#326 Tom James Managing Director at Bill's - Putting Guest Happiness at the Center

Speaker A: Welcome to the Hospitality Maverick podcast show with me, Michael Tinkser and ah. We're on a mission to share what maverick leaders know, but more importantly do to build businesses that deliver strong results and positively impact people, society and the planet. And this episode is brought to you by Monotree, the branded front door to your workforce. Simplifying onboarding and training, centralized communications and makes operations smooth, helps you putting people first and watch your business client.

Speaker B: If you're not obsessed with guest experience as a general manager, if you're not obsessed with amazing food as a head chef, this might not be the right business for you to work in because this is what's important for us. It's not going to change. This is what we're about. And uh, the amazing thing about Bills is actually is that's what it was always about. If you go back to its fundamental DNA 25 years ago. I mean Bill, who's still very much in the business and is absolutely up on cultural benchmark, is the most kind, generous person. And he set up a business down in Lewis Cafe if you like when it first started. But the USP was kind because he would be in the restaurant every day making sure you were happy. And if you said you liked the picture on the wall, he'd probably give it to you and say or take it home to go from there. And that's always been there and that was the real. I think that's what made the task easier. Certainly within builds is there was that sort of a culture existed.

Speaker A: Sometimes you sit down and have a conversation with a maverick. And this week it's Tom James, managing director of Bills, the old dining brand founded back in 2001 in Lewis. And that story you can actually hear the founder Bill talk about in episode number 23. So go, please go back and revisit that. That's actually more than 300 episodes ago where he shared the story of Bill's and why it exists. But today we only got to talk about how Tom and the team actually did a uh, turnaround as very much talked about around in hospitality and how they actually went from scaling down to a growth story in UK hospitality. And here's what really pulled me into the conversation. In a market where almost everyone leads with covers, bottom line and site counts, Tom did something counterintuitive. He made guest satisfaction the number one KPI in the business. Not a nice to have the headline metric for everything we do. Everything is centered and move towards amazing guest experience. And his argument is a bull one, how happy guest feels when they leave is the strongest indicator of when the business is heading next and what kind of result it's going to make. And that's a brave bet backing one of these, the softest number as ah, the head of a business bigger than any other financial number on the dashboard. But the results has followed. So today we dig into what made him do that call on how Bill actually runs his business by day to day and how it actually got guest experience and focusing on that as the number one focus across the whole estate and got the frontline genuinely engaged in creating better guest experience. And before you tune in, please sign up for weekly newsletter uh, packed with more maverick insight strategies and tools. Find the link in the show notes or visit hospitalitymavericks.com and sign up there. I would highly advise you to grab pen and paper for this conversation. There's so many great insights and reflection I did myself. I had a whole a four page scribble with thoughts when I was done talking with Tom about building a guest obsessed and profitable business. Enjoy and remember, be maverick. Well there's nothing better when you get a uh, guest recommended from somebody that's been on the show before. And is Ali Gordon recommended Tom today. And when I had my call with Tom, um, we talked very quickly about how do we actually win in a super hyper competitive market. And it quite quickly went in on something I'm really interested in general in business is that how can you be thinking counterintuitive not for the sake of it but actually to actually to get both internal uh, approval and commitment from your team to do something that is very different than when anybody else is doing in that moment of time to win competitive edge. And that's the conversation today. So thank you Tom for saying yes to come on the show. It's a uh, huge honor to have you here on the show.

Speaker B: It's lovely to be here and it was great talking to you previously and thank you very much to Ali for recommending me and ah, look forward to it.

Speaker A: So just to give a bit of a context, many maybe know that you are heading up bills and been in bills for. You just mentioned it five years now. Coming up to five year but it be interesting to hear a bit about, you know the story always sets a context for these conversations. So the story you've been on in hospitality and then how he ended up uh, heading up bills.

Speaker B: So um, I think it's a bit of a classic hospitality origin story actually where I sort of started in my local pub as a glass collector at 16. So I'm coming up to over 30 years in hospitality now and then, um, while I was at university, worked in a bar. Really uh, loved it. And I had that difficult decision in before my finals actually it was in my third year of do I want to be the bar manager or do I want to complete my university degree and do something in finance? And I made what was then probably seen certainly my father as a ridiculous decision to manage uh, the bar and uh, sell hospitality. But I genuinely loved it. I fell in love with the industry from quite a young age. It was exposure to real people and adult life and fun and enjoyment and excitement and uh, I absolutely loved it. And still here and over the last 30 years, I mean I've worked in most sectors that I've worked in. Bars, late night, fine dining, casual dining. But when I, when I started moving to the more senior role of the regional director for Jamie's Italian, going uh, back to. So that's, that's where I met Ali and a number of other fantastic people who worked with us at that time. And then there's some very strange things throughout my career as well. I worked uh, London's first cold pressed juice bar. So we set that up back in 2015. So that was a real experience as well as doing the startup, uh, and then hotels. Spent three and a half years working in hotel sector as well and other startups. So a lot of bases covered. And then joined, joined Bill's five years ago in October as uh, operations director. Actually didn't join as managing director. And you know I always say that that is the ultimate cheat mode for any leadership role is to come in um, you know, in a senior role but not sort of in that top spot and working in the trenches, seeing the culture, um, and the rhythm of the business and opportunities. And so that um, after a year of doing the opposite role, I was made managing director. And um, that was great because I sort of had a year of being able to formulate a plan and seeing opportunities and seeing things that I would potentially do differently and seeing things that you know, from talking to lots of people in the business that they felt were a big opportunity. And then it was, it was actually then super exciting taking the MD role because you had a stats notebook of things that you thought could really make a difference and then it was being given the opportunity then to implement those was really crucial. And I think that was probably, you know, that career wise that's been the biggest learning for me is that transition into a managing director role and then taking a messy notebook of all these ideas and things that you wanted to do and actually build that out into a strategy and how you implement that and then more importantly how you get two and a half thousand employees, people, our teams, to agree that that was the right strategy and, and get on board and get excited about it and see that was the right direction of travel and, and seeing the opportunities for them as a result of that journey. And how do you present that? How do you do. You know, the hearts and minds piece of leadership is absolutely crucial. We've seen so many, you know, and I have, we have done it in the last few years. So many great ideas fail not because they were bad ideas, because they weren't adopted. And so that first six to 12 months was a real leadership lesson for me. Um, absolutely exhausting, completely rewarding and I loved it. And still here, four years later, we

Speaker A: could say a bit about uh, that transition because it's really interesting because when you do that transition where you actually step away from operations, you said you had some huge learning on that transition into MD role because it's two different, very different roles. There might be more responsibility. Yeah, sure. But again you suddenly are uh, the top one. Yeah. What was your learning from that? And like if you had had had that insight before you did that, would you pass on to anyone else that's going to do that transition from operations director or finance director, uh, marketing director up to becoming the MD CEO of a business?

Speaker B: Uh, I think there were lots of. The first one was I'd always been an operator and operators have a different rhythm to I think most, most other humans. It's very, you know, reactive, it's high pressure, it's in the moment, concentrate, it's go, go, go, go, go. Um, with ops and it was really uh, for two reasons, sort of understanding that I knew how to do operations and that was my background. But actually I was hugely under indexed on other departments and other areas of, of a business, be that commercial finance, be that brand and marketing and really having to upskill very, very quickly and understand the teams and their business and then all of that learning together in a short space of time to, to then formulate a plan for the whole business. Not just rocks. I mean we are an ops led business. I think, I think all hospitality, everything plays out on the front line and it is all preferable place to be operations led. But that relationship with the other departments and the understanding as well and you know, I took a leadership role at the time when a lot was changing. The guest has never been more dynamic. Technology and innovation has gone through the route over the last four years. And so there was so much upskilling needed by myself to actually understand the business. And then the, the other thing was then I'd only really seen a business through an operational lens which meant you, you probably too narrow a filter. And then so you, it can be quite attritional. You know, the amount of times when some marketing might have, you know, disagreements as to what's, what's the right strategy or what's the most important thing to do. So it was then taking the OPS hat off and actually then working uh, I think the, the biggest lesson was taking a long, long enough view. So taking it, we took a two year view at the time to say let's not worry about fixing next week or next month or these immediate issues. Um, you know, obviously something's business critical, you're going to jump on it straight away. But actually where do we want bills to be in two years time? And then working backwards from that with all the departments to go. How does your department, your team, your function contribute to this overall goal? Putting it all together, building this master plan and then presenting that to at the time, the exec team. And that was terrifying because I had 18 things on my list that I wanted to achieve in two years and we sat with the uh, exec team and by the end of the meeting that ended up going on for two days, it was supposed to be two hours. It was 257 actions from my original 18 because everyone had some great opinions and things snowball. You sort of say, well what do we think we should do about this with the menu? And then the conversation opens up. So well, if we're doing that, shouldn't we look at this? The crockery doesn't. And then, and you've got to consider all these points and actually then under a sort of umbrella of what do we want the brand to be? Well, you can't ignore uniform or napkins or table setups that I, I didn't have on my list, hadn't even considered them as being important. But if we're changing the brand direction then every touch point has to align otherwise you won't get the buy in from the, from the wider team. So that was uh, I remember coming back after those two days and, and speaking to my wife and going, I don't think you're going to see me much for the next couple of years because there's, there's a lot to get through. And um, but it was amazing, genuinely amazing. And then once you've got the problem. How are we going to do it? The next challenge is then which is the other big learning is how do we communicate this? You know, how do we get two, two and a half thousand people excited and on board? And you've got to distill and simplify because, you know, teams, especially of that size, but it's pretty much everyone, they'll only remember one key message. So how do we take all of this, change all of these actions and deliver it under one message? And um, that was incredibly stressful and a lot of sort of nights thinking up and we got there and that's how the goal we put together the goal of everyone leaves happy, which incorporated all of it. We are doing all of these actions, all of this change, all of these, you know, quite big business decisions to make sure that our teams and our guests and that's it. And that was the goal. And it was a really good distillation of, uh, all these points into just one goal. And, and also was then a really good filter for us for future decisions of each change to go. What, what impact does this decision have on our guests and our teams? Does it make them happier? The answer is no. Then, then we put it in, in the waste paper.

Speaker A: And it's super interesting because you're actually leading us a bit to where I want to take us next. Because you talk about operators in the time you joined Bills, it's been hard. Yeah, and it still is hard. There's been a lot of focusing on boosting covers, more sales, digitalization, the bottom line, and so on and so on. But you already allured a bit through it. You agreed with the team. We have a different KPI we are focusing on what was that KPI and why was that the central KPI Everybody was driving tool webs.

Speaker B: So one of the big flips is, is once we sort of presented our goal was everyone who's happy. It was how do we make sure that everyone buys into it, but also how do we measure that and how do we make sure that we're all accountable and we have a really clear target. And so we put guest experience but guest satisfaction score at the center of the business. So we had two measures. We had a guest satisfaction score, which comes from all our online reviews, our insight surveys, uh, team engagement surveys from the team side. And then we also have mystery diamonds as well. We build all that together, we have a guest satisfaction score. And that became the critical metric because it's fundamentally, actually incredibly simple. As every hospitality business, that is why hospitality exists. It Exists to make people happy, to make sure they have a good time. We were, you know, if you looked at history of bills, we were in cover decline. We have it. We'd have really tough exit from, um, from COVID and we weren't relevant in the market. People had stopped talking. Everyone I spoke to before I joined was, I really like bills. And then you'd say, when was the last time you went? And it'll be, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago. And that I was hearing that all the time. And so we'd lost relevance. And actually you just took the fundamental principle of any hospitality business, which is if someone comes in and um, they have a really good time, there is a really good chance they're going to come back because that's it, that's the get the enroll people go out to have great food, great service, great atmosphere. If you hit all those metrics and they have a good time, you have a much higher chance than coming back. If they come back, that's great. And you see them and if they have a really good time, they'll increase their gas frequency. And then you're in cover growth. And um, once you're in cover growth, the whole world and whole landscape changes because it gives you options. Um, it means, you know, cover growth is the best indicator of popularity. Once you are popular, you can then push the brand, you can try different things and you can then test things with your guests because you get more license once, once there's popularity. And it's the same with the teams, it drives momentum. And I think we wanted a metric that was, if we put traditional financial metrics, we would have been looking at the wrong things and I don't think we would have fundamentally fixed at the time which was wrong, which was the energy, the enthusiasm, the guest experience in the business. So, you know, everyone joins hospitality apart from the greatest respect. Some people in finance, they join hospitality to make people happy. That, uh, is the reason why they fall in love with the industry. Uh, everyone who works in health hospitality either loves great food or they love praise, which is really interesting from a psychological perspective. It is a role that gives you almost instant praise. If you work in hospitality, you can wake up on a Tuesday, go into work, and if you do a good job, whether that's your manager or a guest will say, that's amazing. Thank you. That was so good. It is such an instantly rewarding industry. So it was tapping into that psychology with all the teams to go, if we make this the important thing, if we make it because it's achievable as well. You know, it's, uh, providing you've got the right training tools and the right support. All we're asking you to do is to make sure that when the guests come in, we do everything we can to make sure they have a good time. And we will measure it, they will give you scores. And that was the change as well. We will change then all the rewards. So the incentives and the rewards, the bonus scheme completely changed from financial KPIs into guest KPIs. And it was a big gamble for me at the time. Uh, you know, there were some difficult conversations with some grizzly CFOs to go, what, we'll just lose control of all the costs? And we had long conversations about it and said, no, no, no, we won't. Because on the other side of that coin, we're doing a load of work on the systems and the process. So how do we take a lot of pressure off the restaurants and the sites on cost controls, on, um, stock management, on all the things, labor management, how do we make that easier? Reduce administration and almost centralize the cost control task so that they can focus on what's important, which is the guest measures, when they do a good job, then over celebrate, I mean literally lose. Send them on trips to Italy, you know, anyone. Still now, five years later, if we get 100% Mystery Diner, the two come in yesterday. I'll email them straight away. Amazing. Great, thanks very much because that's what we're here to do. And it was, it was a culture shift as well as a real focus, you know, as well as, uh, sorry, I spoke a basic plan of going. If people are coming into your business and they are leaving with a smile on their face, I'm happy you will see them back again. And then once that gains momentum, you will then deliver 10% cover growth. The numbers we've been able to deliver for the last four or five years. And once you've got cover growth, then profitability is much easier because it's one of those, you get options as well once you're in sales growth. If you lose the top line and you lose cover growth, it is a really, really, really difficult industry to be in.

Speaker A: It's very interesting to hear you say James, and you can correct me afterwards, but you talked about, and I see there's a pattern. Some people I've interviewed that turn things around or build something that works really well from customer experience point of view. They, they define what they want, you know, they measure it. Yeah, they reward it, they live it, you know, and then they evolves all the time. Yeah. But it just becomes better and that becomes the driving system around how they do and it becomes. Then it impacts culture because that becomes the way we do things around here. And it's really interesting and I think there's like this pattern of things and sometimes they do it in, in a different way or uh, get there by lock or adjustment. They don't sit down. We have a workshop and then we're going to define this and then we're successful. But it seems like you were on that journey and how did you get that out to. You know, there's like one thing is the exec team and the board and so on. Everybody buys into a plan. But how do you. I think lots of people sitting here. How do you then when you make sort of radical counterintuitive shift in thinking, how do you get that all the way out to uh. James, that is serving the guest on a Sunday night. Yeah. And part time.

Speaker B: I know. Ah, there are sort of three strands. That one was. We did. We did a series of road shows. So we went out and it's always better to. If we're. If I'm saying this is what's the most important thing to me, then I want to be the one delivering the message. So there's the visibility piece which is huge. So not only the road shows as well. A lot of traveling around all the restaurants meeting everyone. You know, I, I joined as UP director. So I, it was a huge head start. I knew probably 50% of the general managers and, and more the sites and the teams at the time as well because I was doing a, A uh region but it was getting around and being visible doing the road shows and then it's making sure that all the touch points they see in terms of the whole way we did communications, we do you know loads of business do it and Monday memo it was we've got to change the dialogue uh there it's got to come across as. You know the things we highlight aren't well done to Chelmsford for beating the sales for last week. It's got to mention well done to Birmingham for having the highest NPS score in, in the business. And look at these great bits of feedback from our guests. And these guys are now going to Olivia Dean concert uh because they gave such. It was making sure that there was a real culture exactly as you said around that and, and from leaders being visible but also making sure that everyone we had in a leadership role and this was tough. This is kind of what we. What doesn't necessarily as part of the strategy. There's some really difficult decisions. You know, we, we restructured head office because it was. We had to make sure that everyone on board was able to deliver. And we saw quite a lot of turnover actually, in, in management and ops roles. Because I think once people saw, like, there's this shift and this is what they're interested in now, and there is an obsession with great guest experience and there are repercussions as well, you know, that it's not all rainbows and unicorns. If people don't deliver guest experience, it's very much, well, we need to go there and we need to work out what's happened, why isn't it happening? Do they not have the right training tools, support, what do we need to do? And if it's consistent, then those difficult conversations. Listen, if you're not obsessed with guest experience as a general manager, if you're not obsessed with amazing food as a head chef, this might not be the right business for you to work in, because this is what's important for us. It's not going to change. This is what we're about. And, uh, the amazing thing about Bills is, actually is that's what it was always about. If you go back to its fundamental DNA 25 years ago, I mean, Bill, who's still very much in the business and is absolutely our cultural benchmark, is the most kind, generous person. And he set up a business down in Lewis, a, uh, cafe, if you like, when it first started. But the USP was kindness because he would be in the restaurant every day making sure you were happy. And if you said you like the picture on the wall, he'd probably give it to you and say, or take it home to go from there. And it's. That's always been there and that was the real. I think that's what made the task easier. Certainly within Bills is there was. That sort of culture existed. And, you know, when I first joined zops, the thing that I said on day one was there are some amazing people in the business. Like, absolutely. Lovely. Great. Now they, at the time, they weren't all doing the right thing, they weren't all pulling the right direction, but culturally they were in the right place. And so that sort of trio, if you like, of visibility, constant reward and then culture was, was all the focus in that first, first eight, nine months. And it, it led some tough decisions. You know, we did see a big spike in turnover over those first six months. When we were trying to shift the culture and say this is what's important and you know we, we actually made some difficult decisions on closing some restaurants which you know, over that period of time we shut a number of restaurants and the estate shrunk down. And probably one of the best decisions we did because that again was when you start looking at, at the math side if you like and start some of the P Ls you know, myself and the commercial finance director, we're sitting there going, we can't make this. The model had changed. Costs were more expensive, electricity, food, staff costs. And if we can't make the business work on um, um, paper, how demoralizing is it for a brilliant GM and a brilliant way to chefs? That was what the saddest thing about that actually was. There were some fantastic people who had done nothing wrong. They were giving great service, they were doing their best. But the model had shifted. It wasn't possible for a street all day restaurant, sort of 20 quid spend per head to um, do the numbers it needs to do. So we made those decisions but you know, you kind of, you justified it or certainly I did with the teams is to go this is for the future. Is that when we have a really. And they're practical reality as well with challenging sites. And you see it a lot in a lot of restaurant businesses is you look at. And that was the big I think decision change if you like for me was looking at how much time the ops managers and op chefs were spending in the small challenging sites trying to make them work. And that was at the expense of some fantastic businesses, you know. You know, and some great restaurants. And they were being almost neglected because everyone's the same with families. If you've got one of your kids is especially naughty, you're probably spending 80% of your time trying to stop them jumping in the paddling pool or trying to catch a neighbor's cat and ignoring your other two kids who do still need, you know, engagement and nourishment and all that stuff. So it wasn't all. There was a lot of kind of. And we talk about it a lot. There's a load of positives but we had to make do the cup stuff as well. You know, make some people changes, structural changes, close some restaurants and that was really setting the platform foundation. So it was a heck of a first six months in their role and

Speaker A: ah, it's quite interesting and there was probably lots of people looking from the outside thinking are they actually tanking? Because they might not have known as Very conscious. Like you know, you can say counterintuitive growth. Yeah. Because you knew you had to pull back to get back. Yeah. And I think lots, lots of businesses uh, get into that decision too late and then it becomes too brutal. You're not in control of that process and actually getting that right. At the same time you, in trying to move the ship forward, it's, it's like very hard. Especially in the environment we've had. Yeah. That uh, you had to make some tough call. I think you've seen some businesses that didn't do that fast enough or didn't look at the, the, the different ways of thinking. And I think uh, it's really, really interesting where you know we, in what I've seen, I've seen a pattern where people have intuit, they, they call it graceful growth and that's both indecision about how you bring on new sites or new location hotels, whatever it is, but also when you have to make tough call how you do it the other way to keep the business alive and make sure that it's alive. Yeah. Because then if it doesn't survive, there's no jobs for anyone. Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, it's. No one ever likes closing restaurants. And you know the rules that we said is that if we're gonna close any restaurant, I wanted to be. Wanted the comms and went there and we went with the senior team to sort of support the teams. Because that's what I think is difficult about it is that you know, in a lot of those restaurants we closed, the teams couldn't have done a better job. It was nothing to do with how hard they were working or what they were doing or. And they're all actually doing great jobs. It's. The model didn't work anymore. But I think alongside that it was taking that long term view and that was good. The justification of we are doing this because we want to have jobs for two and a half thousand people in two years time. And uh, not sort of carry on, struggle through, not make this call. And then you know, you may be. You're risking far more than just those restaurants that we closed. And it's really difficult. But it's, it's one of the uh. I'm so glad we did it. And I was fascinated to your other point of the dialogue at the time and I was quite nervous. I was new to a leadership role and it was a lot of time, you know, you had to almost pick yourself up and be your own cheerleader to go think of the future. You know, you've got to. This is doing it for the right time because people do talk in the industry and they're saying, well, I wonder how that's going when restaurants are closing and there's this wacky new strategy on just guest experience and this could go wrong. And uh, I think the real the, the really exciting thing is we actually saw the financial, we saw the covers growth and the top line sales shift pretty quickly because after that initial there was a real energy in the business and that was back in September we started in the strategy and that Christmas was absolutely fantastic because I think the teams, it resonated, which I was really glad. You know, it really, really resonated with the teams. The message of everyone is happy. And we saw a fantastic Christmas. So after that first few months, you know, after some nervous weeks, once the sales numbers start coming through, then I was there going like this this is going to work and how do we build on this now for the next next few years? So it was good if we hadn't had the sales come through in three months, I think been much, much, much greater.

Speaker A: But was there any like, you know, there's never one thing but was like 1, 2, 3 things that you did in that early part of the strategy. We said we're going to shift the focus on the mindset from, you know, purely focusing on financial number. I know everybody looks at their P and L anyway but actually how we lead is through the guest experience and nps. Was there like some initiative you did there where it was actually you, when you look back and think that actually made it more sticky from day one because you know, if you just said we got to focus on the guest experience, it probably wouldn't have landed that well if you hadn't built the model and activated something.

Speaker B: I, uh, think the side that also doesn't get spoken about is alongside that strategy, the work on systems and process in the background was just as. There was just as much focus now that didn't. The frontline teams wouldn't have seen it. Um, and um, actually potentially, you know, 70% had office but amongst the finance team and Sherry, who's our conversion and marketing director in terms of putting together a brand and marketing strategy, there was a lot of hard work and mechanics behind the scene. Improving our guest booking journey, improving our website, having a different approach and far more structured commercial finance view on PNLs and cost controls. So all of that was happening in the background. But what we were determined to do is let's not blur the lines and speak to all the Teams about all this other, all this other stuff. In some ways I think some people, you know, there was, there was suddenly this boost in, in cover growth and there was a load of, you know, the website and, and um, whole guest booking journey had a huge impact on you know, covers coming to the restaurants. How much easier we were. We had a big focus you going back then on, on M. SEO and um, search engines and our Google improvements. So we did a lot of stuff behind the scenes alongside the core strategy. But I think one of the lessons that I learned like quickly is you cannot give too many messages. And we sort of kept a small group of people who were doing the less glamorous, you know, behind the scenes, late night, almost financial or technical side of strategy. And then we were only talking about the positive cultural side and um, lucky the two came together. And then what was interesting is that once you start getting that movement now on the cultural side and it starts stabilizing people, you're like, right, people are bought into the cultural side, then we can start opening up more to sort of say look, this is the expectations in terms of systems and process and this is what we're doing from a brand and marketing perspective in the future. And we kept that all and I uh, still don't know to this day when it was right. But we kept it all very closed book for that first year because we didn't want to overwhelm people, didn't want people distracted and having an opinion on different offers or brand colors or the way the website looked. What we really wanted to do was, was just keep them focused on the guest measures and then we would really, really focus on the technical side and get all that right. And then it's. They sort of merged after 18 months where you realized that actually the culture had really come in on the guest side.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it is super interesting. Um, there's something that you've probably heard about it before, um, something I got very interested in some point because I learned it a bit with McDonald's. But then I saw when I came out of McDonald's is the service profit chain where actually what you're focusing on is let your frontline do what they should do, which is principle deliver great guest experience or service, if we call that it's called service, property, chain. But your job in the background as the support team, the head office is actually doing all that work. You just talked about improving quality of work, uh, make it easier to be a customer and more importantly being an employee. It's like, you know, the one swipe at Amazon thinking behind everything. You know, how to change the shift if you're an employee, how to book a uh, reservation. How do I make that the easiest way of doing business with you or being an employee in your business and you start thinking about that in the background you will see profitability increase very high because of productivity. And then you, it's easy as a staff and then you are more open minded to actually go and deliver that service that uh, the company talks about they want to achieve. Yeah. The service handbook or principles or guidelines or whatever I'm gonna call it in your business.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. I think that's what's amazing working this time is there has been so much innovation and so many improvements and drive forwards in technology and depending on your mindset I uh, do think the industry still suffers by probably not, not not being forward thinking or progressive thinking enough. Uh and uh, that is an ops mindset and I totally and I am saying that as an operator operators are successful because they are metronomic in their approach. Most great operators hate change because they come up with a system and a process that enables them to deliver what they need to and it works and they replicate it every single day. And you think McDonald's is a brilliant example. Coat back in the day was a brilliant. Consistency is what certainly you know in casual uh, dining and branded chains as well that, that is you know number one on the list. We have to lever consistency and you're recognized and rewarded for that consistency metric and it's achieved by the operators who follow the STEM process. Then a change is, is a bad work. It's really really difficult and that's I think the challenge we've got at the moment is there is so much stuff going to the market which is going to make everyone's lives easier. It's going to reduce administration to time. I'm sure you have it in your personal and professional life. I certainly do. Where administration uh, is becoming less of a headache because the advancements in LLMs and access to data and mean that something used to take me six hours. Even something like a board pack used to take six, seven hours. It's now a uh, 30 minute job of providing you know your data sources all align there. So there's so much stuff and the teams even more so. You know that we're not there quite yet as an industry but we are not far away from accurate demand forecasting. One click hybrid deployment and team engagement that is intuitive and self fulfilling performance reviews actually review all your Performance input, whether that's timekeeping or guest satisfaction. And rather than me as a manager having to sit there for two hours writing your review out when it's all done and presented, and I just add that the cherry on top. And so it's. That is super exciting. But you've got to now have, uh, that mindset, which is another thing I think is interesting for leaders in the industry is, you know, the playbook that works pre Covid doesn't work anymore. It's a totally. It's a different game, it's a different model, it's different mindset. You have to be progressive, dynamic, embrace change, understand change management and how to do that, and have a team of people around you who then challenge you to go, should we not be doing this? These guys are doing this. This is the way. This is what the teams are saying. So it is tough, as you said right at the beginning, but it's also super exciting.

Speaker A: It's quite interesting. There's also like, you know, we can talk a bit of what are you in control of, what you're not in control of? You're definitely control of the, the internal quality of your business. You also, in a way control of how you choose and deploy technology, I guess, in some kind of way, and what kind of power you give in the hands of your employees, especially with AI coming out. Because actually lots of people that joined the industry didn't join it really to sit and fill out spreadsheets and so on. Yeah, they just need the data input to make better decision in the front line.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, how do you think that. You think that AI already have done a revolution or do you see something even bigger coming as we become better at using it as general society, but also as uh, an industry where I think we are lackers in many ways when it comes to these things because it's, we, uh, have to get our head around it and how, how we put it into our business.

Speaker B: It's actually slightly, uh, frustrating from an industry perspective. We have been, you know, headlines, conferences, AI. It's, it's on every word. But there are very few practical applications and case studies where it's actually had an intrinsic benefit to the industry. There are some, there are some sort of small, really amazing projects that have gone on. But that's why I think genuinely we are right at the beginning. I think the way that it's changing now in terms of, I don't want to start sort of getting too tacky, bore everyone. But with MCPS coming in and my ability to use you know, LLM to Claude or GDT and get really, really valuable insights into the business in seconds, you know, in the morning. If I can now ask to say yesterday was a bit off, what's your take on performance and what would you focus on? The answers are now brilliant because the data and insights that's coming through and then I think about, God, if I was an ops manager, you know, where it can prioritize my impact actions for the week and actually say, you know, if I were you, I would go to Norwich this weekend to fix the door and I would then go here and look at the stock issues and they will have X pound value and this will have like, it's doing the hard work for you that, you know, I know some people are afraid because they're like, well that's that intuition and that's that gut feeling and that still needs to be there certainly for the change or the big ideas, but for all the things that were mechanical and exhausting and you make the point and it's absolutely true. No one joined the industry sitting on a spreadsheet, but the amount of manager waking up, having to review sales, performance, the labor control, send an email, own 5gms, that's now, that's now coming away. You know, that will be done automatically and you can actually focus on coaching, developing growing teams. So I think we're at the beginning. I think the next two years are going to be absolutely fascinating for the industry. And I think the polarization that you're seeing in performance, the sector has polarized more than I've ever known in 30.

Speaker A: We talked about that on the pre call. Yeah, let's talk about that.

Speaker B: There are some real winners and there are some businesses that are really, really struggling and no one likes seeing anyone struggling. But I find it interesting that, that you often, you see a lot of people and when they talk about their adoption of technology and their embracing change, that's got to be the reason behind the polarization as well. Alongside, I think there's another thing that is really, really relevant. It is really tough. It's never been tougher. I say it always to the GMs. Uh, you know, it was 10 times easier being a GM when uh, when I was a GM than it is now. It is a really tough job to same for a head chef. However, we've got to get this whole stop moaning about it mindset as an industry. I think as an industry, every single year it's the hardest year there's ever been and, and it's been like that for 20 years. And we've got to get that off it and actually just go, what are the opportunities? How do we do things better? How do we focus on the positives? And your point earlier, focus on what you can control. Because that was, you know, people can give, uh, ten reasons, whether it's, you know, rising costs, and that's all very true, or the weather, why things aren't right, but you can't control those. So as a leader and as a business, is our food good enough? Uh, are people having a great time in our restaurants? Are our teams happy? Focus on that. And the strangest thing happens is that when you focus on that with all your energy and all your enthusiasm, suddenly good things start happening and you start pulling away from. From the Packers. Whereas, no, we could spend. Cynicism kills business far quicker than food or bad service. It becomes cultural. Everyone puts the head down. And I think that's what I find most exhausting. Certainly being a leader is you've got to represent that positivity every single day. You dive up. And it is tough. I'm not in any way saying that we're doing everything right and there's loads of opportunity and everyone should stop sort of saying about how tough it is because it is up. But it doesn't do anything for your teams, them seeing that, you know, you've got to. Here's a plan. Well, it's our rule, actually. It was, um, Photo Wolf and I stole it, even though we're doing it from him. But the best thing with McLaren is whenever there's a problem, they don't focus on the person, they focus on the process. And. Exactly, um, is when things are wrong. Create a plan, get everyone's input, and then positively focus on execution, executing that plan. And. And then, then suddenly something that feels really horrible and difficult and negative actually feels positive. Because nine times out of 10, and that's what I'm proudest of with, with our team at Build, is once you come up with a plan you execute, the problem goes away, and suddenly you get, uh, you actually get an exponentially more positive result than, Than pre. The problem because you put some focus into it. So I think that mindset shift, along with adopting change are two really key attributes that leaders in this environment need to have.

Speaker A: That's very interesting. You talk about change management, and it's quite interesting. I was at McDonald's when they struggled and they launched the I'm Loving it campaign. Yeah. And. And it was all about actually focusing on the process instead of all the problems and Actually coming back to the core of what actually made guests really happy. That was a, uh, principles. You say consistency at the core, but what is it that the need to be consistent then was not all the, it was not a big menu, for example, you scaled back the menu and so on. But it was really banging that drum and actually understand how do you get like a huge system like that on um, board on this journey that was a bit demoralized. Yeah. Gone from being number one and sinking slowly and saved on the, the line by an investor. Yeah. And, and it was quite interesting to see where actually it's about focusing on process as you say, but also understanding the importance of communicating with everybody in the organization about the momentum we're having. Yeah. And then suddenly Top Line was back again and a global business has evolved. And it's like insane when you think about 100 and you know, 36,000 restaurants, millions, uh, of employees. Yeah. The fourth biggest work force in the world. Yeah.

Speaker B: I wish I'd worked at McDonald's. I've always, that's going to be one of my regrets. And who knows what the future holds. But I, uh, wish at some point in my career I'd worked at McDonald's because I absolutely cover what they do in terms of the systems, uh, and process and the standardization and the consistency. And then amazing layer on top, starting with the I'm loving it campaign as well in terms of their marketing, their comms, the way they speak to their guests, their teams, the loyalty acts and the mop. I, I, I love that, that whole model of, of a, a consistent, mechanical, brilliant, robust, process driven business that then presents itself to its teams and its guests in a totally different way that's not mechanical and systematic. It's a really great model. And, and you know, similar, we've tried to replicate a very similar system with us.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, and I think it's really interesting while we, in this change situation, I think I had a guy called Mike Hoen on the podcast last year and we talk about how do you actually make change and then still keep high performance. And often actually what we do in hospitality is we jump down into the plan execute straight away. We'll forget the, the what, the how, the the who, the when kind of stay in the, the, the bigger question thing, as you said, you stayed away. You don't inform the, the whole organization. You stayed and did the hard work on that so you could take them from. In principle, I, when I say people feel unsafe to save. Yeah. Then they execute well on the plan. Yeah.

Speaker B: I'M laughing because I wish I, uh, was actually talking from our exec meeting room. We have a big board that is the size of the wall and it says why, who, what, how, uh, when, like, literally there's headline, anything. We comes to the team, we have to run through that, uh, process and then we do, you know, we launch new stuff with whoever's launching it. So if it was, we're doing World cup burgers on Deliveroo, and Josh, who heads up a lot of delivery, he will then do the short form, um, video, come to the team in front of the board. That's fascinating because we organically came to that to go. Look, we're missing out key elements of, you know, we have explained the what without explaining the why and how well enough as well.

Speaker A: That was quite interesting. That was really also part of the, you know, I called it the Loving, Loving it campaign. It was not campaign, but it was the way of working internally as well. Where you had a process, they called it Nap it. Where in principle, if you couldn't answer those questions, your initiative would not hit the restaurants. And it was the executive board in the country, the market, to filter that process. So they built a model like you talked about the beginning, that delivered the, the McDonald's promise to the guests. In principle, but. And if your initiative didn't support that, forget about it. And you hadn't thought it through, you didn't have your stakeholders on board, it would not happen, you know, and nobody would be standing in that room not ready.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm smiling because we did exactly the same, literally the amount of times, actually some good ideas. We've gone, so why, you know, you had that, why are we doing this? And you go through that and then there's this kind of panic and pause and go, what's it? What's it? And you go, we've just wasted 20 minutes. Going through a big, very impressive presentation is something that's actually not needed. So, yeah, I, uh, couldn't agree more that that is the right process and system in the way you comms, but also the way you filter and sense check new initiatives and plans.

Speaker A: And actually now I'm thinking about that something if you listen in, you can go and implement tomorrow. It costs nothing. It's just being so disciplined around and ruthless about that process. Process, yeah, that will make positive change into your business tomorrow. But, yeah, that was a bit of a segue, but very, very valuable.

Speaker B: Well, we brought it in because we're doing, we doing so much. It's a very dynamic industry and we Brought it in because we've made some mistakes. You know, last year where you just kind of went, oh, this great idea is not landed. And then we had to bring that, that process we brought in and it's made a huge difference.

Speaker A: What are you most uh, excited about right now, Tom?

Speaker B: Um, we're acting our first airport, uh, at the end of the month. So congratulations. In T2 which you know, bills as a brand because, you know it's such a natural fit with an all day offer and very breakfast heavy as well. I think the airport environment is super exciting. The restaurant and um, we're partnering with Aalta who operate in the airport space and they've been fantastic and I am so excited to get, get that open. It looks, the restaurant looks stunning and I think airport is going to be a really good natural home for Bills as well. So uh, that is, that is very exciting. I just smile every, every time I think about it. So yeah, no, I can't wait.

Speaker A: What is the one question you missed? I asked you and what would it be? And what would be your answer?

Speaker B: I think pro the question, um, what are the three biggest learnings We've done so much in the last five years. You know, this has been my first big, big leadership role. And what are the three key takeaways? And they're quite short. I think one of them is give yourself headspace as a leader. I mean we've spoken about it before in terms of leadership is quite lonely actually. You know, as a role because you're always on and you've got to take a strange midpoint between the teams and whether you've got a board or investor or private equity or Richard. So that side in terms of give yourself headspace to, you know, I diarize it now to go and think is the strategy working? What could I do better? How can I uh, work on myself better as well? I think networking, especially in the current environment is, is the single most important thing to do as a leader. You know, I know it's sometimes got a bad rap and it was sort of seen as leaders that are just going out and drinking together and having fun. But there's so much change that you have to be talking to other leaders all the time. What are they doing? How are they approaching this problem? What have they seen? Where do they see the opportunities and, and sense check especially in when difficult trading. I think that is absolutely crucial as well. And the other one is just once you got to a stage where you stabilize, you know, your immediate concerns, uh, is investing in the growth of your team, I think it's a, it's the most rewarding. That's the thing I'm proud of stock builds. You know, we've had some great financial results. She's seeing the growth of the exec team and the senior leaders. That is the thing on a power to stop and enjoy most because it also makes my life easier. We're seeing across the board whether that you know, Leah, Lucy, Sherry, um, we're really lucky. Ryan and Ben, we've been together four and a half years, you know as the same exact team which is rare, that consistency is rare. But seeing all of those people grow and really take ownership and grow into, into senior leaders uh, has been amazing. And that uh, investment for leaders, just you've got it. It's sometimes easy to go into go mode and leave in the front and not spend enough time investing in your team as well to make sure that they fulfill their potential. So those are three things that might

Speaker A: prepig uh some super, super good stuff there. If people want to connect with you Tom, and they might have other questions we haven't explored or thought that was really interesting the thing you talked about there, how you make guest experience the center of everything. How do they reach out to you and connect with you and have a conversation with you.

Speaker B: So I'm just on tin of the Tom James as ND bills and ah that that's probably my quickest response time. I will try if anyone does that are getting contact to filter through the hundreds and hundreds of tech, new tech startups that message you every day to try their products as well. But yeah, LinkedIn I think is probably the best place to connect.

Speaker A: Awesome Tom. We'll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for for coming on the show, sharing the journey about how you put the guest experience center for everything and how you actually you know, change mindsets and hearts of minds and thereby culture and actually change a business by thinking. Very counterintuitive.

Speaker B: Amazing. Well it's lovely to be part of it and really enjoyed, enjoyed it. So yeah, thank you.

Speaker A: I really appreciate that you're listening in. If you enjoy today's conversation, please share it with others, rate it or give it a review on our website on your favorite podcast platform. The better the views, the better the guest and ultimately the better the learning is for you. A huge thank you to the team at Monitoring for supporting this episode. If you're ready to put people first, streamline your internal comms and give your workforce a brand new front door, then love to use every day. Visit monitoring.com. you'll be listening to the Hospitality Maverick podcast show.

Speaker B: Be Maverick.