Continued from yesterday…
6) If you're a business person getting into F&B, you HAVE to spend some time working IN the kitchen
I guess I already kind of knew this was necessary - that you have to work in the business before you can work on the business. But the last few months have just reassured this for me. What we're doing may sound simple at face value - "making burgers on a truck."
But kitchen operations are NOT easy. Supply chains are crazy. Food safety and standards adds a wrinkle to everything (for good reason). There are dependencies EVERYWHERE.
Logistics are challenging. Handoffs from kitchen to customer are hard. Kitchen design is never perfect.
How can you build labor forecasts when you haven't sat down and built 200 boxes on a weekend to know how long that takes?
How can you forecast labor if you've never spent time smashing patties, cupping sauces, switching gloves, washing dishes, cleaning the prep area?
How can you build a labor efficiency model of X# of employees to achieve Y throughput per an hour in a space with Z square footage, if your only knowledge is sitting at your desk?
How can you hire architects to design a building and optimal kitchen when you've never crossed paths with your chef carrying 10 sliders and spilled them on the floor because he turned around and shoved a hot spatula into your arm because your kitchen is small?
Oh and that pile of dishes that looks like it should take 20 minutes? Yeah, thats 2 hours of dishes.
When you're done with dishes, don't forget you need to filter the fryer and then deck scrub the floors and mop the truck and the commissary.
You get my point. Yes I have my brother who already had a grip on all of this. But I promise you, it does NOT really set in and stick until you go deal with the hellstorm yourself. We'll design an awesome operational flow. I know that we'll get it right.
But I NEEDED to see the chaos early on to better understand the problem, and have more productive conversations with my brother as we progress the business.
7) For content marketing, don't assume you know the best channels, and don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I thought twitter threads would drive a lot more organic followers.
They haven't really done that much. I went from 20 to 150, which i mean 130 new followers in a 50 day period is a testament that it CAN work. I otherwise would have gotten 0. Just takes longer than I thought.
The day before I started posting, I decided to build the VKO website, and set up a substack, and then announce on LinkedIn I'd do a morning newsletter.
That newsletter also hasn't seen THAT many followers (about 120), but they're more engaged. They email me back and interact more frequently than folks on twitter, minus a few highly engaged folks on twitter.
But the bigger benefit is that twitter threads are only good for people on twitter. Email posts can be reused in way more places. I have sent links of my past writings to:
Folks I meet on LI/twitter and have a call with
Journalists/reporters
People that reach out with specific questions
And more random places. Email newsletter content is more digestible.
I also noticed that I can cross promote the email newsletter on Linkedin. Not for every post, but for certain posts I thought had the widest appeal to anyone interested in restaurants, not just my virtual kitchen brand/business.
Heres a snippet from my substack dashboard showing new website visitors per month over time. Every spike is EXACTLY correlated with a post I cross shared on Linkedin.
Those posts were:
Launching my 50 in 50 series
Opinion piece on why 3rd party app commissions won't go down
Announcing Smash Brothers Sliders
3 Part mini-marketing series
These linkedin shares did 2 things for me:
Drove clicks and traffic to those posts so they had on average 3x views than a normal post
Converted some of those clicks / traffic to subscribers
So while substack and twitter organic follower growth is about the same when shared on their own, the cross posting of web-digestible formatting of substack in a linkedin post generates 3x views.
And you can't really do that on twitter. Some people don't like twitter thread format, some don't have a twitter account... Anyone can view a web page and submit an email to sign up for a newsletter. Less friction.
Twitter just bought the Threader App, which converts threads into web-digestible content. I wonder if its for this exact reason. Its a better way to repurpose content external to twitter and drive engagement in different channels.
…While on this topic, I noticed the SAME thing on Instagram and Tik Tok. I created and shared my first Tik Tok a few weeks ago. It did OK (600 views, 10 likes). I shared to Tik Tok because I've been told "Tik Tok is the best algorithm for viral growth".
I took the same exact video from Tik Tok WITH THE TIK TOK WATERMARK on it, and shared it as an instagram reel. 5k views and 200 likes in less than a day.
The point here is to share content you've made across MANY channels, and don't let anecdotal biases limit where you post and subsequently limit your reach.
Share stuff everywhere, and let the data speak for itself.
8) Online ordering tech is still immature
Online order providers progressed their tech offering SIGNIFICANTLY during Covid. Same with 3rd party integrators, 3rd party delivery apps, and POS systems.
But there is a consistent theme I've noticed after 40+ sales calls.
What they say:
"Yes we can absolutely do what you're asking, it works perfectly"
The reality:
"Technically there might be a way to make that work, but our backend is not set up for that, and the onboarding and setup process is also painful, and theres a LOT of limitations."
Product features, onboarding processes, ability to scale, support staff, sales org maturity... EVERYTHING is clunky.
Backend softwares were not architected for multiple concepts to be running out of one location. They weren't designed to allow 5 different ways for a customer to place an order, all feeding into one seamless process.
So many of these companies are in "Product market fit" mode, where theres clear demand for a solution to a problem that many people have. But its FAR away from being a mature space where everything works seamlessly.
Piecing together the right technology microservices model has been way harder than I thought it would be. I thought food tech was further along.
Another HUGE step thats missing that is so clear to me coming from a product management background - theres absolutely 0 testing infrastructure anywhere.
I don't mean like "Doordash didn't test their code and theres bugs".
I mean that I might create an account with Doordash Drive to do on-demand delivery from orders in my Square POS, but there is 0 way to send a "Test order" through the end to end flow.
Or there is no way to create an Uber eats Test Order, push it to Cuboh, and see what shows up in Square unless I have a history of Uber Eats orders. As a new concept, I have no order history, but I do want to test that things work before launch day.
When we launch, I am literally "hoping that it works". And that is extremely frustrating.
You get 1 chance to make a first impression, and "hope it works" is not a strategy that sets us up for success.
9) The phrase "It will take twice as long and cost twice as much" is VERY real
Examples of things that took way longer than anticipated:
Getting this food truck licensed, inspected, and tested by all the regulatory agencies
Packaging process from design to proof to ship to receive
Onboarding with 3rd party apps (3 weeks was fastest, 2 others still not completed and its been 5 weeks)
Local delivery of raw ingredients from a LOCAL SUPPLIER. They shipped our stuff from a Columbus suburb, DOWN TO Cincinnati, then back, and missed our delivery time which made prep late
Every single day, something new takes longer than it should. I think its mostly because we are so reliant on other people/businesses in order for our business to succeed. Which is going to be a challenge, but thats just the way it is for food/restaurants.
Makes we want to vertically integrate AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
And then some examples of some unexpected expenses so far:
Cardstock / printing for the soft launch event
Banner/signange for the soft launch event
Paper bags to-be-stamped to hold multi-box-orders
Custom stamps to go onto the paper bags
Hats / Apparel... in my initial forecasts I definitely overlooked this
Cost to wrap the new truck - Andy had trucks wrapped before but it had been a few years. Costs doubled.
10) Communicating the vision of what we're doing is hard
We envision a world with
4 off-premise food halls in Columbus
Each of those 5 run 4-6 of OUR brands
That are serviced by a centrally located commissary
The ordering experience is 100% digital
Customers can stack orders across concepts
We replicate this in other cities
But RIGHT NOW, we just look like a new food truck. Its really hard to communicate to current employees, friends and family, as well as to the media that we are just using the truck as a vessel to take us to the bigger vision.
Its a low cost, effective use of an on-hand asset. Its a way to test a market and a concept.
But to everyone else, we often get "Hey I heard you're launching a new food truck! Super cool!" or "I saw you're doing some burger thing at a bar!".
We firmly believe we're laying the foundation for a company that will be THE LEADER in off-premise food. And that this will grow and scale quickly beyond the food truck.
We are so grateful for it, and PUMPED to partner with The Ohio Taproom, but neither Andy nor myself want to just be "the new burger truck".
Messaging and storytelling is hard. We hope that more will make sense as we bring our bigger vision to life.