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The Restaurant Roadmap is your guide to building and running a successful restaurant. Each episode explores the full journey of operations—from planning and development to menu design, execution, and growth. Hosts Danny Bendas, Amanda Stokes, and Chef Eric Lauer bring decades of expertise, joined by industry leaders and restaurant professionals who share their insights and stories. Together, they uncover strategies, tools, and lessons that help operators improve performance, strengthen teams, and elevate the guest experience. Whether you’re opening your first location or refining an established brand, The Restaurant Roadmap equips you to navigate every step with confidence.
Danny: Welcome to The Restaurant Roadmap podcast, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants, your go-to source for actionable insights and real-world strategies from the industry’s top experts, clients, and special guests. Whether you’re building a new concept or refining an existing one, we’re here to help you create a forward-thinking sustainable brand, elevate guest experience, streamline operations and maximize your bottom line. With decades of hands-on experience, our mission is simple: to deliver practical, proven solutions to the everyday challenges restaurant operators face. Let’s dive in and get to work.
Danny: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the latest edition of The Restaurant Roadmap Podcast, powered by Synergy Restaurant Consultants. I was at the restaurant show just a month or so ago, and I ran into a very intriguing organization called Vivant, and I had a meeting with them. We’ve had several calls, and I like sharing information to help our followers and help our clients in ways that will help them improve their business, improve their revenue, their costs, and everything else. So, I am excited to introduce Hamed, who is the founder and CEO of Vivant. Good morning, Hamed.
Hamed: Hi, Daniel, and thanks for having me on the show.
Danny: I wanted to start off, talk a little bit about your company, how you got started, you know, what to do, and then we’re just going to have a conversation here, a little bit, and see how you can help people in a lot of different ways. So, tell us about yourself and your company.
Hamed: Absolutely. So, my company is Vivant. We’ve been around since 2012. We started as a voice-over-IP platform and have evolved into a very interesting product for the industry. We service a few different industries, and we had some learnings from co-working office space, where they needed a solution that would not go down and cause issues, problems with their members. When they went around and shopped around, everybody said, “Well, you should get a backup internet.” When we came into the picture, we said, “Well, backup internet is only going to solve 25% of the problem. The other 75%, you need to have redundancy on the network layer. How do you build that redundancy in?” And that allowed us to be the only company that actually made that recommendation to them.
So, we took that learnings and in collaboration with Dave’s Hot Chicken, we built a new infrastructure for the restaurant industry that is a third of a cost or a fourth of a cost, and it delivers almost essentially the same thing. So, throughout the years we built this entire ecosystem and this network architecture that guarantees uptime. So, right now, today, the problem and the challenges that the restaurant industry is facing: internet, phones, Wi-Fi, network, firewall, something goes down, 40 to 60% of revenues go down. Dave’s, 40% of revenues online, Jimmy John’s 60% of revenues are online, so all those revenues, they’re unrecoverable revenue, meaning you lose the opportunity to get that sale. They’re not going to come back tomorrow and order twice as much, they’re just going to go to that next-door competitor. And that’s totally unacceptable.
So, what I tell my team members—and in fact, I was having a call with somebody today—I said, “Look, you’re not buying internet phones, et cetera. You’re buying an IT department. You now have a hundred people that work for you, and their job is to ensure that you never experience any outages, but more importantly, you never lose a dollar of revenue because of problems in the network.” So, that’s what we do today. We protect revenues because of any outages, either internet, phones, firewalls, switch, Wi-Fi, anything that sits in the network.
Danny: Yeah. And you know it’s like—the other thing I really like about your service, Hamed, it’s one less thing managers have to worry about. I mean, they got a lot going on in their day-to-day routines, running their restaurants, they don’t want to have to worry about, you know, the internet going down, or your phones, or what do I do, and there’s, like, panic strikes, and it just wreaks havoc, which is really unnecessary. So, it’s really great to help the managers eliminate that one thing that, you know, it’s just one less thing they have to worry about in their daily routines, right?
Hamed: So, you know, traditionally, even we used to do that. We used to use the manager on site as a tech support individual that’s like, “Hey, can you reboot this device? Can you do this? Can you do that?” Now, today, we don’t do that anymore. We have full remote access that we can—even if the device is non-functional, we can reboot it remotely and stop using that manager as a tech support person, jump on the ladder, you know, eight feet in the air and find the box, the black one. Well, there’s, like, six black ones. Well, follow the blue cable. Well, there’s, like, 50 blue cables. Like, we don’t do that. It’s such a seamless operation nowadays. Again, because what we want the restaurant to do is to make more money, so they can open more locations, so they could make more money, so therefore we can make more money, and everybody’s happy.
Danny: Yeah, and you know, inevitably this happens right in the middle of a busy shift, right? So, nothing good happens in these scenarios. So, let me ask you a question. You have a lot of customers around the country. What do you view—or how do you view the state of the industry, and what kind of challenges are you seeing that we may be able to pass on to our listeners and our clients in ways that will—that you can help them mitigate some of these challenges that they’re facing?
Hamed: Great question on that. Restaurant—I’ve been in this space involved one way or another since 2008 and it hasn’t really changed. The challenges have always remained the same. Labor cost is always too high, food cost is always too high, margins are always thin. And when I started, I actually built the company around this whole notion of why is this happening? Why is food cost always expensive, margins are thin, et cetera? And I did a lot of research on why are they under so much pressure, but it’s actually not just restaurants that are under pressure.
Obviously, even for us, like, our costs have gone up 25, 30% in the last two, three years alone. So, we’re experiencing the same issues, same problems, but the way that we’re solving it is focusing on getting more customers, efficiencies within the restaurant, and more specifically retention. And I think that’s one area that restaurants haven’t fully figured out yet. Even when I go to restaurants, there isn’t much of retention. So, I’m sure we’ll get more into that, but I think the challenges are, again, the same.
How to go about solving it, I think needs to change a little bit, and their focus should be more on guest, guest retention, food quality, service. Even in the midst of all these AI changes, I don’t think people’s behavior is going to change when they go to a restaurant. They don’t want a robot to come in and serve them, you know? You go in there to have an experience, and that experience is the hospitality side of things.
Danny: Yeah. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I think people are so inundated with technology, you know, they just want to get out of technology, they want to talk to a real human, have a real experience and be taken care of by someone that cares about them. And you know, it’s just sort of—things go in cycles, you know? I think when you go out to a restaurant, you’re going out to kind of decompress, be entertained, socialize, and have a good time, and those that do the best job with that, deliver a great quality and great value, you know, they’re going to win the game, right? So, it all gets back to the basics of great service, great food, great hospitality, again less stressful situations. All those sorts of things add up to big wins for everybody.
Hamed: Absolutely. And actually, I heard something very interesting the other day. Someone was saying people do not complain if the—they don’t care what the price is. Price is irrelevant. Price becomes relevant when the experience is inferior. So, if you don’t provide a good product, a good service, then price becomes a problem. If you want to eliminate that price as an objection, focus on great food, great service. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and you had amazing service, amazing food, yes, it was more expensive, but you left a negative review? Like, that just doesn’t happen.
Danny: Yeah, and again, I think far too many people equate value with strictly price, as opposed to, you know, what was my overall experience and did I get the benefit of the money that I spent in its totality versus just, you know, the steak was $60 or $40 or whatever the case may be, right? So, let me ask you, why do you think restaurants are under so much pressure? I mean, you know, there’s supply chain, there’s all kinds of stuff going on. What are you hearing, and what’s your perspective based on your side of the industry?
Hamed: I think it’s coming down—the restaurant industry is starting to wake up to this, that hey, where it’s expensive to get guests, once you get them in, how do we ensure that they have a great expense to come back? And I think there’s a disconnect there. There’s a massive disconnect there. Their retention is not there.
So, for example, for us. We gain a customer. Yes, acquisition is expensive. Whether you’re a tech company like me or whether you’re a restaurant company, it doesn’t matter. Acquisition is just expensive, period. There’s so much noise, so many people saying the same things, and it’s hard to stand out amongst that noise and be like, “Trust me, I have a better product, bro.” And it’s like, “No, you don’t.” Right? Like, why do I trust you? You got to earn that trust.
So, acquisition is expensive, but acquisition becomes cheaper the longer that customer stays with you. So, for example, for us, we have customers that have been with us for 23 years. In fact, our longest, our very first customer, than—so we started in 2012 but our previous company started in 2003, and they’re still mailing a check after 23 years, right? So, talk about retention. And what happens is, you acquire that customer and you keep them for 20 years, the acquisition cost just drastically gets reduced the more they spend money with you.
And I’ve been to a few of these conferences, and they always say, look, you got to look at your CAC—your Customer Acquisition Cost—versus LTGP, Lifetime Gross Profit. So, if you get those numbers right, then imagine if you get it to a three to one where it costs you $1 but you make $3 back, now you just got a mortgage to the house and pour everything you have in that money printer to just get more of it. And now, how restaurants can capitalize on that? And I think that’s where the grand slam opportunity is within the restaurants. I’ve said this multiple times.
Before the end of the decade, by 2030, there will be more multi-billionaires made in the restaurant space. In the industry that everybody says don’t get in a restaurant space. It’s really hard. Thin margins, high labor costs, high food costs, et cetera. There will be more multi-billion dollar exits, and those would be from tech-first founders, younger generation, that, like, look at Dave’s Hot Chicken, for example, going from, you know, 1000 bucks, 900 bucks in a parking lot to a billion dollar exit in five years. Like, that’s unheard of. Like, what other restaurant does that?
But again, focus on great products, great food, focus on great service, and then technology first that happens to be selling food, where they master retention. Because at the end of the day, restaurants are businesses, just like a tech company is a business. The goal of that business is to stay in business. The way that you stay in business is focus on revenue. You got to grow your revenue, and you got to stay profitable. The more sales you have, more profits, more net margin, and that allows you to grow faster, more efficiently. A lot of problems go away. In fact, I say all problems go away in a restaurant when you just inject more cash into it.
Danny: Yeah, and I think—you know—a lot of people don’t understand how thin the margins are, you know, in the restaurant business. So, again, getting back to your services, you know, you have an outage for two or three hours, you lose a lot of revenue, that immediately affects your bottom line. Because your costs don’t go down. You know, if 60% of your revenue is coming through online sales, and you’re no longer online, you know, you’re still paying for the labor, for the rent, for the lights, the power, the heat, the air conditioning, but you just lost revenue.
The other point I wanted to make here, before we move on, very quickly, is I met a guy—many, many years ago, I was a teenager, first getting into the business—I listened to him at a seminar, and he said, “You know, if you take care of your guests, you never have to worry about how much money is in your cash register.” And you know, after 60 years in the business, I still remember that quote because it’s so true. And oftentimes we get so tied up in whether it’s a checklist or it’s a P&L or it’s whatever it is, that you lose sight of what you’re really in this business for, and that’s to take care of your guests and make sure that they have a great experience. And I know that sounds crazy because that’s what restaurants do, but it’s very easy to lose that focus, you know, and get so mucked into the other details that really aren’t as important as making sure that your guests had a great time, a great experience, and had a great value while they were there, right? And I love the fact that your company, again, help support that in a lot of different ways to keep the restaurants operating, you know?
Hamed: A hundred percent, yeah. And actually, you know, back to that point, you make a great point. It’s a very simple process; it’s just not easy to execute. It’s not easy to execute every day, but it’s very simple. Like, look at it—holistically, looking at a business, it doesn’t matter what it is, there’s only three ways to make money, and three ways to keep—and then just by being in that business and making money, all other problems go away.
So, like, let’s break that down a little bit. You only three ways to do that is, you get more customers to come in, you get more existing customers to come back in and buy more often, and then you increase your pricing. Like, those are the only three levers that you have in order to make money. Get more customers, get them to buy more often, and then increase your pricing. Obviously, price increases have, I think, hit a ceiling where people are now starting to second guess whether they should go or not, so it leaves you with two other options.
Get more guests, which we talked about. It’s very expensive, but it’s expensive if you don’t know how to retain them. It’s not expensive if you retain them. Like for example, for us, our average customer right now stays for eight years. So, eight years, and they’re paying on a monthly basis, that’s a very long tenure, so that CAC to LGTP works out because you’re breaking that down.
So, how do you get the guests to come back, to your point? They’re there for great food, great service, and there has to be some value. And value is driven not by discounting, but by having an amazing experience. And there’s a lot of examples outside of the restaurant industry that they charge more, but they deliver more, right? And price versus value, when value exceeds price, people buy. So, it's a very easy equation.
But equation, however, to your point, you got to stay focused on that. And that quote is a hundred percent right. If you focus on the customer, if you deliver what you promised them, everything else should fall in place and they’ll come back, they’ll leave a positive review. And now you may need to nudge them a little bit. You can be super passive and just say, well, I hope that they do that, like, use technology, use tools at your disposal to entice them to come back, to leave positive reviews, to share that feedback with others, et cetera, so that it would have a positive impact on you.
But let’s talk about what it actually does. So, when you solve for that problem that we just mentioned, now the restaurant is making more money. If it’s making more money, then the staff are earning more money. So, now your employee satisfaction goes up, your turnover reduces, it becomes a lot more stable because they’re making money. And let’s be honest. Why are people there?
In fact, I was talking to my team, and I said, “Look, if I [laugh]—like, make no mistakes, we’re all here to make money because if I cut your salary to zero tomorrow, 90% of you would just vanish. So, if you tell me you’re not here to make money, that doesn’t add up because if that was the case, when I cut your salary tomorrow to zero, you’re still going to show up, and you’re still going to work.” So, restaurant employees, same thing, they’re there to pay their bills, they need to take care of their own lifestyle, they’re there to have some sort of a financial gain so that they could live a comfortable life. And, as a restaurateur, as a business owner, my responsibility—your responsibility—is to ensure that you drive more traffic in the restaurant because the majority of their compensation is tied to tips. So, more sales, more tip, and then now less waste, food waste, so that impacts your food percentages there, and then your labor becomes—because your labor is going to be a percentage of your sales as well, you have more money to spend on labor. And by the way, if you go from a million to a million-two, that $200,000 a year, it’s like 500 bucks a day in sales, you could pull that off without adding additional labor. So, there are some gaps where you go from a million to a million-two, your labor cost actually goes down because you didn’t have to add additional labor.
Danny: Yeah. Well, it’s all about throughput. And we use a metric sales per man hour, so you know the more revenue to do and not have to increase labor, it just flows through to the bottom line. But the other important point I think to make is why revenue is so powerful is that you know we’ve had a lot of clients over the years, we’ve—been consulting for 35 years now—is that they go down the path of, well, my revenue isn’t going up, so I have to cut my costs. So, then I cut my cost, and then they don’t think that the guest really notices that the costs are getting—you know, they just, they don’t say it, but they subliminally feel it, so they don’t come back as often, so your revenue drops. So, then you cut more cost, and your revenue goes down. So, we sort of just manage our way to the bottom, right?
Hamed: That’s exactly what it is. I say that you’re costing yourself out of business by doing that. You can’t be focused on cost savings. The cost savings has a floor, but revenue increase has no ceilings. You could have a line out the door for three hours for people waiting just to buy your product and pay more than they would pay elsewhere. So yeah, to me, when I hear that, I’m like, oh my God, they’re costing themselves out of business because you’re right, it’s that vicious circle that you keep cutting more costs and your sales are directly impacted, and then you just end up folding.
Danny: Yeah, it’s sort of a slow road to death, you know? I mean, it’s inevitable unless you can get out of that cycle, which, you know, again, is why you know we generally hate discounting because it’s the same thing. You just get, you lower—you know, your discount, and then everybody expects a discount, but you can’t—it’s hard to make up and it’s hard to get out of that cycle, you know, also because you end up ultimately hurting your revenue. And it sounds good in the beginning, but it ends up hurting you in the longer run, right? So, let me ask you, getting back to your company, tell me a little bit—and for our people listening—about your process, what you do, how you do it, how do you help people? You know, you do an analysis of their current state of affairs with technology. Tell me about how you can help our, you know, customers so they have a better understanding of what you do?
Hamed: Sure. So, our part of the equation for restaurants is very simple. We come in, we do cost analysis, and we grab all the invoices from all the vendors that they’re paying for, internet, phones, network management, et cetera, and then we go around, shop that service around, find the best solution, value-wise, price versus the quality of service that we get, and then we layer on top of that our services, which is bring in—so there actually I’ll come back to that, but we layer in, we bring in the internet, we add in a backup internet, we manage the firewalls, the switches, the networks, Wi-Fi phones, PCI compliance, we plug all of that under a single umbrella, and the goal is a singular goal: never lose revenue because of any outages, regardless of again, internet, phone, Wi-Fi, network, switch. It doesn’t matter what the cause is, that can happen. So, what we’ve done is we’ve looked at every single point of failure within the restaurant network, and we’ve eliminated that, so that way if the manager doesn’t show up, the restaurant continues to operating.
Same concept here. If the firewall decides that they want to take the weekend off, okay, great, we’ll plug somebody else in, and it’s right there, five minutes, you back online, no hard feelings. And our customers speak for itself. So, we’ve got about 12, 1300 Jimmy John’s across the entire platform, and so far we’re saving them about $858,000 a year in cost savings because we went through and we did our cost analysis, and we’re like, well, you don’t need this, you don’t need a static IP there, you don’t need that service there. We’ve consolidated all of it under one roof, and we’ve saved them about seven-and-a-half million in revenue losses because they haven’t had an outage in the past five, six, seven, eight years that they’ve been a customer, so they just don’t think about that.
But ultimately, it’s very simple. Get the information for what they’re paying, look at cost savings, try to save as much money as possible on the services that they have because we’re the experts. We know this in and out. Like, I was talking to a restaurant yesterday, and they’ve got a one gig circuit in a 1600 square foot location where they’re paying 300 bucks a month. Well, somebody did a disservice and said, “Hey, you should just get the highest speed.” Well, why? Who knows? Like, they just wanted to make more money on their side. We don’t do that.
So, we’re now able to save them about 200 bucks on that circuit, just on that one piece alone. And then again, the redundancy is a big part. And now we’re pushing more into a lot of automation. So, the way that we’re able to guarantee that a hundred percent uptime, we proactively monitor every circuit. We know if it’s up or down, we know if it’s unhealthy, we know if there’s too much delay on the line, we know if the speed is not where it needs to be versus what we’re paying for, and we proactively open a ticket on our side, and then call the ISP, resolve issues, and we do a lot of that before the restaurant even knows about that.
Danny: And then you also handle installation, right, follow-up support. And you know, an interesting, we were, as you know, we were on a call yesterday with the rest of Synergy’s team, and one of the people on our team asked a question that I thought you had a really great answer for, and what she asked was, “Well, what happens if the power goes out?” And that’s one of the things that you can’t really control, but you kind of can. So, tell us about that because that also, I thought that was a really great answer that you have to that question as well.
Hamed: Absolutely, yeah. So, we actually put battery backups in place as well so that as majority of our restaurants have some sort of a handheld device which is battery operated, so we’re able to keep the firewall, the switch, the internet up and running, and those devices that are battery powered or the terminals that are on battery backup, they’re still able, they get about 20 minutes to close the checks out, get the payments collected, all of that, instead of just lose that revenue and just let the customer walk out.
Danny: Yeah. And I thought the other thing that was very interesting to me, if you’re a multi-unit and you’re across the country or multiple states, where you have, you know, a different internet provider for different cities, wherever you are, you consolidate all those vendors into one service, which is you, right, which saves you accounting. You know, it’s not cheap to pay bills, right, for you’re paying all these vendors, so that you know there’s so many different little opportunities, you know, for savings in addition to the revenue piece of it, right? So, really a lot of great things that you guys provide.
Hamed: A hundred percent. We actually were talking to a restaurant brand, they have 220 locations, they have 33 different vendors across the country. Thirty-three. That’s a full-time person just tracking that. And they have outages and they have no idea who to call. And now the manager is having to, like, get involved, and they’re taking the manager off the floor, and now it’s his job to figure out what’s going on and resolve that issue. Those things just don’t exist with us. You’re right, we consolidated all across the country.
So, for us, the core advantage is, obviously the first thing is no outages, guaranteed. Like, you just don’t lose money because of outages. Our second thing is vendor consolidation. We take 33 different providers, we consolidate it into one. And then cost savings, so we’re able to go through and figure out where the restaurant is spending money where they shouldn’t be, and then we cut those additional expenses out.
And then lastly is just an exceptional support team. You call into our company, like, the person that answers the phone will fix the issue before they hang up the call. If they can’t resolve it, they’ll be like, “Hey, listen, it’s going to take me 30 minutes to resolve this issue. Go do your thing, and then we’ll call you back when it’s resolved. Don’t worry about it. Like, I got it. I’m responsible for it. I own the outcome. I’ll handle it, and then you go do your thing.”
Danny: I love the win-win, you know? You win at the top, you win on the cost side, and you continue to provide that great service, maximize your revenue, reduce your cost, potentially. So, let me ask you, in closing, is there anything else that you’d like to bring up or add to before we close this out today?
Hamed: Again, back to that opportunity, and back to what you were saying about cost savings. Like, cost savings is amazing. It’s great when it can be done, but not to the detriment of the business. I think what people are missing, and I think the next generation that will come in and be able to capitalize on that opportunity will focus on top-line revenue. I talk to a lot of restaurateurs, and majority of them are always thinking about cutting costs down.
And I think that’s a little bit of an uncommon approach, but what you should focus on is how do I get more customers in. I mean, look at examples, like, Chick-fil-A, or in-N-Out, or I met another brand called P. Terry’s, very similar to in-N-Out, and look at the cost of the menus. Like, it’s very—like, you look at that, and you’re like, how do they make money? But they’re doing that by, again, retention, volumes, increasing top-line revenues.
The restaurant industry as a whole, average restaurant revenues are about 750,000 a year in top-line revenue. Well, if you’re a technology company, if you’re a lawnmower company, if you’re an electrical company, you can’t survive on 750. There’s just not enough. You can’t do 750,000 a year and take home 20% net margin and have labor costs that’s in line and employees that are happy, and they’re making 11. Just, the numbers don’t add up.
So, learn the numbers, know your numbers, and then kind of go backwards. In order for me to make a 20% margin, in order for my employees to take home x number of dollars, in order for me to be able to absorb a 5% cost increase on my food costs without changing the price of the menu, how much sales do I need to do? And now you have one problem to solve. How do I get to that sales number? If it’s one-and-a-half million a year, okay, great. Break it down.
I need to do one-and-a-half million. What’s my average check? How many days a year am I open? Break that number down, get it to a daily pace, and then figure out what you need to do. And again, your choices are very simple. There’s three: you either charge more, you get more customers and new customers, or you get more existing customers. And by far the most underutilized way to capitalize on that is retention.
And focus on that, and again, back to what we power… don’t give up an opportunity. When you have a line out the door, you don’t want to have an internet outage, a phone outage, a network outage that prevents you from capitalizing on that. You’ve done all that hard work to get that customer in the door, and now you’re like, “I’m sorry, yeah, you can leave. I can’t charge you. My system is down.” Or, “I can’t take your order, so I can’t sell you stuff.” So, just keep those things in track, so that you can actually, when time comes, you’re monetizing on that opportunity and you’re not giving up on that opportunity.
Danny: Yeah. Two final points for me. You know, first one, I like when you know you break it down as you talk through the revenue, you know how much you need for a year, by the month, by the day, and you break it down into smaller parts, which makes it a lot more attainable mentally. It’s like saying, if I could just add 25 cents to every check, that’s a lot easier than saying I got to do another $10,000 today. 10,000 is just like, holy crap, am I going to do that, right? 25 cents on a check doesn’t seem like it’s so insurmountable, right?
And then the other point I wanted to make before we close out here is, you know, our mantra when we consult with our clients is, we can only make a change without sacrificing the guest experience. You can’t just make a change or cut a cost for the sake of cutting costs. There has to be a legitimate reason to do it without hurting your guest experience. Otherwise, you’re just hurting again, you’re cutting your way to the bottom, right, which is not the right way to drive your business.
Hamed: And actually, a point to your consulting approach, I think that’s very underutilized. People again, maybe due to cost and, like, the pressures of it, you know, in my—in any business, if you have money, you have no problems. Period. And then show me a problem that money can’t solve. None exist, in any business. But to drive a point, I think the underutilized part of consulting and coaching from the experts that know what they’re doing is so undervalued.
And I remember I used to be a full-time trader for five six years, and I was buying a lot of airlines, and specifically American Airlines. And I remember they came out and one of the earnings, and they said, “Hey, we hired this consultant and they’re going to save us, like, a billion to a year,” or whatever the number was. I just made it—but it was like billions a year in savings. And no one in the industry figured this out, and it’s so simple. The consultant came in, Daniel comes in and says, “Well, let me look at this whole thing. What’s your number one expense?”
In the airline, you’ve got your lease agreements, which not much can be done, and next is weight. Okay, so now they looked at weight. The more weight I have, the more fuel I burn, and fuel is one of my key costs. So, if I want to reduce my fuel costs, I got to reduce my weight. Fuel itself weighs a ton, so every gallon weighs about eight pounds. What airlines used to do is they used to fill up the tank to a hundred percent, fly from Dallas to Houston, a 45 minute drive, fill up to a hundred percent, fly back to wherever else. Every gallon was eight pounds, so they were burning more fuel by carrying more fuel. The solution was, you pump as much as you need to get to destination plus 10% buffer. That’s it.
And that solution did not come from the airline industry. It came from somebody outside the airline industry, just looking at the math. So sometimes, point being is you got to go to somebody who’s done that and who’s from outside the industry that can look at this and say, “Why are you doing that this way? Just don’t fill the tank up,” right? And it makes it so easy.
And you break these things down, break it down to a daily task. You’re right, like, 25 cents a transaction, that’s very easy. Like, you could just be like, “All right, I got to instead of selling water, I can just sell a tea,” right? And then that alone fixes it. And running a business is really tough. I don’t care if you’re a restaurant or tech, even I’m dealing with challenges myself. Like, it’s not all rosy here. We’re dealing with our own challenges, hiring talent, training, upholding that a hundred percent uptime, there’s a lot of work that goes in there.
So, it gets overwhelming very, very quickly. And even yesterday I told my team, I’m like, look, I don’t care about tomorrow, I don’t care about the next week, next month, what do I need to do today to get to that milestone? Just let’s focus on today only. And I think that’s the best way to approach it, back to what you were saying, is just break it down and focus on today, what do I need to do today to hit my goal, and then tomorrow I’ll repeat that process again.
Danny: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s funny you mentioned American Airlines, and that, you know, crazy story here and we’re going to close. I believe that one of the other things American Airlines did to save money, fuel costs, was they didn’t paint their planes, you know, because you know the amount of paint that it took to paint a jet, the weight was pretty astronomical, and that added all that weight to the plane, which means you burn more fuel, so they just left them with the whatever metal they were building the planes out of, which I thought was very fascinating. But anyway.
Hamed: And is a—it weighs a ton, agreed.
Danny: Exactly, yeah. Hamed, I would like to thank you. This has been a great time for me. I’ve learned a tremendous amount. I want to thank you for being here today. And for those of you listening in, follow up, email us at info@therestaurantroadmap.com. When we first started the show, I put the website for Vivant up on the screen, so reach out. They are—it sounds like a great company, someone that could definitely help you. And I want to thank you again, Hamed, for having this conversation today. I hope it helps. And we’ll be in touch, and we’ll talk soon. Okay?
Hamed: I appreciate it. Thank you.
Danny: Right, take care.
Danny: Thanks for tuning in. We hope today’s episode gave you valuable insights you can put into action. If you have questions, want more info on today’s topic, or need support with your restaurant-specific challenges, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out anytime at info@therestaurantroadmap.com, and visit synergyrestaurantconsultants.com to explore our services, sign up for our newsletter, and catch up on past episodes. Don’t forget to follow and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook so you never miss what’s next. Do you have feedback or a topic you’d like us to cover? Contact us. We’re here to help make the world a better place to eat.