering, but your margin stack, because you're serving it en masse.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: to 20, 30, 40, 50 people is a lot higher. So I'd love for you to, I guess, juxtapose those two ideas before we kind of jump into how Rally is solving this and making it easier for people.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure thing. I want to touch on the margins, just so that we were talking like I'm going to, like, these are stats that I don't know, you could like look them up. But on average, you know, your, restaurant monitoring might be like 4%, 3%, 5%, something like that. When it comes to catering, if you're doing it, let's just say at an average level, you're between 10 and 15%. So maybe like say 12, 13. So you're making like stronger margins on catering. As long as you've got the right systems in place, because the the ability for you to succeed at catering is going to come down to the power of your systems. And when I say systems, I'm not talking about technology. I'm literally I'm talking about your process, your people, and the technology that you use. those are that's kind of the trifecta people process and technology. And it takes three of those to work well together to create a system that you operate your catering business under. Catering, the catering space, ⁓ is a high stakes game because ⁓ something goes wrong in catering. Like you're not getting as many catering orders as you are getting orders or restaurant takeout orders or whatnot. So when you do those orders, they're bigger dollar orders, but it means that you've got to get everything lined up. And when you make an error on that, the error effect is not the cost of the catering. It is ⁓ that cost because you're damaging.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, because you lose that customer potentially for life. The other thing I like to remind people back to your beer, they also start the day oftentimes with a certain amount of sales and catering because they're typically pre-ordered. So you're walking in, you've already got $500 in sales today. You've already got $1,000 in sales today. You've already got $2,000 in sales today before you've even opened your doors. Yes, it takes labor. Yes, it takes food to make all of that.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yep.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: You're not having to rely on people walking in the door to make payroll next week.

Elias @ Rally Catering: That's right. That's

Jeremy Julian - RTG: You've already got a certain stack of transactions that are already in there when people start ⁓ it's also, I guess, the peanut butter ⁓ over a wider period sales that you don't to worry late night or happy hour or it might be, right?

Elias @ Rally Catering: right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. As long as you have the right rules in place, so you know that, here's my threshold, I've got a way to intake them. this comes to kind of the rally catering story. maybe can I share a quick story about my first foray into, you know, one of the early forays into rally catering as ⁓ part this? ⁓

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, that's really where I wanted to go is how is rally catering? mean, you've educated our listeners for close to 20 minutes on what the benefit is, why our people need to do it. But now I'd love to kind of see how is it that you guys have built this system and it's part technology, but it's part a whole lot more. And so I'd love for you to talk through some of that.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah, totally, totally. earlier on in our journey with Riley Catering, went, ⁓ mean, I went and I did a whole tour, cross tour to visit different caterers. my goal was to understand about the of catering. This was, ⁓ this was number of years ago. And I went and ⁓ met with friend Rachel out ⁓ West and Rachel me an hour and a half of her time and ⁓ I like, I'm going to just walk you through the whole thing. so, but while I was there for the hour and a half, what surprised me, what blew my mind is Rachel, who has a team behind her. She, she had one main catering hub, but like it was a storefront and a few other locations, but she was on her phone. was customers were messaging her at one point she had, Oh, and then she had, she got, yeah, yeah. She got pulled into the kitchen at one point within the hour and a half.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, WhatsApp, text message, phone calls, voicemails, emails. Sorry, I'll let you keep going.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Another time there was a miscommunication, she had to grab a cart of a catering order on a cart and go take it to the delivery person herself. She's the one running this business and like it's all hands on deck. And I'm looking at that. And I'm also looking at Rachel's numbers and I'm real like, she's doing maybe five catering orders a week. They're, you know, five to 10, something like that. and just, didn't make sense because she's not even a solo operator. She has. she had people there and this is when I realized like how important the systems are, the processes you have in place and much ⁓ enable. So actually Rachel was a huge part of helping us uncover and unlock where digital needs to come in and help. And one of the other things, Rachel, I mean, she was one example of ⁓ many we saw was that catering has this amazing opportunity, especially for storefronts. Two things that I'll share. One is, Repeat orders, like if you're doing corporate catering well, 50 % plus of your orders are going to be repeat orders, which is amazing. It's like people that have ordered from you before that want to order from you again. And the second thing is when you're storefront, your customers, your catering customers already know you and love you. Like the ones that come and come back. it's, so your customer is actually walking through your door and there's catering opportunity walking through your door. And it's about

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah.

Elias @ Rally Catering: converting them. there are these two dynamics. So where Rally Catering came is let's start on the intake side of things. So on the intake side of things, how do we receive orders and what happens? And one of the biggest learnings we found is when a guest places a catering order, I mean, if you're using traditional methods, phone, email, I'm even going to say forms, because like online forms, that's pretty common. Most of them are putting requests or forms or asking for information from more than just you, like it's you and maybe one or two others. And whoever responds fastest, like I was talking to one of our local kidders here, they're one of the best ones in town. Like how are you one of the best in town? Their food is excellent. Their experience is excellent. Their answer wasn't that. It was we answer the fastest. We have an automation that allows us to answer requests super fast. our chance of getting that, that, that order are extremely high. have less slippage. so ⁓ number one to solve, well, are there a good percentage of customers that would love to see pricing upfront, optionality upfront in a clear, clean way, and be able to actually place the order and confirm it and lock it in for the date and time with all of your catering rules built in, with all of your custom questions, like there's specific questions that are tailored to you, built into that experience with your upsell packages and your, say, I say upsell, you know, your, ⁓ your bundle opportunities, your add-ons built into the experience. And that was one big piece. And that was an unlock. was, wow, okay. So now I've got a way for people to come discover me, see my pricing. they don't even need to go, they don't even have, they don't need to go shop anywhere else. They don't need to go request a quote from two or three different people, especially repeat customers. They know who you are. It's like, I want to just confirm that you've just made my life so much easier.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Your add-ons your value added add-ons, right?

Elias @ Rally Catering: So this is the story with Rich. She's doing now 35 plus orders a week just from digitizing the whole yeah, anyways.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: That's amazing. So that's really what Rally, you guys built kind of the storefront for lack of a better term to help people ⁓ this process. And I mean, know there's more to it, but ⁓ cause it's not just a web forum. There's a whole lot of business logic layer that needs to go into ⁓ it is and kind like everybody thinks, ⁓ it's starting software. ⁓ you got all those AI stuff. It's so easy to start software. There's so much business logic that goes into it. ⁓ ⁓ preaching to the choir, obviously.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. It is what. No, you are because the intake was just one piece of it and there's, there needs to be intelligence behind all of it. So, Hey, what if I want to invoice? What if I have some corporate customers that, that have PO numbers and cost center numbers and we have a good relationship. So that's how they pay. They want to pay that way. What if I have corporate Kano customers that order so frequently from me that I want to spin up a branded menu for them? Can I just do that with my solution that is say, Hey, This is for all of the executive assistants at the company X. You can order from here. Who are they going to pick when they need to place the catering order? Are they going to go fumble through, do forms? No, they're going to go to the thing that they're like, I know I've ordered from these guys. I like ordering from them. And I could place my order right away. And they have a menu dedicated to us. So these are the parts of the intake. all of that, if it's so. One of the other early wins we had on catering, and we've gotten a quote from someone saying, hey, you saved my business with this. This was such a cool moment when a customer says that to you. ⁓ came from a place where their biggest pain was operational. They were doing ⁓ for the education space, for ⁓ schools. the are and the amount of operational lift is so heavy. But they were doing it all in spreadsheets and

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah.

Elias @ Rally Catering: pushing, they spent so much time and energy on admin and they were moving certain things manually too. it was all like spreadsheets. I'm not even paper, but still the margin of error is so low in these types of situations. And if you're spending hours of the week doing spreadsheet stuff, you're not working on the business, you're working in the business. And so they were about to, they were about to go under because they just couldn't sustain it. And we helped them. what, what we helped them do is digitize everything that happens after the intake into. the production sheets and into the packing forms, which is as soon as an order is in and locked in, it goes into this flow and there's flexibility behind that. If someone makes a change, it gets reflected in real time. If ⁓ happens because things change in catering all the way up to the last minute, that's the other thing different from a restaurant order is catering, you can get the order and then the next day something needs to change. And then you're like, okay, we're about

Jeremy Julian - RTG: you

Elias @ Rally Catering: You know, a day away, something needs to change. It's an emergency change because you're past the cutoff time. You get a phone call and it's like, ⁓ no, we need to change this. No, no problem. This you can change it. Right. Because these things happen. And so it's not until the very last minute that you got to like lock in the billing, but everything updates prod sheets in real time. And that was the big savior is in one click. I can get something that I can send to my kitchen to make hundreds of, you know, chicken and, and stakes and, and whatever is. reliably with confidence with the right allergen information and all of that. And that was a massive part of the equation is how the backend logic works with the front end.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Well, I use this analogy or this story that I tell internal to the business about even for our own team members is don't we call it don't ding the door. You you guys have this thing where it's like, hey, you went on an anniversary dinner with your wife. They came and they valet your car and then they brought you in and they had your favorite bottle of wine sitting there and flowers and the meal was fantastic. And then you get back to your car and the door is dinged. This is where you guys, and now I'm never going back to that restaurant again, because I had the most fantastic meal, but the only thing I remember is that door ding. They missed the utensils, they missed the plates, they missed something about the meal that was going to make it special in this catering environment. So the fact that you guys have put it into this process is huge. I guess I'd love for you to talk through, because it's not just the food preparation. Yes, that's a huge piece of it, but it's also the plates.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: It's the napkins, it's being there on time. It's understanding that you've got to check in with the bellhop before you go up to the sixth floor and you got to have it there at this time. You got to check in with this person at the front desk. All of that communication flow going from the time of ordering all the way through to ensuring that they got what they needed and being able to pivot even to the last minute. I love that you guys have built this into software. guess I'd love for you to talk through some of that.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yep. Yeah. Well, Jeremy, I'll talk through the non-software piece because that's really important is, ⁓ know, I like to think that most people in this business are, you know, they aspire to ⁓ their guests with the best feeling. Like it's the feeling you, you know, you said it, you know, you might not always remember the food or, or whatever, but you'll remember that I liked that place and I had a great time and I'm going to go there again, or I'm going to order from them again. And that's what you, that's the feeling you want to create. And there are so many tiny little pieces that go into creating that feeling. It's not just the food, it's how it's presented. It's what's around you. It's how many times or did you even have to lift your head up and say, I'm missing this or I've got that. So all of those, there's like hundreds of micro elements in the whole thing and the whole equation. that able to achieve the ultimate guest feeling. great, amazing about their experience, that's the ultimate goal. That's the ultimate goal. And rallying the technology is a component of that. what our is to make it so that all of the elements that can enable the star, which is the operator, which is the merchant, the restaurant, to succeed their mission, at their vision, we're gonna try to make it as smooth, as strong as possible so that they can achieve that by removing any possibilities of those little trip-up points that take that away, that are, you know, to give them that extra edge because on top of the technology and tooling layer, you also have to have the right, great food and a great chef and, you know, all of these other things. So our vision is to make it so that the intake process, all of that happens in the back office. Everything that gets pushed into the kitchen does not trip anybody up from being able to deliver that experience. I know I kind of took a step back, 30,000 foot view, but that's really what it's about. That's what it's about.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: No, it's great. Well, it is. And I think that all too often, not too dissimilar to, you know, to talking about just open up a restaurant. It's not just the great food. It's the experience. It's the guest experience. It's all of that. And ⁓ the way, I'm going to pick on you here for a second for ⁓ that are listening, know, ⁓ ⁓ for us Americans, know, Canadians like to say process, obviously you.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: The last thing I'll throw at you that I'd love for you to talk through is you would share that successful caterers, oftentimes 50 % of their customers are repeat customers. guess, help our listeners. I'll share a quick story here. I've got a good friend that happens to be a pharmaceutical rep. And I would ask her, trying to understand a little bit, why do you order from the same four or five places when you're delivering food for the doctors? And she used a lot of the same analogies that the food is always on time.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: I know what I'm going to get. know what my pricing is going to be. know that these things are out there and I know that it's going to be successful. And I've asked her, said, how many times do you give people an opportunity to screw up? She's like, they get one opportunity and if they screw up, that's tens of thousands of dollars worth of potential commissions that I might miss out on from the doctor's office if they're not bringing in the food properly. It obviously has to be delivered well. The food has to be good. The doctors and nurses have to enjoy it. And so I'd love for you to talk through kind of How do you guys make sure, how can restaurants and operators out there ensure that they don't not only don't lose that guest, but continue to have them coming back. There's lots of stories on how to get them coming back into the dining room. But catering as we've talked about for the last 30 minutes or so is such an unlock that so many people don't do. And there's a huge opportunity there.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah. Yeah. gonna, I'm gonna go off on a limb here. I'm gonna say this isn't, this is not for you. Just for the people listening, Jeremy, this is for people listening. Okay. For those of you listening, I would make a bet that your next five catering orders that you can probably pull out, like get locked in, in the next week or two are sitting in your inbox right now, untapped. They're sitting in your inbox and it's because of the post event ⁓ post catering follow-up. There's, know, the rule that we have is the catering is not fulfilled until the follow up is actually done. Like follow up is part, should be part of the fulfillment. And if you make that a rule, make that a rule and get your, get your team to like, you know, when my, when I need to ingrain a habit in my team, I make them put it as their phone background or, or write it on a sticky note and stick it on their computer. So they're seeing it until it becomes a habit. The follow up is part of the fulfillment because A massive percentage of people that are ordering from you are not going to stop ordering a catering order for the rest of their lives. They're going find another, they're going to have another thing to cater for, whether it's a private event, whether it's corporate, whatever it is. So when you're done, and by the way, we have, we've got, we've got a little bit checklist on our, in our resources on our website about exactly what that is. But when you're done, you send a follow-up, you send a thank you, you ask them for feedback. How did you like the experience? I know what I'm saying sounds silly and like it's obvious. But people still don't do that. You can find really good creative ways to automate that and still be personal and still reference the exact customer and what they went through. then you need to take note of this is intelligence, your customer intelligence of are they a company that has like, did they just do a board meeting? If someone did a board meeting, how often do board meetings happen? Usually once a quarter.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Mm-hmm.

Elias @ Rally Catering: You know, they're going to need something once a quarter. So you actually write out that message to them, write that in there and schedule it for three months from now or two months from now. Hey, do you need another catering order for your board meeting schedule? You know, it's, it's a, but this is going to be specific to everyone's process. It's don't miss out on the followup capture the intelligence of your customers. Don't be afraid to ask them. Hey, do you have an upcoming creating order? Don't be afraid to ask them. Ask them. That's why I said they're probably in your inbox. And right now with AI, by the way, this is just like, uh, this is what I would do. This is, I would go in and tell AI to, you've got AI, like talking to them, links, you know, looking at your inbox, go and look at all my customers that I've emailed. And I want you to identify the top 25 most likely, um, potential customers that would

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah.

Elias @ Rally Catering: be most likely to need to request another catering order in the next month. And here's my criteria. You your customers best. You line the criteria up. And it'll pop out 25 names. Send them a note. Send them a note right now. Anyway, I got to. ⁓

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yep. I love that. That's a huge unlock. I think, well, you just, I mean, you just paid for their, their, you 45 minutes of time that they just had, because you know what? That's going to pay for this time to learn that. And I love that idea to be able to help them get to their.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah, yeah. And you could do that without technology. you just do it in your email. Do it in your email. Like, anyway, yeah.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: ⁓ huh. Yeah, no, it's huge. again, we've already talked about the value of it. We've already talked about those customers that are getting catering. They might be discovering property for the first time now they're coming in ⁓ the dining room. There's so many different opportunities in catering ⁓ done well. And you said, there's hundreds of data points and hundreds of times that you can screw it up if you don't do it well. So ⁓ I that you guys have put together a free resource to help. help their listeners out. guess why don't you share a little bit about what you guys have built. How do they get in touch? How do they learn more? What would the experience look like for them to go into your intake form to learn more about rally catering? Hopefully you got that automated as well.

Elias @ Rally Catering: Yeah, thing, sure thing. So we've a couple of resources. So our website is rallycatering.com. So go to rallycatering.com. There's a resources spot there. You'll see a bunch of resources there. We did put together a catering inquiries workbook. so ⁓ Jeremy share with you the link to that if someone wants to just go download that. It's got a checklist and some strong practices for the intake, fulfillment, and then the reorder part of the experience locked and loaded in. And on website, what we also have is a ⁓ free kind of scorecard assessment. You might already doing catering, but if you're not doing catering and you want to kind of know where you sit in the realm of catering maturity, it's there on our website on the front page. So those are the resources I'll share. But... You could find Rally Catering on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn and shoot me a note. And I'm happy to also share the links that are needed. So I'll say that.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Awesome. Well, I wholeheartedly, and I said it at the onset, I think that it's such an opportunity. I talk about four wall economics within the store. You're already paying for the labor. You're already paying the rent to be in that building. There's a lot of opportunity to go get new customers and to continue to expand your margin stack to be able to get that. Everybody talks about loyalty and they talk about getting butts in seats in the dining room. But I think there's a huge untapped opportunity to go out and get these people outside of. getting them in and it's going to be cyclical as you said earlier. You're going to get them catering and then they're going to come into the dining room and then you're to get new customers in the dining room because of your catering have done well. So thank you for helping educate. Thank you guys for really building this tool. I love that you guys are out there just really trying to help operators expand margins and serve guests.

Elias @ Rally Catering: You got it, you got it. Thanks, Jeremy. It's a pleasure.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Awesome. To our listeners, guys, like I said, I know you guys got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. If you haven't already done so, please go subscribe to the show and make it a great day.