How Teriyaki Madness Manages Franchisee Tech Adoption

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us, as I like to say each and every episode. We know you guys have got lots of choices, so thanks for hanging out. Today, I am joined by a technology leader from a brand that I respect.

It's fun. I've not been to one since I moved, but I used to go to the one in Southern California all the time. Ana, why don't you introduce yourself and then we can talk a little bit about where you get the privilege of working and we can talk a little bit about the brand and what you guys have been up to lately. Aunna Macias: Yeah, so my name is Ana Macias.

I am our manager of restaurant technology here at Teriyaki Madness. Or TMAD for short, I'll probably say TMAD a lot. ⁓ Yeah, yes, ⁓ always say TMAD. And yeah, so I basically manage everything that has to do with the way our franchisees are taking and processing orders.

So ⁓ online ordering, ⁓ and loyalty, third party integrations. ⁓ Jeremy Julian - RTG: team ad. Okay. ⁓ Inside lingo.

Okay. Aunna Macias: gift cards and even merchant processing. So that's where I live. And yeah, it's been a fun ride so far.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: how long have you been with the brand? Aunna Macias: Almost five years now, which is actually crazy to say. was recruited right out of college here, and I'm just still here. So it's been awesome.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: I love that. For those that are not familiar with, I'll try and use the Inside Lingo team ad, but Madness, what, you ⁓ I and you guys have had somebody from marketing on the show a couple of years ago, ⁓ talked little bit about the brand, but for people that either didn't listen to that episode or ⁓ kind why don't you walk through what is the brand? What is the product? What is it that you guys ⁓ put into the field for those that haven't gotten a chance ⁓ to check it out?

Aunna Macias: Yeah, so ⁓ we are a fast casual Asian brand. also about 99 % franchised. And we're super big on sort of like the build your own ⁓ teriyaki bowls. We've got ⁓ steak, salmon, tofu, really good stir-fried veggies and a number of base options like rice and noodles and a different signature sauces as well ⁓ with some We can be healthy, you can make it healthy, or you don't have to make it healthy.

We also have options for that too. And we now have just over 200 units across I think 40 or so different states now. And we're continuing to rapidly expand, I close to 20 % each year. So it's been quick moving.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: That's incredible growth. You probably, as you've been there for five years, probably have watched happen as you guys kind of continue to expand. Aunna Macias: Yes, absolutely. think when I started we were just over 100 units.

So we've doubled that in the last five years, but our growth rate just continues to increase. So I think we'll be at 300 very, soon. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Very cool. I know when you and I talked pre-show, we had kind of talked about, you, as expanding, ⁓ obviously it continues to get met with challenges on the tech side.

⁓ So to me a little bit about, guess, first philosophically, because I've watched different brands do it different ways. And let's talk a little bit philosophically about ⁓ how you guys even consider tech? ⁓ You've to get adoption from the franchise community, but you get to, you know, help make the decisions on I'd love for you to kind of talk about some of the best practices, because I know you guys just did some renovations, tech stack wise and continue to expand. also ⁓ in the last five years, growing 20 % year over year, it's a balance.

You need to be able to be on the bleeding edge to make sure you're meeting consumer demands, ⁓ you also have to manage the franchisees and their spend patterns and kind of all of that. So I'd love for you ⁓ kind of talk philosophically about how do you guys even think about tech and then. we can walk through how you guys might consider putting it out into the field and what does that look like? Aunna Macias: Yeah, I mean you kind of touched on it.

The franchisee adoption is huge. I I mentioned we're 99 % franchise. That only means two corporate locations in our system right now. So very, very heavily franchised.

And we have an amazing group of franchise owners that are very invested in TMAD and care about the business. So their adoption just means a lot to us. Like we won't move forward with anything without their adoption on something. So that's definitely a huge part of it.

And then I guess more on the tech side of things, we just want to be able to prove it's worth. We want to see the numbers, we want to see if it can improve speed of service or order accuracy, labor efficiency, guest experience is another big one too. And it needs to be able to scale efficiently. If it can't support us at 200, if it can't support us at 500, we just can't do it anymore.

think one of the biggest points, and lot of brands are probably saying this now, is it has to be integrated. We can't even look at systems that are not going to integrate with our current tech stack. It just creates too much disconnect in our operations if something is not integrated. And this was a little bit before my time at TeamEd, but I think a lot of people would remember when you have a separate tablet for like DoorDash and Uber Eats and Grubhub, and it was just...

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah. Aunna Macias: tablet, chaos all over the counter and you're entering the orders manually. It's just a process and so avoid that at all costs. It's just not an option anymore.

So it needs to be scalable and something that the franchisees are really benefiting. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah. so I guess talk, talk me through even how do you get that adoption? Because POS is POS.

And again, I know that you guys, you know, I know where you guys are at POS stack wise, but then you've got, you know, do we want third party delivery? I'm guessing across your 200 stores, not everybody's the same. The brand doesn't look exactly the same. They don't have the same third party delivery options.

They don't have the same even product from time to time. And so you talk about the depth of integration and that you guys think through that. but also there's always cool shiny things that come up every day. get, you know, your mailbox probably gets full every single day.

How do you even evaluate what is the next? mean, every time I talk to somebody that's in your role, they're like, can you guys please just stop calling me? I, know, I, my, my mailbox is full. I don't have enough capacity to be able to do the projects that I have.

want to be able to do these things, but how do you guys even, you know, make sure that you're on that bleeding edge that you are delivering that to the franchisees, but do it in a scalable way. but also not be so tone deaf that you don't think about, know, everybody's all excited about AI and voice AI. Is that something that needs to be in your brand? And so I'd love for you to kind of talk through a little bit of your thought process and then how do you get buy-in from the franchise groups, I guess.

Aunna Macias: Yeah, I think a lot of it starts from franchisee feedback. They are constantly sending us feedback on things, or we'll send out surveys about certain pilot programs that we may be running we can feel out early on how they're feeling about it. Do they even think it's necessary? ⁓ thinks it's even going to be worth the additional cost if there is one on their side?

⁓ I think piloting is probably one of the biggest pieces in that. If we see something we like as a franchisor or... franchisee comes up with an idea and we're like, okay, that might be kind of cool to try out. We'll try it.

We'll try to get a solid group of owners to dedicate some time to give us their feedback, know, pull some numbers together. And then if we can decide ⁓ a if ⁓ it's provided benefit, that's usually when it becomes more of a necessity in our tech stack than just, you know, the shiny ⁓ object that everyone is cool for a minute. And then, you ends up just being an unnecessary overhead cost. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, well, and again, I've watched over my career, you know, lots of different franchise brands struggle with that because they want to be there, but they, know, the franchisees oftentimes have experience even outside of your brand.

And so they're coming in with restaurants from other brands and like, well, I have this system here. Why can't I implement it in the, in the store? How much, and again, I've watched both sides of it. How much control and command do you guys have from corporate versus how much freedom do you guys leave at the unit level to be able to, I guess, you know, be able to modify what it is, you know, from pricing to product options to even delivery options or catering options, those kinds of different things, I guess, how much flexibility do you guys give them versus much are you guys like, you know, and again, I've watched it everywhere from ⁓ have to use our internet provider, you have to use our router, you have to use our online ordering, you know, there's certain things that I know I'm sure gift cards.

online ordering POS are probably kind of consistent, but I guess how much do you guys leave them latitude at the store level versus how much of it are you guys controlling at the corporate level? I guess anything that you've even seen over your five years that you guys have changed because of some failings or some learnings that you guys have had. Aunna Macias: definitely have some level of flexibility ⁓ especially just because our shops are all over the place like we have to find ourselves supporting different things to support those areas and those demographics so I think I see the most flexibility in ⁓ like local marketing promotions that an owner may be into or if they're doing some fundraising we a lot of owners interested in that and then we'll run like little programs that are just specific to their location.

I've also seen a number of sort of those like one-off third party providers or more so catering, honestly. Catering is huge for us ⁓ I feel like there are just every day there's like another catering platform out there that is ⁓ in Texas or just in Chicago or just in LA. And so when we have shops in those areas and they're being scouted by these brands, like we want them to have that business. So with things like that, like.

We want to give them an opportunity to try that out and hopefully it's something that can expand across the country and more of our franchisees can actually take advantage of as well. Jeremy Julian - RTG: I love that. Talk to me a little bit about LTOs. One of the things that I always thought was unique, and again, I don't have a Terioke team ad near me any longer.

I was in Southern California when they opened the first one in Orange County, and they used to be in line out the door when we would first go, and I would drive by it on my way to work, and quite honestly, I miss it. But one of the things that I always found unique about your guys' brand is the sauce selection, the protein selection. guys always had something unique and always something different. ⁓ guess...

Talk to me a little bit at the brand level and then talk about how that impacts the, know, cause a lot of people, they struggle with LTOs cause you you're doing it in a test pilot store and then you've got to roll it out. I guess I'd love to your philosophy as a brand starting ⁓ then how does it impact tech? Because again, we got a lot of listeners that, ⁓ they're trying to figure this out. I guess I'd love ⁓ insights that you may have ⁓ from a brand level.

How do you guys know what what to put on the menu, what does that look like, and then how does it end up impacting the tech stack and how do you make sure that it hits the catering platform that you've got 40 of out there or whatever else. Aunna Macias: Yeah, I mean, think is always top of mind. so we ⁓ now recently have ⁓ a culinary in-house team. So it's been really cool to see what ideas they can bring to the table and actually have tastings here at the office.

So a lot of it just comes from input at the level here. And also just we're learning from franchisees, of course, I'll probably repeat myself, it's always that franchisee input as well. I'm not on the offside so I probably can't go into too much detail. yeah, think we just, if sounds like something that fits the menu, ⁓ that gonna have a bold flavor, can be healthy or maybe not, and isn't gonna operations in a negative way.

It's something that kind of fits into the flow of our back of house operations already. I think it's more likely to be added to the menu. ⁓ And lately we kind of try to go for the things that are just easier to implement. So I think double protein is a huge one.

We're already making those bowls. We're already grilling that chicken, that steak, that tofu, ⁓ it may be. You're just putting more of it in a bowl. And I feel like everybody is on a protein kick right now.

So that was one of the easier ones to put in. No new skews or anything like that. And just super easy to build into our POS system. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yes.

Aunna Macias: stack we were able to roll that out I think in less than a month ⁓ we first started talking about it creating you know the rollout guides for it building it out in each of our menus and we were piloting actually this quarter for a few months and now we're expanding to the rest of the brand next quarter as an LTO. Jeremy Julian - RTG: That's awesome. That's awesome. And I think back to your point, you guys have your ear to the ground on what the franchisees are needing and what consumers are looking for.

So that part's huge. And I guess any learnings on the tech side or has it just been kind of, hey, Ops tells us this is what we need. We need to kind of roll those things out. Because again, I always feel this tension between marketing operations and IT.

And I'm sure you've experienced it over your five years there. Not in a bad way, but just in a, hey, we need to be faster. And IT is like, well, we've got 14 projects that are already on our list and I can't get to this. You know, so, you know, I guess speak to your fellow IT administrators that are out there listening.

I guess, how have you been able to manage that to be able to make sure that you keep up with the business, the high growth? Because again, if you guys are opening 20, 30, 40 stores a year, you're constantly working, you know, somebody's working with construction and, and, you know, all of those people to make sure that they get the new tech for the new franchisees and getting them through that pipeline, but also being able to manage this double protein thing that's coming up.

Aunna Macias: Yeah. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Is there been any learnings that you've had that you could, I guess, share on things that didn't work or even things that you're like, we implemented this system, we implemented this process to make sure that we don't miss it of something that I guess you guys have had as learning over the last few years. Aunna Macias: Yeah, definitely some learnings. ⁓ think for myself, I've kind of learned over time that I should come with recommendations and I should come with ideas to my team.

Not so much of what are we rolling out, what do we want it to look like, but how do we build it? I'm kind of like, I am our primary like tech expertise here. it was just me for the first couple of years here managing all of our new shop openings and getting our integration set up for everyone. I able to hire somebody for the first time a couple years ago.

So that's been really awesome to have, especially with all of our growth and have a little bit more dedicated to that side of things now. But yeah, I think just educating yourself ⁓ on each of platforms, knowing what the capabilities are so that ⁓ you can share your team internally what they want and then figure out functionally how you can actually support that and come with that recommendation and build it out, test it out, show them how it works and prove that out. And then I ⁓ think as a company, we are huge on communication and just keeping people informed.

⁓ continuing to update everyone on where our projects are at or if you have other projects that are impacting your ability to support these LTOs or other ⁓ new things that were rolling out in the system. We still kind of have a version of it but we had what was called a MAD Labs team. It was basically one person from ⁓ every department here at the office ⁓ and we would all gather once a week to discuss ⁓ that we were working on that would have some sort of impact on the company, primarily franchisee facing, but also corporate facing changes well or improvements really.

So that gave us an opportunity to get everyone on the same page, figure out what the next steps are, what do we need from everyone, how do we ensure this goes ⁓ smoothly we're not seeing unintentional impacts other parts of the business. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, no, and I think that's huge that you guys have got this cross-functional team that you guys are built because again, I've watched too many times on IT where they're the last to know and they're like, ⁓ POP just showed up or the menus just showed up and you're like, was somebody going to tell me so that I could program it into the POS and your digital menu boards or whatever those things are.

Why don't you talk a little bit about kind of your stack. We talked about POS a little bit, but why don't you kind of, what all do you guys have technology, you know, both guest facing and then staff facing within the stores, if you, if you don't mind kind of through ⁓ is kind of your core building blocks and then where do you see things going? Aunna Macias: Yeah, so with our in-house tech stack, we've got Rebel POS right now, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit, because we were just in a big POS evaluation, and so we're actually moving to Toast.

in progress with that now, ⁓ currently Rebel, we use Olo for ⁓ online, as as catering. We rolled out their Catering Plus tools a couple years ago, and that's been great. Punch for loyalty. We also Tatl as a guest.

feedback platform for guest surveys and things like that. And then our kind of our primary third party providers are DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, ⁓ then EasyCater. EasyCater is a huge, huge one for us as well. Yeah, and back of house, we are using Altimetrics.

And what am I forgetting? We've got value tag gift cards. The list, I feel like, keeps growing, so ⁓ I always to go back and remember. ⁓ Jeremy Julian - RTG: Well, that's the thing that I try and remind people is the amount of stack, know, kind of, you know, sprawl continues to grow.

Have you guys gotten into digital menu boards? ⁓ the only times I've been to your guys' concept have been primarily in a walk up fast casual. Have you guys expanded into, I guess, let's start with digital signage and digital menu boards. Are you guys doing anything with those ⁓ And if so, what?

if not, then, you know, we're good and we can move on. Aunna Macias: Yeah, nothing yet with the digital menu boards. I know we've into it in the past, but it has been a number of years though, and I think just at that time, the cost wasn't really worth it for us. ⁓ I think there's potential for that to change in the future, and from a management side of things, if you're able to go into your POS menu, update a price, and it's instantly on your menu board, you don't have to reprint everything and reinstall it.

It sounds great. It sounds like a time saver and a little bit of a money saver. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Mm-hmm. Aunna Macias: Yeah, just not something that's been like a big focus for us as of yet.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: And I will say that especially from an 86 perspective, being able to, know, when you do run out of broccoli or whatever for your veggies, it can get rid of it off the screens and it creates a level of flexibility. We've had a couple of providers that have been on the show in the past. So we see more and more people go in there. Let's go down the path of digital.

So you talk about your kind of primary digital ordering platforms. You talked about them being integrated. ⁓ How integrated and how much sprawl is there? ⁓ You again, easy cater.

⁓ Aunna Macias: Mm-hmm. Jeremy Julian - RTG: I'm guessing you guys don't do an easy cater, you know, the same bowl recipes that you do when you walk in to the store. Again, it's it's primarily a bowl concept, at least when I've been, or we, at least what I've ordered there has always been kind of bowls. Talk to me a little bit about kind of how you guys even manage that stack from a tech perspective.

Cause again, more and more people are trying to figure out how to get outside the four walls and be able to expand those things. And so what do those offers look like? How do you guys make sure that you guys stay relevant, but also keep some level of control and some level of some level of control as well as some level of, I guess, consistency across the brand. Aunna Macias: Yeah, mean, transparently, I think there's room for improvement there and integrations in general, I think will just continue to improve and become tighter.

I think we get the most important information we need out of those integrations, which is really what on that order? What does the kitchen need to make? And then what time does it need to go out the door? There are other things related to like third party markup or promotions that we're running and these other systems that the POS can't capture that can make the reporting a little bit harder on the corporate end but also for franchisees too because then you find yourself logging into your POS platform and then your online platform and then you have all your different third party portals where you have to go and look at your banking statements and it just, it be a lot.

⁓ especially from a bookkeeping side, but if you just want to know how your business is doing, you have to put all the puzzle pieces together if you really want to get into the nitty gritty details of it all. we are also super on improving our data accuracy and our data collection here. One of really big projects right now is just tapping into more of those APIs so that... We're not having to manually go in between these platforms and we can just put everything into one big data warehouse, have all these metrics put together and kind of have it be a one stop shop for our franchisees.

And that's a long term goal. It's gonna take some time to get all of that data into one place, get it organized. And just in a digestible format for the franchisees as well, cuz sometimes it's too much and so we just wanna pull out what we find the most impactful there. But yeah, I'm excited to see that continue to evolve and just ⁓ us more information so that we can continue to make ⁓ decisions for the brand.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: I love that. And ultimately you keep talking about how much you guys rely on the franchisees, not only to give you feedback, but ultimately the brand is only as successful as the franchisees are successful. so ensuring that got all of that stuff hit. Last, I guess, kind of thought process on the tech stack side.

Where ⁓ are you investing? ⁓ You guys are growing so fast. You're in the middle of this POS retrofit, it's probably, you probably don't have a ton of time, but where do you see things going? I guess, where are some things that you're like, ⁓ this is intriguing.

We talked a little bit about digital menu boards as something that's intriguing. I alluded to Voice AI. I was just at MureTech last week, multi-unit restaurant executive tech show. ⁓ you know, and just listening to people talk, I guess, as you sit and think about the brand and, and your operators are coming back to you, where do you see things going?

Where do you see things, you know, from an investment perspective outside of kind of core POS? Aunna Macias: probably a number of things across the system we could be working on. For me, I'm pretty focused on our operational efficiencies. I think a lot of that will come with our POS migration.

Like that's kind of a fresh start there. So we're going to make a lot of improvements either way throughout the process, even though it will be a little bit painful. We're very excited. ⁓ Yeah.

yeah, no, I think one of the biggest things that I've just seen as a pain point here, Jeremy Julian - RTG: it always is. ⁓ always is. ⁓ Aunna Macias: And I think with plenty of other brands too is all orders that you're having come through online and third party and how to throttle those orders based on what is happening inside the four walls of the shop. I think that is one of the biggest disconnects I see in our platforms today.

And I know there are like some systems out there that can support that. ⁓ But think because of everything else we have going on, it is also something that we just kind of have to keep. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yes. Aunna Macias: pushing to the side for a little bit longer.

I'm hopeful that once we're a little bit further into our POS migration and ⁓ things ⁓ going and we're just opening more shops and everything kind of settles back down again, I'll be able to focus on improving some of the other pieces that I feel like are still missing ⁓ from our tech stack. Jeremy Julian - RTG: Yeah, I'll shameless plug here. did build, we built a tool called Kitchen AI. That's a predictive timing analytics tool.

I'll say it to you, but for our listeners out there, it's the idea of how do you know what's actually happening in the kitchen, get a prediction time of how long it's going to take to make this order so you can give the guest back something within, you know, within a minute or two of when it actually will be produced because you don't really know. You don't really know. And I think As people are getting more and more going from 10 % off-prem to 30%, 40%, 50 % off-prem, some are even higher than that.

You got to figure out how. When I walk into a store and I see a line, I know how long it's going to probably take me to get up there and get ordered. When I'm digitally ordering and I see 20 minutes and it takes an hour, I'm pissed. There's times when I see an hour, I'm like, I'm not going to order from there and I lose that order, whereas the chances are you may have been able to fulfill that because of one thing or another.

⁓ you know, love, I love, guess the thoughts on, that, changing gears here. What, what you recommend? So I'm going to go to the product side. If you've been into teriyaki madness, a team ad, ⁓ what is of the go-to ⁓ and then what is five years in?

Cause almost everybody that's in a restaurant brand ⁓ has this order that they're like, ⁓ I get it with this, with this, ⁓ you know, I get the, you know, the salmon added to the beef or whatever else. So. ⁓ Love for you to kind of talk about what's kind of the core one or two items that you would recommend to friends and family that have never been the brand then kind of what is your ⁓ know unique order that's a little bit different than what everybody will would expect Aunna Macias: Yeah, spicy chicken and teriyaki chicken are our top sellers.

Those are kind of the prime ripples that we have on the menu. So those are ⁓ a go-to. I think if ⁓ new to the brand, those are some really good options. If you like spicy, our teriyaki chicken is really good.

And you can also take that a level further with our matte spicy chicken. Over the though, ⁓ I have myself ordering over and over again our orange spicy chicken. So grilled chicken in our spicy sauce but also tossed in our orange sauce so it has a little bit of a sweetness to it. And I also cannot resist our crab rangoons.

They are just they're they're top tier. ⁓ try the crab rangoons they're my favorite thing on the menu. If I like if I'm not hungry enough to eat a whole bowl I will just get crab rangoons and and colic it. ⁓ Jeremy Julian - RTG: They are fantastic.

Yes. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you sharing. And again, the thing that always has blown me away is just how the quality of the sauces that you guys have and really just even the, it feels like to me when I've been into the brand, it's like one of those things where you almost can't go wrong because you can always just try different things.

And that part is really cool to me because a lot of the competitors, I guess in the space, there's, there's a very, you know, confined menu. It's like, ⁓ you get chicken or beef, you get it over white rice or brown rice. you can get side side of vegetables, but you guys, don't know. It feels like the sauces to me are what take you guys to that next level.

And I love that you guys are executing at that level. Aunna Macias: Yeah, yeah, I the sauces are great and we're continuing to experiment there. Hopefully we'll see more on the menu soon. Yeah, lots of lots of really great flavors, so we're excited.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Awesome. What did we miss in today's conversation? Anything else that you would want our listeners to know about kind of your role, the things that the things that you guys are doing and or the brand before we sign off? Aunna Macias: too much.

mean if you're interested in opening ⁓ a team at, hit us up. We are opening shops almost every week now and we want to continue to grow and get in every state and ⁓ expand to countries even. So we want to continue to grow. We want your support.

And yeah, go to teriyaki-madness.com to find a location near you. Hopefully there's one near you ⁓ already. ⁓ and you can give it a try.

Jeremy Julian - RTG: Awesome. Well, I appreciate you sharing about your experience and kind of all of what you guys continue to do. As I like to say to our listeners, and I said it at the onset, thank you guys for hanging out. If you haven't already done so, please subscribe.

Let us know, let us both know ⁓ what tried and what the item was once you checked out a team ad ⁓ in your region and make it a great day. Aunna Macias: awesome.