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The Grateful for Hospitality Podcast features candid conversations with founders, operators, and experts shaping the sector. Practical insights, honest stories and ideas to make you think.
I think anyone that's watching or listening, it doesn't matter what business you're in, whether you're in sales, whether you're in marketing, whether you're in product, whether you're a founder, a CEO, your story matters. We believe in h to h, which is human to human. Let's get back right to the beginning. Sure.
Mason Potter:The one restaurant that you started, the smokestack, tell me about that. Like, how did you end up starting that business, and what was what was the business like
Sean Walchef:in the early days? Hard. That's probably why I believe so deeply in storytelling. Once you embrace the tools that we all have now at our fingertips, you can connect with people all over the globe, but more importantly, for local businesses, people right in your area. But you have to have the courage to look stupid and sound stupid.
Sean Walchef:And the more reps that you put in talking to a camera, going on a podcast, posting on LinkedIn, posting on TikTok, the more opportunities there are.
Mason Potter:Sean, welcome. Thanks for coming on the Grateful for Hospitality podcast. We're not international yet like your show, but for
Sean Walchef:You're international. You're publishing on the Internet. Anyone on Earth can hear this show. Right. Well, correct.
Sean Walchef:You gotta have a deep belief. Well, for
Mason Potter:those of you that that don't know who you are, give a quick introduction about Cali, the work with Toast, Cali BBQ Media.
Sean Walchef:Sure. So my name's Sean Walchef. I own Cali BBQ in San Diego, three restaurants. We've been in business for eighteen years. It's me and my wife, my team.
Sean Walchef:We have a full smokehouse, full 300 seat restaurant that's been up and operating. We opened up a stadium location in Snapdragon Stadium. That's where our MLS team, Major League Soccer, in The United States, I know I'm talking to, in London, so Football. It is World Cup time, but yes, football is alive and well in San Diego, just so you know, and we serve barbecue out of our Cali barbecue stand at that location, and then we have a Navy based location where we are in a food court with a bunch of national brands. We're the only local brand, and we've doing that for two years, but eighteen years in the restaurant business, and over the last nine years building a media company, b to b storytelling, basically telling restaurant stories, the business of restaurants and the business of technology that runs restaurants, hotels, and stadiums.
Sean Walchef:Yeah. We have 18 podcasts, I think, that we 18 shows, so whether it's a podcast or a YouTube channel that we either produce internally or on behalf of clients. Our biggest show is called Restaurant Influencers. It's a podcast with Entrepreneur Magazine. Toast is the title sponsor of that show.
Sean Walchef:Pepsi just signed on for a year long sponsorship to promote the technology that they're helping restaurants with, with menu optimization, it's called Digital Labs. And then we have our Digital Hospitality podcast, which I've been doing since 2017, and we've got a substack called Restaurant Technology Substack. We believe in omni channel storytelling, and think anyone that's watching or listening, it doesn't matter what business you're in, whether you're in sales, whether you're in marketing, whether you're in product, whether you're a founder, a CEO, your story matters. We believe in H to H, which is human to human. So most of our content is b to b, business to business.
Sean Walchef:We don't need to have videos with hundreds of thousands of views or millions of views. We care that restaurant owners and business owners watch our videos and get value from them. And if they do, and it makes their business better, then we've done our job.
Mason Potter:Wow. It's a lot. A lot. I got a lot.
Sean Walchef:And I got I my my wife, my son, and my daughter, and they're the Walchef Wolfpack, and we travel now all over
Mason Potter:the world to tell restaurant technology stories. Amazing. Yeah. I wanna unpack all that today anyway, but let's go back right to the beginning. Like Sure.
Mason Potter:The one restaurant that you started, the Smoke Sack. Like, tell me about that. Like, how did you end up starting that business, and what was what was the business like in
Sean Walchef:the early days? Hard. Running a restaurant is hard. We opened in 2008, it was me and Corey, one of my best friends from college. We took over an existing breakfast business, added a sports bar and a dinner service, and we were young and naive and just, you know, right out of college, we thought that even though we grew up both in family restaurants, we never thought we'd be getting to the restaurant business, but the liquor license was a good opportunity to activate in an underserved part of San Diego.
Sean Walchef:So I believe in London, you call it the dodgy part of town. Spring Valley would definitely qualify as the dodgy part of town, but it's our dodgy part, and we love it, and we believed in it, and we built a business that we were super proud of, but the business didn't make any money in the beginning. You know, we struggled very difficult 2008, 2009 to pay our vendors, pay our team, we definitely didn't pay ourselves, and it was hard, And I think that's probably why I believe so deeply in storytelling, why I believe so deeply in technology, is that once you embrace the tools that we all have now at our fingertips, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, it really doesn't matter what the platform is, you can connect with people all over the globe, but more importantly, for local businesses, people right in your area. But you have to have the courage to look stupid and sound stupid, and I think that's the biggest problem and opportunity with social media. For business owners, no one wants to look stupid or sound stupid.
Sean Walchef:No one wants to post a video of them awkwardly stumbling over their words, and then seeing somebody on LinkedIn go, who do you think you are? Mhmm. Like, you have investors, you have board members, you have a husband, a wife, a daughter, a son, and they're looking at you and they're like, Mason, you look stupid. Like, why'd you post that video? But that's our own fear.
Sean Walchef:That's our fear getting in the way of the opportunity. And the more reps that you put in talking to a camera, going on a podcast, posting on LinkedIn, posting on TikTok, the more opportunities there are. I don't care how many people see a video that we post, a blog that I make, I don't care. What I care about is the humans when I come to London that stop me, and we have a meetup. We had a Rising Tides meetup, so every there's another we do another two shows.
Sean Walchef:We have a show on Wednesday and Friday called Rising Tides Live. So it's a live show that we started during the pandemic on Clubhouse, which was an audio app, but now it's evolved into a live podcast on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and we have a community of people like Scott Turner from Auden Hospitality Yeah. Richard Liverman, Adam Foreman, these are all digital hospitality professionals, people that work either in the business of restaurants, the business of technology, or are storytellers and business owners. And because we have the courage to do that, we met with 15 people on Tuesday. We had a meetup in London, and I got to meet people that I've never met in real life.
Sean Walchef:I didn't even know they followed me on LinkedIn, and yet they showed up in real life to talk about restaurants, talk about technology, talk about storytelling, and you know, we've made some connections that I'm sure, you know, we'll see where those connections go, but could lead to business, could lead to new clients, could lead to new opportunities. You just never know until you actually start doing the work. And in the beginning, when you do the work and you post, no one will care. And then you post again, and no one cares. When we first started our podcast, nobody listened.
Sean Walchef:2017, like, there was no one listening to our show. 50 episode was audio only, no video. But you have to have the courage to keep posting. Did you know that the first, if you can publish 10 podcasts, you're in the top 10%. Wow.
Sean Walchef:There's millions of podcasts on Apple Podcasts. Millions. Only 10% have published 10 episodes or more. That's a very low bar. But why?
Sean Walchef:You know, this is your third podcast.
Mason Potter:Mhmm. Is it more is
Sean Walchef:it harder or easier than you expected?
Mason Potter:Well, it's easier. Like you said, it's it's the initial jump of thinking, I don't wanna do this because
Sean Walchef:because you're busy. You're running a tech company. Yeah. How many how many clients do you guys have? Hundreds.
Sean Walchef:Hundreds? Yeah. And how many employees do you have?
Mason Potter:22.
Sean Walchef:22. Livelihoods that depend on you. Investors that are betting on you. So they ask, tell me about the fear that you had of spending time. What day is it?
Sean Walchef:What day are we recording this? Thursday. Thursday. Mhmm. You've blocked out time to do podcasting.
Sean Walchef:Why?
Mason Potter:Well, I actually think it comes back to the initial conversation we had around brand building and storytelling. When was that? Oh god. It was it's probably, like, eighteen months ago, twelve months ago. Eighteen months ago.
Mason Potter:What happened? Well, life got in the way.
Sean Walchef:No. But what happened? What did we have a call?
Mason Potter:Yeah. We had a call. Yeah. We're introduced Yeah. By I think it was Phil at Toast.
Mason Potter:Yep. And it was the line, I think, that you said no one's gonna come and start telling your story for you.
Sean Walchef:Yeah. No one's coming. That's if anybody's watching and anyone's listening, if you're an entrepreneur, there's there's an American baseball movie called Field of Dreams, and the line is, if you build it, they will come. So Kevin Costner is the main actor, and James Earl Jones, and the whole idea of this is that they build a baseball field in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. And because he built this baseball field, all of these legends of baseball, these ghosts come and they play.
Sean Walchef:But the line in the movie, which is a line that many entrepreneurs and business owners, at least stateside, will say is, if you build it, they will come. If you build a restaurant and you open up the doors, people are gonna come. And it's just not true. If you start a tech company, if you start a product, no matter what you do, we think that the product is so good, product led. The product's so good, ChatGPT's so good that everyone's gonna download ChatGPT.
Sean Walchef:Right? Well, most businesses aren't ChatGPT. Right? And because they're not, you have to tell your own story. And the more that you tell your story, the better you get at telling your story, then other people will start to tell your story.
Mason Potter:Yep. And just going back to that storytelling piece, like, starting from one restaurant, like, what was the moment that you realized, like, this is what I need to do, and this is this is my calling. Like, this is is where I wanna go in life. Because, obviously, you've got multiple different business ventures that you're focusing on now. What was was there a specific moment from starting a bricks and mortar site to then actually going into media and thinking this is
Sean Walchef:what I need to do to to succeed? So the specific moment was realizing that no one was coming. That we thought that when we had been open for five years, I thought that our five year anniversary, because we were in the dodgy part of town, that maybe I could get local media, legacy media, newspapers, magazines, local TV station to come out and cover our restaurant. And I actually bought some books on PR, public relations, on how to write a press release to get news coverage. I wrote probably 13 different press releases asking local media to come and cover, you know, us being open for five years, serving great barbecue, providing phenomenal hospitality, giving back to our community.
Sean Walchef:Do you know how many people came and wrote stories about us? One, two. Zero. No one gives a shit. Like, maybe we didn't have a good story, but like, no one came.
Sean Walchef:And at that point, I realized we either need to tell our story, or we're gonna go out of business. And we opened up our business in 2008. Do you know what year the first the iPhone came out? No. 2007.
Sean Walchef:So like, we've been building our restaurant business on the backs of Web two point o. Literally on the backs of the iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Yelp, all of these different tools that now a restaurateur, small business, big business, we all depend on these tools to get our story out. I mean, I was just sharing just yesterday in the Toast offices when we were filming, you know, when Google makes a product announcement, where do you learn about those Google product announcements? Online. Where online?
Sean Walchef:On Google. You learn on Google. Like, through what? Google notification? They email you.
Sean Walchef:How do
Mason Potter:you know how do you learn about it? Oh, it's just through socials online, I guess, like various different channels. Through socials?
Sean Walchef:Yeah. Exactly. I learn about Google products from Meta on Instagram. Mhmm. On Google's account on Meta.
Sean Walchef:Isn't that crazy? Like, the world that we live in is Google, Alphabet, one of the biggest technology companies on earth, uses tools like Facebook and Instagram to promote their products. Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, when he's doing Meta Glasses with Ray Ban, they make YouTube videos about it. That tells you a lot about the world of technology, the world of storytelling, that no matter who you are and what you do, all of these platforms matter because they reach different audiences.
Mason Potter:And just, I guess, going back before we go on to I guess, I want to get some real nuggets for people that are watching around the power of social media and the power of, like, a multi platform approach. But I guess just to try and put it into perspective, what was the difference between before and after? But after you had that realization moment of, like, I need to take control of this. I need to start telling the story of the business. What was that ramp period looking like?
Mason Potter:Was it, I'm guessing it wasn't an overnight success. Definitely not. I mean, it's still not an overnight success. We've been able
Sean Walchef:to do some really I mean, I'm here in London with my family, with my team. David flew from Bulgaria, Chance flew from San Diego, Cam's coming, he flew from Buenos Aires. Like, we got a team operating in six different time zones, 14 people on the media team, but we're just getting started. To your point, when we did do it in the beginning, no one cared. It was just me.
Sean Walchef:Everything that you need, if you're watching, if you're listening, you don't need 14 people on your media team to be able to do this type of content. We're filming in a podcast studio. There are podcast studios all over The United States, Definitely, apparently, here in London. No matter where you are on Earth, people understand the power of new new media, what you can do, but you have to have the courage, back to what I said in the beginning, you have to have the courage to know that no one's coming. Like, it's it's a self realization that even though you have a marketing team, even though you have a PR team, no matter who you have, your perspective and your ability to cut to the truth is cut down to nothing.
Sean Walchef:You can go live right now on Instagram. You can go live on TikTok. You can go live on YouTube. Is anyone gonna show up? Probably not, and that's why most people don't do it.
Sean Walchef:But if you do it for a hundred days, every single day, maybe you get one person that goes, I kinda like what Mason said. I kinda dig what he's doing at Grateful. I like their approach to digital hospitality. I like how they're, the way that they're taking care of the workers, and they're making tips transparent, and they're giving back to restaurants. I really like that idea.
Sean Walchef:Maybe we should introduce him to this person, and maybe we should, but like, a hundred days. A hundred go lives. It takes a lot of courage to be able to do that, and, you know, back to your question, why did we do it? We did it because we didn't have another choice. The choice is to go out of business or not.
Sean Walchef:And like, if I'm gonna go out of business, I'm gonna go out of business swinging. I mean, remember in the beginning, I made fun of Corey, my business partner, opening up the restaurant for being on Facebook. I was like, what are you doing on face? We're a business. We're trying to run a restaurant.
Sean Walchef:Are you just trying to Well,
Mason Potter:having a personal
Sean Walchef:Him having Facebook personal Facebook account. Wow. I was like, what are just trying to pick up girls? Like, what is this social media? And then we got to the point where we couldn't pay our bills, and I'm like, well, Facebook lets me post about the restaurant.
Sean Walchef:So I started posting about our restaurant.
Mason Potter:Was that the first platform you started posting
Sean Walchef:on Yeah. Platform. And I remember annoying friends and family that followed me on Facebook, going, Sean, why are you posting so much about the restaurant? Like, well, if you're my friend and my family, why don't you come to the restaurant so I don't go out of business?
Mason Potter:Yeah. And was it was it was it Facebook for a long time, and then you started on, like, different channels, and was it was it written content? Was it photo? Was it video? Like, what what were you doing?
Sean Walchef:We kinda learned all of it. It was, you know, I mean, the evolution of how social media has changed is we just don't discriminate on the platform. Mhmm. I had a most restaurant owners hate Yelp. I hated Yelp in the beginning too, until I realized, wait, there's actual humans that are on Yelp that have visited my restaurant, and they have an opinion, whether it's a great opinion or a bad opinion about their visit.
Sean Walchef:Maybe I should start to interact with them the same way I would interact with person in real life. If they came into my restaurant and they gave me that feedback on the floor of my restaurant, what if I treated them the same way on Yelp, and I responded to them immediately, instead of waiting twenty four hours, or a week, or a month, or never responding at all. We started responding on Yelp, on Google, on Facebook, eventually Instagram, and started realizing that the more channels that we're on, and the better that we get at telling our story with quantity, speed, and consistency, we'll start to get better. Mhmm.
Mason Potter:And I guess that's that's the first half of the battle, and arguably, you know, for a restaurant or someone starting in hospitality, may not be something that comes natural to somebody. They wanna focus
Sean Walchef:on There's nothing natural about talking on camera. There's fucking nothing nothing natural about podcasting. There's nothing natural about taking up your iPhone and being in the town square and and going live or making a video and then public. There's nothing natural about it.
Mason Potter:But it's part of just life now. The biggest part is to not think
Sean Walchef:of it as creating content. We're not actors. If you don't like me on a podcast, if you don't like me, how I appear on my YouTube video, you just won't like me in real life, and that's fine. But if you see how I act on a podcast, if you see how I act at a trade show, if you see how I act in the Toast offices, and you like it, you're probably gonna like me in real life because that's how I am. Like, yeah, you're exactly how I thought.
Sean Walchef:Well, yeah, because I it's just I'm not acting. I'm just the cameras are just on. Yeah. We don't care how many it's actually better the more cameras that are Mhmm.
Mason Potter:And so, I guess, going back to what I was saying is the first half of the battle is getting the media out and getting people through the door. Yeah. As actually, as a restaurant, know, you see it quite a lot. You've probably had experience of it going to other hospitality venues. You have it anywhere you go.
Mason Potter:You have the element of hype of people thinking this is the best place ever and naturally executing on the experience when someone comes into a venue. Like, how do you how do you battle that and combat that really where you you're creating such a high expectation for people coming through the door and you're getting so much media coverage around the business, making sure that when they come through the door, they're still having a fantastic experience and the actual reality is is met.
Sean Walchef:I think that comes down to operations. Mhmm. I mean, you have to foundationally share your truth. So if you're posting bullshit that is bullshit, you know, there's the Instagram versus reality.
Mason Potter:Yeah. And that's exactly it. You know, you see venues with queues outside the door. And, you know, I I had it where I'd I'd seen it so clearly. There was two venues in exactly the same place.
Mason Potter:And you go on social media, one's got a 100,000 follower a 100,000 followers, and one's got, not really, even an Instagram page. On the face of it, they look exactly the same, but one's queuing out the door. You go in and the experience isn't that good. Yeah. So
Sean Walchef:I think the most important thing is that you're not building it for social media. You're just sharing your truth. And your truth is your truth, and the truth of the matter is you'll never make everybody happy. Yeah. We sell barbecue in California, which is an oxymoron to the rest of The United States.
Sean Walchef:To Texas, to St. Louis, to Memphis, to The Carolinas. For anyone to talk about craft barbecue in California, it's an insult. It's like talking about religion to them. But we do it anyways because every single day, our goal is to make better brisket.
Sean Walchef:Yeah. And if every single day we work on the craft of making better brisket, better ribs, better pork, better wedding beans, better mac and cheese, then eventually, we're gonna have a great business. But we have to share that journey along the way, and the problem is most people don't wanna share the bad brisket. I do
Mason Potter:share that.
Sean Walchef:We've been sharing it. Mhmm. We've been sharing it for eighteen years. I was like, that is the journey. That's the hardest part, you know.
Sean Walchef:One of the biggest things, we work with a lot of tech companies, and I talk to tech founders a lot of times, I give a lot of advice, and they tell me they're build, they're in stealth mode. Like, oh, we're in stealth mode. Why the fuck are you in stealth mode? What does that even mean? You're waiting to tell your story?
Sean Walchef:What are you waiting for? We have everything that we need right now to tell our story. You're scared that someone's gonna steal your secrets? Please. You know how hard it is to build anything of value?
Sean Walchef:If you're confident in what you're building, if you are who you are, you will build something phenomenal. I mean, had Aman Narang, the co founder and CEO of Toast, on our show Restaurant Influencers, talking to him about the early days of building Toast. And in the early days, him and Steve Ferdette and John Moody were sitting in their garage downstairs, and their wives were questioning, you know, how are these brilliant minds from MIT selling cash registers to restaurateurs, like, is this really gonna work? I wish they had video of those conversations. And it's not that they were in stealth mode, it's just you don't think when you're building something of what it can be.
Sean Walchef:You think about what it can be, but imagine what it would look like if Jeff Bezos, we had video of him building Amazon. Mhmm. Imagine if we had Elon Musk building, you know, PayPal in the early days. You had the thoughts, Steve Jobs. I mean, all of those people as an entrepreneur, what that would look like, what we could learn from them from their early days, and not only the good stuff, but more importantly, the bad struggles.
Mason Potter:I think that's I think that's what a lot sorry to interrupt you. I think that's what a lot of people miss. You you automatically assume because you start seeing someone online, it's like an overnight success. You don't see all the grind that's gone in for the ten years previous. Yeah.
Mason Potter:And I think that's sort of part of the problem where people are like, I don't wanna start posting because of the, you know, they're scared to do it, but they also think I should be up here, same as the people that have been doing it for ten years or whatever.
Sean Walchef:Everyone wants to be the hare in the race and not the tortoise. We all wanna be a unicorn. Like, we want to have the success immediately. We wanna post and we wanna go viral, and we wanna see the business. We wanna see the ROI of social media.
Sean Walchef:I want If you're a business owner, you need to see the return on investment immediately. The return on investment is, you gotta measure it in years and decades, not in days and weeks. Years and decades, if you make a commitment, I will build on YouTube. YouTube is the number one TV channel in the world. How many businesses have YouTube channels?
Sean Walchef:Very small amount.
Mason Potter:Mhmm.
Sean Walchef:10%, I would I would I would get. Most businesses at least understand they need to be on Instagram, but still, a lot of b to b businesses definitely b to c businesses, yes, they're on Instagram. Yeah. B to b businesses, they still don't think do you have an Instagram account? Yeah.
Sean Walchef:For Grateful? Yep. How often do you guys post?
Mason Potter:Not enough. Well, this is this is the point. We think we post more on LinkedIn, and we get more engagement on LinkedIn because it's a b to b platform, but everyone's a consumer at the end of the day in one one way or another.
Sean Walchef:You you have restaurant owner friends? Some. Some? Do you talk to restaurant owners all the time?
Mason Potter:Yeah. I talk to our customers all the time. Yeah. We're Do
Sean Walchef:they have Instagram accounts? They do. Yeah. Do they post on Instagram?
Mason Potter:Yeah. No. Exactly. Yeah. We're on the same page.
Mason Potter:It's crazy.
Sean Walchef:Yeah. Like, I don't know why I don't talk about it more. Mhmm. But, like, it's nuts to think that, like, when we think of restaurants and we think of storytelling, at least restaurants are posting, from a b to c standpoint, the restaurant brand itself. Now, very infrequently, that's why we do the shows that we do, is we wanna know the restaurant storytellers, where the founder, the owner, the chef, they have their own Instagram account.
Sean Walchef:But like, they're all on Instagram. Whether it's a private account, or a public account, or they're posting or not posting is irrelevant. They all open up Instagram, and they follow what's happening. That's a big signal. It's a big signal, like, that's a good playground to be in, a storytelling playground for not just a tech company, but for any b to b business to be on.
Sean Walchef:But why don't businesses go on it? Because they don't know what to post. Right? Mhmm. It's usually buy my shit, and no one wants to buy your shit.
Sean Walchef:You don't go to Instagram to buy shit. You go there to be educated or entertained. And if you're educated or entertained and you add value, then people but adding value takes time.
Mason Potter:I think it's the balance as well between you talked about the ROI of measuring it in years and decades. You need to get the right balance between what can I do now that's gonna help me in the short term Yes? But what's else also gonna help in terms of long long term brand building. Yes. I think when we're looking at long term or long form content or just brand building in general online where you want people to resonate with you as a founder or you as someone that's running the company, that is something that takes years and decades to build.
Mason Potter:Beards and decades. And I think that's what people probably overlook. They like you said, everyone wants to be the hair in the race. They're Everybody. What can I do that's gonna generate more money for
Sean Walchef:you for
Mason Potter:the next month or the month after?
Sean Walchef:Right out of the gate, success, Gold medal. It's not like that.
Mason Potter:Yeah.
Sean Walchef:It's a marathon, not a sprint. Like, it's overused line, but it is a marathon. That's 26.3 mile, like, that is a long distance. And if you plan on doing this forever, if, like, this is the thing that you are building, if this is the mission that you're on, in ten years, if you posted, if you made a commitment to YouTube in ten years, like, is YouTube going anywhere? No.
Sean Walchef:Right? I think YouTube's kind of solidified itself as the OG social media platform. Yeah. People have cut the cord globally, starting to realize, like, we have YouTube on our phones, we have YouTube in the hotel rooms. Like, YouTube's a pretty important platform.
Sean Walchef:Mhmm. But YouTube is more difficult to tell stories on than Instagram or TikTok or even Facebook. It requires thumbnails. It requires lots of other moving parts, but businesses have websites. Most businesses don't update their websites.
Sean Walchef:That's a different conversation. SEO versus AEO or GEO or whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. But those are all storytelling platforms.
Mason Potter:And on on the point of storytelling, actually, I guess, bringing it back to inception, if you were I guess, if you're talking to somebody that's wanting to start a business, hospitality business today, or somebody that's got single site, amazing food, really, really passionate about their craft, and they think, right, I need to I need to do this. Yep. Like, where would you
Sean Walchef:tell them to start? I'll give a free tip. So this is a free tip. Anybody that's watching, this is the the most important tool that you have, and it's an app. This one?
Sean Walchef:Yep. It's the most important tool. It's free. It's a big secret, but I'll let you know what it is. It's called the camera app.
Sean Walchef:Do you have one? Have you downloaded it on your phone? It comes installed and everything. The CamRap, four k video. It allows you to tell your story.
Sean Walchef:Everyone has everything that they need in their pocket at all times. Internet, camera app. That's it. Everything's free. YouTube's free.
Sean Walchef:TikTok's free. LinkedIn's free. But the cost is the commitment to telling the story every single day and documenting the journey.
Mason Potter:And what do you like, again, in in your opinion, document everything, the highs, the lows, everything in between. Do you start with a specific message?
Sean Walchef:The most important thing is to learn the craft of documenting. It's understanding when is the right time to pull out your phone and to tell
Mason Potter:the story. And when is that for somebody that doesn't know somebody that's, like, just in the kitchen twenty four seven, three six five, and this is completely new to them. It's easy.
Sean Walchef:You tell your story about the thing, like, every single every single item that you've put on the menu has a story. Why is it there? Why did you make the selection for this steak to be on your menu? Why did you make the selection for this pudding? You like that?
Sean Walchef:I know all about puddings, and I've had a pudding tour of London. That's dessert for the American audience. Mhmm. Why is this dessert? Why do we serve wicked peach cobbler?
Sean Walchef:There's a story behind Wicked Peach Cobbler. Why do you call them wedding beans? There's a story we call wedding beans wedding beans, because they're so good that you'd serve them at your wedding. Here's our catering menu. Why did you name the restaurant Cali Barbecue?
Sean Walchef:Why did you pick the location in Spring Valley? Why did you hire Eric in the parking lot when he first started eighteen years ago? Why is Steven the catering manager? Why do you have a red catering all of these questions that we assume no one cares about is the human side of business.
Mason Potter:And do you think that human psychology is changing towards resonating more with people's stories, or do you think it's just circumstantial because technology's available and people are starting to do it more?
Sean Walchef:I think because of AI, people are starved for real connection and real truth. That's why I think live video is going to be even bigger than short form. Streaming. Streaming. Yeah.
Sean Walchef:Because streaming's hard, and it's real, and it's raw, and it's immediate. Have you started streaming? We stream, yeah. We haven't streamed on this trip, so that's a note to my team. We gotta do a livestream.
Sean Walchef:We'll do a livestream in the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Mason Potter:Yeah. And on the topic of AI, like, it's a super, super hot topic at the moment, especially in hospitality. I think a lot of operators, especially in The UK, know that they want it, but it's not a case of exactly knowing where this fits in in my business. Like, first of all, what sort of impact do you think AI is having in the hospitality space?
Sean Walchef:Artificial intelligence is I mean, it's a technology just I mean, I'm 44 years old, so I'm a fringe millennial. I was born in 1982, and I am old enough to have had a pager. I'm old enough to have had a cell phone that wasn't an iPhone. I'm old enough to have had an original Facebook. I know what Napster is, like, I've lived through this, you know, not only lived through, but we built our business through the age of, you know, web one point o to web two point o to where we are now with artificial intelligence, and to see the rate of change.
Sean Walchef:I mean, just last year, was in Bulgaria with Scott Turner, who's a friend of mine from Odin Hospitality. Him and his family, we became friends online because of content, because of LinkedIn, because of the rising tides. His family came to Bulgaria, and we made YouTube videos about ChatGPT. Like, we're gonna let ChatGPT tell us where to eat at the Black Sea. So that was our YouTube content.
Sean Walchef:Well, if he came to the Black Sea this year, we would probably be asking Claude. Yeah. Which is crazy. Right? Mhmm.
Sean Walchef:Like, we've gone from ChatGPT being the only AI, to now Claude, to now even we do a lot of work with Google, and the tools that Gemini are building are just phenomenal because it's connected to my Gmail. Mhmm. It's connected to Google Maps. Like, we're in a place where this stuff is so important. I mean, Toast IQ is one of the most powerful AI tools of, for the 170,000 locations that Toast serves.
Sean Walchef:Toast IQ literally is in my pocket. I have all three of our locations on my Toast Now app, and I can ask Toast IQ any question, and it will get me the answer like that. Not only off of my data for our restaurants, but also aggregate data, benchmark data of like best practices. I can have a conversation like I would with ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude with Toast IQ, which is just unbelievably powerful. Because before, you'd have to have a data scientist, or you'd have to spend, you know, six hours digging through reports to get ready for a manager meeting.
Mason Potter:On a Sunday night.
Sean Walchef:On a Sunday night, it's just, it's not reasonable. But where we are is like, how is all of that gonna connect? You know, how is Toast gonna connect to my Restaurant three sixty five reports, to my Seven Shifts reports, to my Ovation reports, to my Marquee reports? Like, my entire tech stack needs to be accessible, right? If it's not accessible, then it's fragmented.
Sean Walchef:If it's fragmented, it's probably broken. And I need to have clean data before I actually get good data.
Mason Potter:And what do you think that, like, the negatives are that AI is doing to the industry, if any?
Sean Walchef:I don't think there's any negatives. I mean, I tend to be more of an optimist when it comes to technology. I think the biggest negative is fear, but fear comes with I mean, people deal with fear from social media perspective. I mean, how long have we been able to tell stories on the internet? A while now.
Sean Walchef:YouTube's been around for a long time. Whether people use YouTube or they don't use YouTube, whether they use Instagram, whether they use LinkedIn, like these are all tools that are available. Some people choose to use them and they benefit greatly from them, and other people ignore them to their own peril. And they look around and they're like, well, why haven't we claimed our Google business profile? Like, why haven't we updated photos?
Sean Walchef:Like, why are our operating hours incorrect? Like, are we looking at the Google data? Are we seeing how many people are coming from Google Maps? Are we seeing how many people are coming because, you know, Gemini or ChatGPT recommended our restaurant? If you're not looking at that information, chances are, you know, it's gonna be tough in the next five years.
Sean Walchef:Yeah. Yeah. And do think
Mason Potter:that do you think that comes from lack of willingness to adapt to what's going on with AI? Do think that's coming from people being frozen stiff because they don't really know what to do because they've come through all these different iterative changes when it comes to technology, or do you think it's laziness? Like, what do you think it is? Because I don't wanna talk about in the industry. I mean, hospitality is hard at the moment.
Mason Potter:I don't know about in The US, but in The UK, it's It's hard. It's brutal. Tough. But, you know, you see operators that are thriving. They've got queues out the door.
Mason Potter:You know, we saw that just before we before we recorded. But you also see, you know, there's there's the amount of closures at the moment is is ridiculous Mhmm. And good businesses that are that are going under, but then you talk about and we know what happens. People aren't updating their operating hours. They're not updating this.
Mason Potter:They're not paying attention to the detail and the free tools they've got available. Like, why do you think that is the first question? Why do you think that is people aren't doing these simple things that are that are easy to do?
Sean Walchef:To be honest with you, I think, you know, one of the things my grandfather I'll tell you what's helped me, and what's helped me is what my grandfather taught me, which was to stay curious, to get involved, and to ask for help. Curious people ask questions. Curious people listen to podcasts. Curious people watch YouTube videos. Curious people read books, go to conferences, but like, you can't just be curious, you have to do something with the information.
Sean Walchef:So once you hear, okay, I agree with what Sean's saying, I need to tell our story more, I'm the owner of the restaurant, I'm the founder of the restaurant, Maybe we should start posting. Well, do a 100 videos in a 100, like, actually do the work, which is uncomfortable. No one wants to be uncomfortable, no one wants to look stupid, no one wants to sound stupid, but ultimately, that's what you have to do. When you're uncomfortable, you can grow. And then finally, asking for help.
Sean Walchef:The most powerful, smartest people that I've interviewed, millionaires, billionaires, people that run the most powerful hospitality groups, hotels, they are phenomenal at asking for help. And hospitality, it's hard for us, it's hard for me to ask for help. I say it to remind myself, Sean, you need to ask for help. Well, no one's ever built a new media business on top of a restaurant. Well, that doesn't mean there's not people that have, like Rob Dyrdek, who's worked with MTV, who I've had on the show, Shaquille O'Neal, like, some of the people that I've learned from Chef Robert Irvine, I've had them on my show.
Sean Walchef:Yes, it's great to have them on my show, but selfishly, I get to learn. Yeah. I get to ask them business questions, things that I'm working on, brand deals, how do you integrate brand deals, how do you do agency work, how do you do things to actually build a sustainable media company, and then how do you grow a barbecue business? I've talked to some of the greatest barbecue brands on Earth. We wouldn't even be a barbecue brand if I wasn't willing to ask questions.
Sean Walchef:So to the point, I think that just humans in general, we have a hard time asking for help, especially when in the world of AI, where I can literally go to ChatGPT and ask for help. But what is better than going to ask another human
Mason Potter:That's done it before.
Sean Walchef:That's done it before. I mean, for you, you having a conversation with Tip House, who's done it in The United States, there's no chat GP. There's no AI model that can give you the information that you guys are able to share about your market and his market.
Mason Potter:Right? Yeah. Exactly.
Sean Walchef:But you have to have the willingness to be vulnerable and open yourself up. Mhmm. Hey, we messed this up. This is something that we did right. This is what we didn't do right.
Sean Walchef:This is where unexpected. This was our blind spot.
Mason Potter:And I think from from what I've learned in being in hospitality for how many years we've we've been operating, I've noticed that it is very community driven, whether you're a customer going to a venue, whether you're operators that technically are competitors on paper. Everyone does want to ask for help, but do you think people need to be doing more of it specifically in hospitality? Definitely.
Sean Walchef:The problem with us in hospitality is that we spend all of our time helping everyone else. Whether you're the owner, the operator, the GM, the area manager, we spend all of our time taking care of all of the problems. We take care of our team, we take care of our community, we take care of our investors, we take care of our family. Very rarely do we take care of ourselves, and taking care of yourselves is having to be vulnerable and asking for help, It's saying that we don't have the answers.
Mason Potter:It's so true. It's so true. Right? Yeah. Definitely.
Mason Potter:And you talk about looking after your team then. And obviously, the philosophy of driving a community and helping each other out, but specifically looking at your venue. Like, how important is your philosophy in actually bringing that back to your team that well, whether it's a media team, the hospitality team, everyone that you work with, like, how important is it that you're looking after the team in the background so you can execute out front?
Sean Walchef:Yeah. I think one of the hardest things to do is to lead by example. We've learned a lot in Spring Valley at our restaurants of what not to do. We've learned what to do by showing up every day, being consistent, leading with empathy, taking care of our community, learning how to take care of all different walks of life. Like I said, because we're in the dodgy part of town and because we're really good at storytelling, we get people from all over, actually all over the earth.
Sean Walchef:You know, the crazy thing is when we started the podcast, people were like, why are you starting a podcast? Like, you think people are gonna listen to your podcast and then come eat barbecue? I'm like, we're not doing it to sell barbecue, We're doing it to build connections with people that we respect and we admire, and now because of the podcast, we have people take founders and restaurateurs that literally there's 1,000 places in San Diego that they would go to before they came to Spring Valley, but instead they fly into Spring Valley and they come, they fly into San Diego and then they come to Spring Valley, because it's part of the story. Like, they wanna see the technology that we're using, they wanna see our tech stack, they wanna meet with me, they wanna do content together. These are all things that only happen because you're willing to put yourself out there
Mason Potter:and be vulnerable. Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, it's not But
Sean Walchef:it doesn't happen. It didn't happen in 2017. It didn't happen in 2018. It didn't happen in 2019. You know, we unboxed Toast in 2020, we switched from Aloha to Toast.
Sean Walchef:I told Toast that we're a media company, and I'm gonna tell stories about this hardware, the software, the onboarding, the successes, the failures, and they said, well, see what you do, and we did it, and within three days, Chris Compareto, the CEO of Toast, had shared our Toast unboxing video with the entire organization. Within a couple months, I was invited to their inaugural customer advisory board for small SMB restaurants. Later that year, I was invited to the IPO on Wall Street. There were 20 other restaurants that are way more successful than we are. More locations, they'd been on the platform for longer, but we were the storytelling restaurant.
Sean Walchef:We were there documenting. I went live from Wall Street inside the New York Stock Exchange and later that year, actually on that trip, we launched our restaurant influencer show, and Toast is the title sponsor of that show. So Toast has been supporting our b to b storytelling journey since,
Mason Potter:you know, the early days, 2021. It's an interesting segue into like, starting to work with a provider of saying, we are gonna work with you, we're gonna be the best, I'm gonna be
Sean Walchef:the best Isn't that what partnerships part of is? It's belief. Mhmm. You gotta have a deep belief. And it's not a one way street, it has to be a two way street.
Sean Walchef:And I think a lot of people, you know, depending on the size of the company, they expect, you know, all I need is an integration with Toast, and then, you know, I'll have access to a 170,000 restaurants. Well, Toast has over 250 integrations. Brand partners, service partners, tech partners, like there's a lot of people that want to work with, you know, the apple of restaurant technology, which is Toast. And once you do, what kind of value can you bring to Toast? Because the more value you bring to them, then it becomes a symbiotic relationship.
Mason Potter:Yeah. Definitely. And I think it's like going back to what you said earlier in the earlier in the show, talking about the tech stack needing to talk to each other. Yep. And how important it is, which is absolutely true for any modern hospitality business.
Mason Potter:Taking a bit of a left field and talking about tips and service charge and
Sean Walchef:Mhmm.
Mason Potter:It's obviously so prevalent in The US. Super. What what do you think about how it operates? Because you you see a lot of things online about especially people in The UK saying, yeah, I don't think service charge should be added. I don't think tipping should be should be a thing.
Mason Potter:But I think when you actually look at it, it's part of the fabric and DNA of of hospitality. Like, how do you how do you guys manage it at at your venue, and I guess what are the things that you really focus on to to drive performance and use it as a lever? I mean, I think one
Sean Walchef:of the most important things with tipping culture is transparency. Understanding that, you know, through the pandemic, we used to have 73 people at our restaurant, our main location, pre pandemic, and now we're probably down to 45, and that's probably primarily because most of our business, 60% of our business is off prem. Yep. So we do a lot of third party delivery and catering. We still have a robust business for in store dining, but we also do tip sharing, so front of the house, back of the house, and making sure that the front of the house team and the back of the house team know how much money they're making per shift, and it's calculated and it's easy to understand on their paychecks.
Sean Walchef:I think it's one of the most critical parts to retaining staff. I don't know how it is here in The UK, but cash is just not used anymore.
Mason Potter:Yeah, that's true. No one wants to go
Sean Walchef:to the bank. Like, no one wants to go to the bank, do cash deposits, make change. I mean, it's it's a ridiculous, archaic process to do cash transactions in businesses. I mean, today, I think two days ago, I went to the ATM because I wanted to tip the concierge. It was the first time I'd been to the ATM in I don't know how long.
Sean Walchef:Like, I didn't even know if the ATM would work. I was I was like, I haven't been to I haven't went to get cash because everything is is digital. It's all on the Apple Wallet. Yeah. Like, it's it's you pay and you go.
Sean Walchef:But understanding that because so much is changing, how do we take care of our team? You've gotta have the right technology to be able to do that, to implement from, you know, the point of sale to a company like what you guys are building. It's it's super important, not just here in The UK, but globally.
Mason Potter:Yep. Right? Yeah. Definitely. And you're seeing waves across Europe and and other regions where tipping probably wasn't as prevalent, and you you're now starting to see it.
Mason Potter:And I think it's just such an important lever for for driving performance, like you said, and for retention. I know we're coming up to time. Just one last question. We ask every person on the podcast about it, but what are you most grateful for?
Sean Walchef:I'm most grateful for my wife. She has been an unbelievable supporter from the beginning of the restaurant. She got to meet my grandfather at the end of his life. He's Bulgarian. I married a Bulgarian woman, so she supported that journey of the restaurant side, but the dark side of when we were building the media company and it was hard.
Sean Walchef:She was there supporting me no matter what, knowing that even though the podcast didn't make any sense and we didn't make any revenue for five years, that we would she would support me and that, you know, maybe we'd be able to continue to tell stories and do the work that we wanted to do. And she's an amazing mom to my son and my daughter, so.
Mason Potter:Amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Anon. Appreciate it. Thank you.