Success Through Making Friends and Having Fun With Jeff Fenster, Founder and CEO of Everbowl
Jeff Fenster is the Founder and CEO of Everbowl, a San Diego-based acai bowl and juice chain that makes healthy superfoods accessible and affordable for everyone. Focused on disruptive start-ups, Jeff is a pioneer in the quick-serve restaurant category. Having established Everbowl in 2016, he is driving its growth nationwide through retail and franchise initiatives.
As an inspiring mentor and team-builder, Jeff is dedicated to fostering a strong company culture where the motto is “make friends and have fun.” He has received numerous national recognitions for his business creations ranging from a payroll and HR company to a digital marketing agency to a recruiting agency, among others.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Jeff Fenster discusses what inspired him to start Everbowl
What were the lessons learned during the early days of the brand?
Why Jeff considers March 18, 2020, to be the worst day of his professional career
How Everbowl stayed in business after laying off 400 team members
What opportunities were uncovered as a result of having to change operations due to the pandemic?
The steps Jeff takes to ensure new franchisees will adhere to the brand’s core values
How new customers learn about Everbowl
Why “make friends and have fun” are Jeff’s two rules for every employee to follow
What you’ll learn in this episode:
How does a healthy quick-serve restaurant compete with better-known fast-food operations? What strategies can you use to attract customers and keep them coming back? If you’re looking for ways to grow your establishment, building relationships and having a great culture that resonates with people are both effective methods.
According to serial entrepreneur Jeff Fenster, his latest brand found success by hosting a three-hour “friends and family night” when a new location opens. At these events, employees and community members invite their friends and family to try an Everbowl meal on the house. If it’s not their thing, they pay nothing, which makes them unlikely to leave a negative review. If they like the product, they keep coming back. With regular customers, Jeff requires his employees and franchisees to “make friends and have fun.” He says when you’re having fun with friends, nobody leaves disappointed.
On this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni is joined by Jeff Fenster, Founder and CEO of Everbowl, to discuss how a healthy quick-serve superfoods restaurant can thrive against its relatively unhealthy fast-food competition. Jeff talks about the inception of his brand, how it attracts new customers, and the essential mindset for overcoming challenges and building relationships with customers. Don’t miss it!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
This episode’s sponsor:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we create meaningful moments of brand trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands.
There is a science behind tapping into your audiences’ desires and motivation. After all, if you’re not changing your audiences’ behaviors, you can’t truly unlock all of your brand’s potential.
The proven models and methods of Behavior Design is the strategic foundation for your brands’ success.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona to Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:34
Hello, everyone, I am Roger Hurni, the host of From Persona to Personal where I get to speak with top leaders changing customer behavior so they can propel their brands forward. Before we get to today's guest. This episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we use behavioral science to create meaningful moments of brand trust, which influences how people interact and engage with companies. Our behavioral approach taps into your audience's motivation and prompts them to shift behavior. After all, if you're shifting your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. These proven behavioral models and methods are the strategic foundation for your brand's success. Visit offmadisonave.com to learn more. Today, I'm super excited to have with me, Jeff Fenster, who is the founder and CEO of Everbowl now, on a personal note, I'm a big fan of his, particularly like the Blue Moon. There's one here in Tempe, so I'm there quite frequently. But outside of that, and moreover, Jeff is an award-winning entrepreneur. He's an author and expert in relationship capital. His entrepreneurial success is pretty vast. It's ranged from quick-serve restaurant space to payroll and HR company. He's done a digital marketing agency, and he's even had a construction company, which I'm not sure if that makes him a jack of all trades, but I would go that way. But no matter what venture Jeff pursues, he lives by the principle of putting people first, he was named one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in America under the age of 35, the top 40 executive under 40 by the Business Journal, and a top entrepreneur to follow in 2022. Today, Jeff speaks around the country on entrepreneurial mindset, authentic networking, and vertical integration. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff Fenster 2:15
Thank you for having me such an honor and pleasure. So I really appreciate it. And I'm excited to chat with you today. Roger.
Roger Hurni 2:21
Well, did I get anything wrong here? screw anything up? I know to do that quite frequently.
Jeff Fenster 2:25
So no, you made me blush. You said it so well. I almost want to record that from my own bio. And have you say, that every time you made me sound so still wonderful. So thank you. It was very, very humbling.
Roger Hurni 2:37
I appreciate that. I got a lot of practice. That's called good media training in my business. So I've been where I've been well, media. We're here to talk about Everbowl. I know, you've done a lot of stuff I wanted to focus in on that particular brand. I know it started in 2016. But I'm kind of curious as to what was the inception for the idea and the catalyst for starting the restaurant.
Jeff Fenster 3:02
So it actually started. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac. And what that means is I'm afraid of illness. And the internet is a wonderful tool, but a dangerous tool when you're afraid of disease. Because when you Google something like a symptom, it always says you have cancer or diabetes or stroke coming or one of these conditions. And so I focused a lot in my earlier life in prevention, how do you prevent these illnesses. And so I used to import a lot of superfoods into my house, and, you know, accessing ice and other fun super foods like KAPOOYA, and other products that even some that we don't sell. And I used to bring them all into my house and just make them because you couldn't get them anywhere. And in 2015 after I sold my digital marketing agency, I was kind of trying to figure out what was next for me and what I was passionate about doing. And I never wanted to own a restaurant. I never thought about restaurants, I don't have a ton of restaurant experience. And my wife said go just go do something you're really passionate about health and wellness was really it. And so I said, Okay, you know what, you can't get an acai bowl anywhere. And it's such a good product and everyone who came into my house that I forced to try it in one of my bowls. At first were like, “What is this?” And then eventually they were like, oh my god, it's so good. And so I thought, you know, there's an opportunity for me to kind of disrupt the healthy eating sector and help more Americans have access to superfoods and eat better, because when you look at what all those conditions I mentioned, you know, heart disease, stroke, obesity, cancer, diabetes, diabetes, hypertension. The science shows 80% of these are preventable or delectable with lifestyle choices, which means if we alter our lifestyle, we could prevent or delete 80% of these conditions, and only 20% of them are genetic, or are going to happen regardless of what we do. And so when you take a step back and understand that, you ask yourself, well, why are we doing this? The information is there. It was like back in the 90s. Smoking is bad for us, but yet smoking was prevalent. So fast food is unfortunately what most Americans consume. The average American consumes fast food 3.2 times a week, and that's fast and fried food. And so I realized that you know what? If I can put superfoods and, and fun, healthy food inside of that vehicle, instead of a fast food packaging or wrapper, I can not only help a lot of Americans be a better version of themselves, but I think I can make a lot of money as an entrepreneur at the same time. So I can do double impact, to success to be a successful business as well as help a lot of people. And so everyone was started to be to make healthy food affordable, filling, delicious and accessible, and be that fast food or quick, quick-serve option for the average American who needs food on the fly, who needs to be able to afford it needs to be full and satisfied and has to like the taste of the inception.
Roger Hurni 5:38
Yeah, you without maybe realizing it my work and consumer behavior. This is the classic pattern, you have an audience of people that are somewhat motivated, eat healthy, and, but when they're prompted by either their STEM going off or time of day or something else like that. They're they have the ability to eat healthy, because there weren't a lot of options there. And there's getting more and more all the time. But you created those systems to provide them the ability to go to something that is just as convenient, but clearly far healthier. And when I am in consumer behavior, like that's what great brands ended up doing end up doing all the time. You got it off the ground? What were those early B's? Like? What kind of because you didn't need to have a lot of experience in the restaurant's base? I'm kind of curious to like, what were the challenges or lessons learned during those early days?
Jeff Fenster 6:37
Tons of you know, had no SOPs or standard operating procedures. Basically, what I did was I tried to say, Okay, I want to start this, I want to start this concept. So I went to a local smoothie shop near my house, they sold smoothies and juices, they didn't sell bowls. And that wasn't yet on their radar. And I said, You know what, maybe I can acquire this company, maybe I can buy it. And I can take the foundation of an already successful smoothie and juice shop and add what I felt was the next evolution the next phase in this right we had we had smoothies then we had the big juice craze. And then I assumed ASA evils was going to take off, I felt like enough people who tried them in my house or you know, a few restaurants around the world that served them. They're really good. I mean, they just are. So I felt like this was a natural evolution of this product segment. And so I tried to acquire this one local smoothie shop, the guy said, it's not for sale. So I said, Can I pay you to do some consulting for me and help me get off the ground? Because I don't know about health regulations? I don't know what's required from a restaurant side. He said yes. So I paid him some money to kind of help me. It was a lot of learning. You know, a lot, a lot of small mini failures, a lot of days of hard, hard, hard work. Very long hours, I had no idea what I was getting into in the restaurant space when I started, you know, I thought it was just going to be very simple. I think for the first three and a half months, I was there seven days a week and 12-hour days, just trying to figure out what was what. And, you know, if I just going back in my mind, you know, restaurants are very interesting places because not only do you have the customer side, but you have the food side. And so when I first opened, we were making everything by hand. And you'd come in and say okay, I want, I want the Super Bowl, which was also a blueberry, strawberries, banana, and almond milk was in the base. And I would measure out blueberries, measure out strawberries, cut a piece of ice, measure out the milk. And we would do that by hand, which seemed very authentic, it seemed very great. And it was like, Okay, this is easy until you actually sold some product and had real customers. And then we got into the issue throughout. We got into the issue of inventory, we got into the issue of understanding cost of goods sold or cogs. Because it's great. I used to make bowls that were this high. And I over-served every customer until I realized I was paying every customer to eat our food, and all good things from the customer side, but all bad things from the business side. And really quickly I started you know, being an entrepreneur, I really started to dissect the business side of restaurants. And I now understood why nine out of 10 restaurants fail. And nine out of 10 restaurants fail because unfortunately, most restaurants are started by chefs and they're really good on the food side. But they don't understand the business and the economic side. I had to learn about marketing a restaurant, you know, I tried the coupon, hey, you know, come in for $2 off your bowl. But I was just kind of being bled out, right? So I had to start thinking differently and start to apply what has made my other company successful to the restaurant space. And so it was a fun experience being a serial entrepreneur. That's my favorite phase startup phase. When we have a blank sheet of paper, we have a goal and we have to figure out how to get there and how to solve all the problems that are popping up along the way.
Roger Hurni 9:39
I actually think it's really good that you, you didn't buy somebody else. You just got the consultant. Too many times I've seen entrepreneurs make the mistake of buying something and then where they end up buying is yeah, you might buy this great product but you buy a lot of problems that you have to fix and changing behaviors of employees. Is it war systems is like really difficult? Maybe you can start from that blank slate. Yeah, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes, but you can fix them really quickly because there's no template that you have to erase and start again. And by the way, I, nine out of 10 businesses period fail, let alone on restaurants. And I think anybody who makes it to a million dollars in sales is basically a miracle. So it is congratulations. So you get this restaurant off the ground. You'll go through some learning lessons, and then boom, you get hit by the pandemic. What happened to your restaurant during that time?
Jeff Fenster 10:41
Well, so, in October 2016, I opened my first restaurant. March 18, 2020, when the pandemic hit, I had 28 locations was in multiple cities in two states. And it was the worst day of my professional career. My chief development officer, Brian Augustine, he called me up and he said, listen, based on what's going on right now in the world, and it wasn't a mandate yet, but it was pretty close to a mandate in California that you had to shut down. He said, Look, we employ a lot of hate school and a lot of college-aged staff members, for the health and safety of our team for the health and safety of our customers, and just for where we don't know what's going on. He said I think we need to shut down our stores. And, you know, I, I had a moment, you know, I stopped and processed that information and realize the severity and brevity of what he's saying is real. I told my, my team that that moment, I said to Brian, I said, Okay, let's, let's, let's do it. And we had to temporarily lay off over 400 team members, we had to shut down 28 stores. I had to go home that night and kind of have that on my chest. And you know, I had the tears had the motions had to tell my, my wife and my family like, hey, you know, I don't know if we're going to succeed anymore. I mean, we were we were we were on a rocket ship, things were looking incredible. And something happened. There's a little thing I do, which is my five-minute pity party. So I had to really lean into that. And that's where I set a timer on my phone for five minutes. And for five minutes, I go through all of the emotions of being a victim and the pity party and I cry, I scream, I curse, I jump up and down. Sometimes I hit a wall. Hopefully, I don't break any knuckles anymore. I've done that in the past. But when that timer goes off, it's no more being a victim. It's no more crying about it. It's now what's next. And that's part of being an entrepreneur, that's part of my success formula that I've used to be successful that has allowed me to give the motion the time it needs and not brush it over and not try to be macho and say, Ah, you know, I'm a tough guy, I don't need to go through the emotion but at the same time not living the emotion. Too often, we either don't give the emotion the credit it needs and it shows up at the wrong time. Or we spend too much time being living inside that defeat or tha,t that negativity. So once that five-minute pity party went up and went off, and that was done and we realized we were gonna lay everybody off it was okay, what's next? So I reached out to my executive team and I said, let's all meet in the office or on Zoom. So we all got together, two of us were in inside the office and two of us were on Zoom. And we said okay, we have 20 restaurants around, you know, around Southern California. We have no team members, we have a ton of superfoods. We have a ton of customers that are stuck at home who need access to real food and are either going to go to the grocery store or in what can we do. And so we spun up a website on shopify.com We called our new product later bowls, we started packaging 10 asa bowls or 10 of our bowls in a box with dry ice and some toppings and said order 10 of our bowls and we'll deliver them to your house. And overnight we started selling bowls directly to consumers at their houses and you know I would be in the van delivering product my van would be in Eric would be in Matt would be in. You know our team just started delivering bowls literally door to door to any customer that would order in and around our 28 stores. And that was kind of keeping us afloat while we were figuring out what was next for the restaurants.
Roger Hurni 14:05
So you basically created your own little ghost kitchen kind of a thing. How long were the physical stores closed?
Jeff Fenster 14:14
From March 18 until May 1. So it just wasn't.
Roger Hurni 14:18
Yeah, it wasn't a massive duration. You were able to reopen and pivot and still do home delivery then.
Jeff Fenster 14:25
Yes, it was I mean, we launched what we called a store through a door. So we put a door on the table in front of every door so no customers could come to the restaurant anymore. You can order ahead, you can show up to the door and place an order and our team members would go back and do it. I mean obviously, we were in California where pandemic rules were a little more severe. We have a higher-density population where we're much closer together. So there's a lot of things we had to navigate you know, this was before vaccines before politics got into anything regardless of what side of the fence you're on before. You know mask mandates came out. This was the early days, but we found ways to reopen we started leveraging Three PL and three PD three PL for the direct-to-consumer and three PD for sorry, third-party delivery. You know the Ubers. A DoorDash is the Grub Hub, and then three PL for our later bulls, we really started to launch later bulls nationally, it became a new opportunity for us. We ended up going on QVC and selling our product direct to consumers through that channel medium, which was great for expanding the reach of every bowl and just the brand itself, and giving more access to superfoods to more Americans all around the country during this time because one of the things that we were learning was the people who were more likely to have the least amount of complications if you did get COVID was healthy people. And so what we eat and how we take care of ourselves became more important. And so we leaned into it. But yeah, on May 1, we reopened through the store through a door, and then we decided it was time to franchise the concept. No longer could we own the mall. We couldn't travel anymore, so it really tamper down our growth. And we had over 500 franchise requests from our community of customers and people who have been in our stores that just said, Hey, do you ever franchise we want to franchise or are you franchising will you franchise and so we decided to launch franchising on January 1, 2021, we launched franchising, and today we have 60 Open locations around the country in 16 states 310 more units coming. We have a tremendous community of edible franchise owners that are bringing superfoods to communities all across the country, and making, making superfoods more accessible, affordable, filling, and delicious, and helping everyone kind of live that unevolved lifestyle. So we have 1000s of team members now and in a weird way COVID kind of was a little wind behind our you know, became wind behind our sails after we kind of weathered the initial days, but it was definitely, it was definitely a gut punch, you know when you don't know what's going to happen and how you handle that was, was tough.
Roger Hurni 16:46
But I mean, that's, that's, it's subtle. But that's the real lesson here is that when things go south when things become bad, oftentimes we're at our best. Because of opportunities, you will uncover opportunities that you may never have thought of, if the situation wasn't as bad as it as it once was. And I know that saying is you know, God, lemons, make lemonade, somewhat maybe BS by people. But it is true that when you are when you are dealt that gut punch, you know, you can either curl up in a ball, pass the five minutes, or you can get up on your feet and go figure out a different way and a different approach. And that I think that's a tremendous lesson for, for everyone listening and, and all those entrepreneurs out there. You did mention franchisees? Go ahead.
Jeff Fenster 17:37
Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, one of my core values that I stress and teach onstage and tell everybody is you have to have a change-ready mindset. And that means that whatever has been working, whatever you're comfortable in, it's great. But you have to always be ready to change your business or your perspective on the fly. Because to your point, when you get sucker punched, you get gut-punched, and the world's coming down on top of you. If you're just going to be one of those people that says the internet's not for me, therefore, I'm not going to do but you go extinct, and that you see those companies that was blockbuster, right, if you're ready to willing to change, when change is required, you will find that next opportunity. Just sometimes it's disguised. And so it's just having a chain already mindset.
Roger Hurni 18:19
Yeah, I agree. Again, that is spot on. I think it goes hand in hand with complacency because that's becomes the other killer. And I think, to your blockbuster example, you just like, hey, we've got this market share, we're very complacent. They, they could have been, you know, Netflix, just like could have been Apple iPhone, right? Think of their digital camera. You'd mentioned franchisees and when I've ever been I've ever spoken to entrepreneurs, and you talked about your core values, this goes hand in hand. I believe in hiring on core values and training for skill set. And the best companies I've ever interviewed. They do that same sort of thing. But when you have a franchise organization, I always worry because I'm always interested in the insights, how do you track franchisees that will carry those core values? And that deaf philosophy of ever bowl forward? Is there something you look for that, that is unique?
Jeff Fenster 19:22
Well, it's not science, it's art. And now that we've been doing this for a couple of years, and we have quite a large franchisee population, I can tell you, we're not perfect. It definitely takes work to find the right franchisees that can fit the, fit the culture. We don't have a sales team. We don't spend money advertising, do you want to be a franchisee of evitable? You've never seen an advertisement for a paid ad. The way we've generated that community of franchisees has either been customers, which is a great way to find franchisees because they naturally believe in the product A lot of times, I speak to entrepreneurial communities on stage and on podcasts, and I stress my core values. And hopefully, that resonates. And from there, we've gotten a ton of franchisees because they've listened to the kind of what we stand for as a company, and they say, Hey, I want to get involved in this, you know, not not, because I think I'm going to be a millionaire, and not just to chase $1, even though obviously, you're in business to make money, that should be the byproduct of building something special. If you chase money, it runs. So for us, it's all about building a right community of people and helping everyone living on evolving lifestyle, if that's what your mission is, and that's what you want to be a part of, we want you to take the next step. But then I say this to every franchisee that ever applies. When I get on the phone with them, I say, Listen, you're interviewing us as much as we're interviewing you, we should both come at this looking for a reason not to move forward. If you find it, or we find it, that's our message to go the other way. But if at the end, we can't find it. Let's do business together and come join the family and let's open edibles in your community. And let's, you know, do a lot of things together. And so, for me, it's my two rules, every employee that ever will follow these two rules, and every franchisee does, which is make friends and have fun. And as broad as those two core values are as much as they seem very simple. And it's kind of like life gives you lemons make lemonade like it doesn't sound like a lot. There is so much that you can unpack from make friends and have fun that that's all the rules you need. Because you don't treat your coworkers badly if you're if they're your friend, right, you don't treat your friends badly. You show up on time when you're going to meet a friend to go do something you act with integrity with your friends, you look out for your friends, you take care of your customers, because they're your friend. If you're having fun, you're not bringing your drama to the to the workplace or to your customers doorstep, you're tolerant when things don't go the way they should. If you have an unhappy customer, you're going to make friends with them and you're going to smile and you're going to take out the steam that is built up inside them that anger that they have gets taken away. So hospitality and all of that built into that hospitality culture can all be stemmed from make friends and have fun. And that goes through the business side, we're going to make friends, we're going to have fun, which means when things go wrong, and maybe the franchisees not having the success out the gates they anticipated, maybe we're dealing with some supply chain crisis that's going on because the world is doing what it's doing. Maybe price of goods has gone up due to inflation, like all the things that we're all dealing with. If my franchisees know that we've got their back, they're our friend, and we're fighting day in and day out to bring down the cost and ensure they have access to all the right products that they need to sell, then they're going to be tolerant to the fact that we're not perfect, they're not perfect when they make mistakes as a franchisee we're not going to be you know, mean people on our side, we're, they're our friend, and we're here to help them. And so it all starts with making friends and having fun. And from that foundation, we can build tremendous relationships together and do a lot of fun things. And remember, this is a business but we're serving people super foods. I mean, we're, we're selling staples, we're not curing cancer, we're not putting people on Mars. At the end of the day, we don't have to be so serious, we can realize that all we have to do is serve ice with a smile and recognize that the customer is coming in to be a better version of themselves. So let's help them
Roger Hurni 23:05
you may not be curing cancer, but you certainly may be prevented to get. We're trying. We're designed to steal out of that. Well the the franchisee is a unique approach. It feels fairly organic. I want to I wanted to pivot to marketing, how to get new customers find you had they learned about every bowl.
Jeff Fenster 23:23
Well, that was an interesting lesson for me. When I first opened, I didn't get a ton of customers. A lot of people didn't know what else to say he was I would say two out of 10 people in San Diego new ice when we first opened, a lot of people came in and asked me what we served can I make them eggs and bacon? All types of fun questions would come in, they come in and look at our menu. I try to make friends with them. They go ah, this isn't for me. I'm leaving. I thought this was like, you know, pokey bowls or something. Because the name was ever bowl. And then we realized, you know what, we just need to make sure everyone tries our food. So we launched what we call our friends and family night where we total all of our employees go tell everybody you know, it's free food at evitable. For a couple hours, we built a lot of fun relationships in the community. And so when we open a new store, we launch what we call friends and family for three hours. We give away free food customers come from the community, kids, parents, teens, et cetera, local businesses, come try our food, it's on us. We're going to make that investment in the community because I believe that once you try it, if you like it, you're gonna come back and if you don't now, you know, and I don't need you to pay I find that out all invest in you and see. And then we build our tribe that way to people who like it come back. And then obviously the people who it's not for them, now they know. But the data on our diamond so we're not getting those bad Yelp reviews, like oh my god, I tried this food it sucked. Or, you know, while we're, while we're training our staff early on, and they're brand new employees while they're making mistakes, everyone understands it's on us. So we put it as come help us train our team. Come try our food. We're going to be working out kinks. So be patient with us and give us your feedback and suggestions. Because we are a community store. All of our stores are we hire within the community and we want to serve the community and each community is a little bit difference. So there may be things that we don't understand yet. And we need to learn from our community members. So we're going to ask questions, we're going to have some fun, we're going to serve superfoods, this is going to be an uplifting night. And it's a great way to just launch a store and from there tends to trickle in with the good customers.
Roger Hurni 25:15
Yeah, bringing the customers into the equation in terms of helping us improve and evolve and train that I imagine, really mitigates bad reviews, because you're, you're bringing them as part of the process, you're getting something for free, right? The worst is, Hey, I didn't like it's not for me. Okay, but that's not going to manifest itself into a bad review, that's just gonna be some does come back for a second visit. I have one other thing in the in the QR space here. Two more questions after that. But in the QSR space, a lot of companies are relying on apps, I noticed that you have one as well, behaviorally, it's it's it's probably the greatest prompting tool that's ever been invented. Companies are in the QSR space, in particular, a little more ahead of the game than some other brands in terms of you can order on it, you can find locations, you can do that kind of stuff. But a lot of them are starting to use mobile marketing software, or looking at really looking at the personalization through the mobile app space. And it's not just customizing a bowl, but it's really understanding that customer on a one to one scalable basis. What are you doing with with your app? What's on the plans for the future? Are you seeing opportunity there? I know there's a lot to unpack in that three, question and ask.
Jeff Fenster 26:37
Yeah, the short answer is we're learning. You know, again, going back to that change already mindset that customer behavior, and the customer pattern changed with COVID, burn and COVID, there was a slower adoption with apps and food. Third party delivery was kind of there, but it wasn't a necessity. You know, you didn't need to be on these platforms. That's not the way our behavior was, we still liked to go to restaurants, you know, you still order pizza delivery and a few other things. But it just wasn't mainstream the way it is today. Now that behavior has completely changed in to your point, no longer does. What you mean by ghost kitchens is a real thing. There are massive ghost kitchen opportunities for brands where that don't even have a physical brick-and-mortar. So as a customer, we want the least friction possible, we want to not have to put in all of our same orders. Every time we want that personalization. We want the brand to hopefully upsell us properly to what they know we want, I don't want your loyalty program to give me a free juice. If I never drink juice, I wanted to give me something that I'm going to consume. We want that personalized loyalty programs. And so we're learning from the customers on how that behavior is changing. It's really hard because a lot of restaurants, we're not chief technology companies, and we don't have chief technology officers. So it's not like we have a team of developers sitting in a room that can just you know, on the fly update, you know, my Facebook and Instagram like they do. So we are a little bit reactive in that side. Whatever we're trying to do is we're trying to increase our app usage, what we have found is customers buy more often for the ones who use the app. So we're trying to find creative ways to get you to download our app, whether it's giving you a free bowl on your first time ordering, or giving you more loyalty points and discounts on different offerings inside of our ecosystem. It also makes for less mistakes, it allows us to be better and faster with our throughput because if you place your order ahead and show up, it's already ready. So I don't have you know, a line of 20 customers in that 18th and 19, customer leave, because it's going to take too long orders are being done, which allows us to monetize our time better. It gives us better accuracy and detailed to what's being ordered. So we understand what our customers are wanting what they're not wanting, what are the more you know, faster moving items, and what are the ones that maybe need to be removed from our menu. It also allows for us to do to your point, real time marketing. So I can say during our slow hour come in right now and do a push notification to our app users, hey, we're going to do a little happy hour, it's raining outside, our sales are slow. Let's give away some discounts. Let's increase the foot traffic where the ordering counts right now or if it's really, really busy. It's also good to know when are those at one of those customers ordering so we can do better scheduling that way. And it's less erratic. So that's kind of what we're working towards. I don't have a great answer, because it is a moving target all the time, every time. But it's definitely what we're thinking through technology is the future of ordering. Food is no longer just ordered inside the restaurant. And we're pivoting and changing and trying to adapt as best we can.
Roger Hurni 29:29
Yeah, it's a lot of the companies I've consulted with don't really rely more and more on the app for that kind of communication as conversations of managing the conversations. They're moving more and more toward how do we look at individual behavior. So when you do have that push notification, it isn't a push notification that goes out to everybody. It goes out to here are a subset of our customers. We're, we're going to create a push notification on the fly through a I that is customized and personalized to you, because of these behaviors that were exhibited, either implicitly or explicitly. And that I think that really is the future. It's, it's the one thing that brands have going for them where they have 100% of control. Because like, no matter how much you do on social media with influencers, there's so many elements that are out of your control. One thing changes in the algorithm or one influencer does something stupid, and all of a sudden, you gotta like, pivot your entire brand. And I always find that reliance on social media a little, a little hard to swallow. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. It's just, I think she's a little bit more difficult. But
Jeff Fenster 30:38
it is. It's less science. Yeah, it is
Roger Hurni 30:41
a sign, what set? You've got everything up and running, you're trying other kinds of things. What's that, that I'm looking for your, your five minute pity party, but what's the big thing? It's keeping you up at night now? Like, what's your what's the biggest challenge you're facing right now?
Jeff Fenster 30:56
Well, I mean, inventory and supply chain have been, were my biggest hurdle. Finally, we're catching our tail on that in society, inflation is still really high. You know, we're we're in an economic time where we don't know if we're walking into a recession. If one's already here, we're gonna have no landing, soft landing, hard landing, if you follow the economics of the country, in the consumer. Being an entrepreneur, and just someone who follows it, I pay attention to what's going on, or I try to so I can foresee the storm coming. I never like to get blindsided. And, you know, the data is showing that consumer debt is at all-time high. People are living paycheck to paycheck, which means with that it's going to naturally come some form of attrition in how much we spend eating out. No longer are we working from home as much as more and more companies are requiring you to come back to work, which means that's going to change the eating patterns and behaviors? Because we may have seen an uptick in certain communities where a lot of people live and they were working from home all day, and ordering every bowl for lunch, but now they're commuting to their office and there is no every bowl there. So did we lose the customer? Because we are not as good? Or did we lose the customer because lifestyle changed, and habits changed? So we're anticipating all this that's keeping me up at night and figuring out how we're going to evolve and adapt around that. Obviously, Maine's retaining and hiring great humans is always a challenge. The mindset of the employee has changed, what they want has changed. No longer is that just I want money and promotion. But now it is what you stand for matters just as much as how much money they're going to make and during their job satisfaction, providing both the franchisees but making sure the franchisees are delivering you mentioned influencers, but because we're a franchise system, if you're my franchisee, you're a brand ambassador. And now that we have stores across the country, every employee is a brand ambassador. And I didn't really appreciate that as a restaurant tour before I became a restaurant tour. You know, if you go to a restaurant today, and we have the worst experience because the waiters a jerk, we're going to swear off the restaurant, I'm never going back to that restaurant because that waiter texted me disrespectfully. They messed up my order. It's a terrible restaurant. Well, no, it was actually just a regular employee who was having a bad day just took me out of the equation of coming back to a restaurant, and the lifetime value of me as a customer went to zero, simply because of a team member having an off day. And when you realize the impact that, that can have. Now it's on that's keeping me up because I want to make sure that our job satisfaction rate is high for our team, and that they are making friends and having fun because if they don't, we're losing customers, not because our food isn't good. And because our prices aren't good. And because our mission statement isn't good, but an employee having a bad day. And maybe that's coming from a franchisee who's having a bad day. And so when I realized that all of these variables are outside of my control, or you know, that's what keeps me up as a business owner.
Roger Hurni 33:41
I tell all of my employees, I call them staffers. I feel like staffers are some someone you work with employees or someone you work for. So I tell all my staffers, rule number one, every point of contact is a brand point of contact. So, you know, no matter what's great, whatever you're saying out there, you've been really gracious your time I have two more questions. These in the doozy so hopefully you can handle these curveballs. First one is verse one is what question didn't I ask that you thought I would or you think I should have?
Jeff Fenster 34:20
Um, well, you asked me why I started ever bull. You know, a lot of times I A lot of times I get asked about competitors. And what do you have? What's the key differentiator between ever bowling our competition? So I figured out get that question thrown at me at some point.
Roger Hurni 34:36
Well, let's go there then. What would how our competitors I mean, I see us a eyeballs like popping up here and there. I don't think anyone's got it down to your model. So I feel like it feels like one offs here and there. But what is the competition look like?
Jeff Fenster 34:50
Well, so my perspective changed on this. You asked me this question a year ago and I would be talking about actually the brands that also sell offs IE and smoothies and and superfoods yeah we have a different mousetrap as far as like our model we're more of a create your own customized go through an assembly line in front of you very similar to what Chipotle or subway look and feel. As far as how you order you don't just come to the counter and order they do. They're more ordered like preset menu. Second we import and and source our own superfoods and have our own proprietary blends in there. A lot of them are buying off the shelf stuff that you can get. So think Coca Cola and a hamburger joint, you go to six different restaurants that Sell Burgers, but they're all sell Coca Cola is the beverage so you can get coke anywhere. A lot of them use the same ice. But really where a year ago this all changed is I realized, and I heard Elon Musk say it when he was asked you know, are you concerned that all the big brands are going to start creating electric cars? And how is that going to compete with you? And he goes, I don't compete with other electric cars. I compete with gas powered cars. And when he said that I had an epiphany and I realized I don't compete with other brands that sell ice and smoothies and fruit and superfoods. I compete with the fast and the fried the McDonald's the Burger Kings the Taco Bell's. So my competition now is them. And if you choose to go to one of my competitors that serves us labels because you think they make them better than I do. Good. I'm okay with that. A rising tide lifts all boats in the super food space.
Roger Hurni 36:17
I think that is incredibly positive outlook on things. I think that's wicked, wicked smart. Well, here's my last question. You have been involved in a lot of different businesses. Is this going to extend beyond everyone that you've been a lot of different businesses in you've provided? And oh, by our conversation has provided listeners with some good valuable lessons here. I've always felt that sometimes, you know, what you don't do is as important as what you do do. I'm sure Steve Jobs had a quote about it at one point around that. So what's the what's the worst advice you've ever gotten?
Jeff Fenster 36:57
Ooh, the worst advice I've ever gotten.
Roger Hurni 37:00
I told you nearly a curveball.
Jeff Fenster 37:02
Yeah, the worst advice I ever got was go get experience before you do something. You know, when I was starting out, some of my mentors that I was taking advice from just didn't have the foresight to understand and appreciate either my personality or how entrepreneurship really works. But I stand I say this on stages, experience is the most overrated prerequisite to starting a company or doing something, the only way you're ever gonna actually get experiences by doing it, I can talk to you about learning to swim in a book, I can tell you what it's going to feel like. But until I throw you in water, and you first feel that weightlessness of what it feels like, and possibly drowning and moving your arms and legs to keep your head above water, you just won't know. So you don't need experience to be successful. There's a ton of information available. But to your point of why you're glad I didn't purchase that smoothie shop to start with the truth is you're right. I am two, I've never acquired a company like that before everything that I've started, and I was going to change the model for this one. And I'm glad it didn't work out. Because what I bring with no experience is fresh eyes and disruption. Some of my SOPs that we have at every bowl today, which restaurant tours look gonna go up. And that's smart. To be honest, it's not smart. I just didn't know better. So I did it that way. It was just dumb luck. It was luck, because I didn't have the experience of what restaurant tours have been doing for years and years and years and years. And so I wasn't set in a way, I had no way. So I had to just create one using modern day technologies, modern day thinking and modern day access to information. And so you know, if you get someone with a lot of restaurant experience, for example, they may have be giving you tried and true SOPs. This has always worked, this is the way it's done. But it's 2023. We now live in a very different world where hospitality the definition of hospitality is different. The definition of ordering food with third party delivery is different. And just how we look at it. I mean, the idea of a ghost kitchen is so contrary to the way hospitality was in 2015. If you'd mentioned that in 2015, people were like no way. Eating is a human element we need to come in, we need to see it, we need to smell it. I want to look at the customer, the employees I want to watch my food be made. So the worst advice I ever got was go get experienced before you try something. And I recommend if you're sitting here listening to this and you're on the fence, just jumped in man, you'll you'll you'll you'll learn so much on the fly. You have access to people reach out to me reach out to Roger reach out to anybody out there if you need advice, but there's tons of us that can give advice. There's tons of us that can give lessons you have YouTube in your pocket. Just get out there and do it.
Roger Hurni 39:27
Yeah, I think that is that's a good pivot on the advice part of it. Work ethic to me trumps experience and even talent Oh yeah, it'll take you pretty far.
Jeff Fenster 39:42
Well, you guys just said the quote is Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
Roger Hurni 39:46
Never heard the thought I love that. You need a pen that or is that a something that
Jeff Fenster 39:51
no, that's not me. That's definitely not a Jeff quote. That's just a quote. I love.
Roger Hurni 39:56
Okay. I like it. I like it. Jeff again. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I had been speaking with Jeff Fenster who's the founder and CEO of Everbowl. And honestly, from this conversation, I think just a generally great guy. Jeff, where can people learn more about you and Everbowl and what you're doing?
Jeff Fenster 40:16
So everbowl.com/franchise if you're interested in franchising, or everbowl.com, just to be a customer, you can follow us at Everbowl Craft Superfood you can reach me at @FensterJeff on Instagram. My new website, JeffFenster.com, will be up very shortly and I'm launching my own podcast. I don't know when this is going to air so it'll either be live or about to be live called the Jeff Fenster show, where I am going to interview a lot of incredible people and pull out of them what their success formula is, because I believe success is formulaic. And so if you understand what to do, you can be successful in all walks of life, both in business and in your personal life. So you can definitely communicate with me on that I love to meet new people. So please reach out. Say hello, and let's become friends.
Roger Hurni 40:56
All right, wonderful. I'm Roger Hurni. This is From Persona to Personal and we'll catch you next time.
Outro 41:04
Thanks for listening to From Persona to Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
