The goal of accounting is to make the information useful to the end users.
And so it has to be meaningful to you, right?
It doesn't work if you're an ice cream shop
and I put chicken on your peanut, like that's not going to help anyone, right?
Sure about that?
You sure about that?
Welcome to restaurant 365 presents Behind the Numbers,
a show where we talk to restaurant owners, operators, chef's kitchen managers,
CFOs, and everyone in between about what makes successful restaurants tick.
Before we get started, a quick reminder just to like and subscribe
to the show where you're watching and please consider leaving a review.
It really does make a difference, and it helps us continue to bring you
these incredible guests and conversations while we grow and support
our restaurant community.
And with that, I'm your host, Marc Cohen,
and I'm Rich Sweeney, and we're here today with Kristin Sandhurst, a partner
at Accounting Services and CFO of affiliated companies
that franchise both Taco John's and Slim Chickens across Iowa.
Kristen, that already sounds like a lot, but honestly, I know that that is like
a fraction of all of the things that you do
with all of the different companies and businesses
and everything that you've got your hands in.
It makes my calendar seem tame compared to yours.
But tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Sure. Thanks so much for having me, Mark and Rich.
Super glad to be here today.
So yeah, as Rich said, I'm Kristen, I'm a partner at Idaho Accounting Services.
But we are also we have affiliated entities
where we're franchisees of Taco John's and Slim Chickens.
So we currently operate 20 Taco John's restaurants in Iowa.
And then we have three slim chickens.
And we've been in this space a long time.
I work with my dad,
my sister and my brother in law, so very much a family business.
Wow. And we've always talked about doing accounting for other restaurants
because my dad's CPA and so am I, and so is my brother in law,
and we never really had the tech stack to do it
until we made some strategic changes a few years ago, including to restaurant.
365 so about a year ago, we started taking on accounting clients
in the restaurant space, and then a few in some other industries as well.
So that's what we do.
It's just like restaurants where like it's becomes a family affair
and then you think you're going to get away from it
and somehow you get pulled back to it.
So you've got like the best of both worlds.
It's the accounting and the restaurant side kind of I'll smash together.
That's right.
And I've seen Rich's calendar, and I can confirm it is a dumpster fire.
Well, look, Kristen,
we always like to start with sort of a big fundamental question.
And I'm curious for you because you sort of sit on both sides of the house.
Right?
You're doing your in the accounting side, but also you're an operating partner.
So, you know,
what do you think is the most important thing
people in the restaurant should be focusing on right
now, day to day, week to week.
You know, what should they be doing?
Yeah.
So we're in a really interesting time economically.
We have some things going on in the Middle East that are driving up gas prices,
and particularly
over the last year, year and a half, the consumer has become really,
I would say, sensitive to what they're spending their money on.
And so for right now, the biggest focus for us in our restaurants is top line,
what are we doing on top line sales?
What are we doing to grow top line sales?
We like to say that to rip off the Bible a little bit.
Sales covers a multitude of sins.
And so when you're
doing, you know, more sales,
labor, food, things like that become a little bit easier to manage.
And we've just seen such a decline in traffic counts.
You know,
and people have tried to make up for that with price and with different things
like that, but really managing that top line as much as you have control over
and trying to grow that in different ways is honestly our biggest focus right now.
I've always said sales fix fixes everything,
but sales cures everything covers a multitude of sins.
I think that's a little that's a that's definitely a little more appropriate.
It's super appropriate for restaurants.
There's always all kinds of sitting that's going on in the restaurant space.
Yeah, it's
I always get nervous when I see somebody chart of accounts come over
and they've got that miscellaneous GL code.
What is that?
And why is there so much in there?
Ask my accountant.
It's the worst account in QuickBooks there ever was created. Yes.
That code always makes me nervous as well.
And typically there's a very large balance in there.
Yes, it's the whole thing to do.
Well, let's talk numbers. Right.
So you are you are.
How many locations do you currently have?
23 that we operate.
Oh wow. Okay.
Awesome.
And it's two concepts. Two concepts. Yep.
So 20 QSR Mexican.
And I'm less involved in that side than I used to be.
And then the three
slim chickens I'm heavily involved in day to day operations of those.
And then you've been using restaurant 365 for how long now?
Oh going on I think this will be three years.
Awesome. Yep. So before that, we came over.
So I know the founders of restaurant 365 started their career life
selling Microsoft Dynamics.
And so we were on Microsoft Dynamics for like 20 plus years and
then came over to our 365 when we decided to get with the 21st century.
So we're alive, I love it.
You're on the same journey, and then you sort of
have your finger on the pulse of SHR chicken.
You were talking.
We were talking just before the show started.
Highest volume chicken concept for chick fil A.
They just came out with their PhD and their top restaurant,
which I believe is in the Miami area, does $20 million in sales on six days a week,
six days a week.
That's right.
No Sundays like $64,000 a day.
So when we opened our first Slim Chickens, we did.
Almost 26,000 our first day.
And granted, we are still learning the concept and how it works.
It would be easier to do 26,000 now, but we thought we were not going to make it.
And so I can't imagine doing three times that every every day.
It's ridiculous.
Every single we can.
Every time, every time. It's a pleasure.
That's right.
We'd love to be doing $64,000 a day.
That one. Yeah. That would come up all the citizens.
That's right, that's right.
And can you imagine how many lemons they have to cut?
Like just the amount of prep they must have to do for that?
See. And I feel like that's one of those things I would cut immediately like that.
And I'm just like, if somebody asks for it, we'll provide it.
But we're not going to put a giant bucket of lemons out in the middle of the rest.
But like in sales, fixes everything $64,000 a day.
We can we can throw some lemons out.
It's not really going to matter.
No, but they have to cut them for the lemonade to.
Oh that's right.
They're all lemonade. I forgot about that.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, time job, the lemon at chick fil A, that's my job.
Well, you've sort of been part of this.
It sounds like a bit of a family affair on the accounting side,
but really, from the on the franchising
side, this has been part of your culture since you were a kid, right?
Like, you would you would take family vacations
and go to franchising conventions. Isn't that.
That's right. Yeah.
Taco John's
is the very family oriented brand, and my dad has been working
with this particular
franchise group for over 30 years, and he's an owner now and whatnot.
But we would go to Taco
John's convention as our family vacation because it was usually someplace fun.
And the kids were always like, we didn't attend the general sessions,
but were invited to the meals.
And then they always had like a fun night and one time, not kidding you.
In San Antonio, Texas, they had live armadillo roping was the activity
the actual animals in the hotel ballroom?
I'm still not sure how that was a thing, but that was, I think you could do.
I don't think you could do that today.
No, probably not, but.
Sorry.
Just in my mind I'm pointing out the cartoon of that in the ballroom.
Yes, it's exactly how you're imagining it went.
That's awesome.
So you were
you were involved in the family business at a at a relatively young age.
Yeah.
So I remember in high school, my dad took me with him
one time, and we did restaurateurs and went around to all the restaurants.
And I was kind of business minded, I guess I would say,
like he taught me Microsoft Excel when I was like 6 or 7, you know?
So we've been going at it for a long time.
But but yeah.
Then after college, I started my career in public accounting,
did that for a couple of years,
then came back and worked for the Taco John's for a while,
took a little bit of a hiatus at a publicly traded bank,
and then came back when we started getting into this little chicken. So,
okay,
so really just truly a family affair of like starting with it,
moving up through it, that's that's cool to kind of see, like I grew up,
my dad was a restaurant manager.
He used to like take me to the restaurants and we would like kind of, you know,
I would laugh. He would do like line checks.
And I didn't know what a line check was.
I just knew we got to go down the line and like, try stuff.
And I just thought that was the coolest thing ever.
You know, growing up
hearing about pals and audit reports without fully understanding what it was
definitely made it click later on in life and it just sticks with you.
And kind of
a weird, different way that only happens when you grow up in this industry.
Yeah, and I kind of grew up on the office side.
You know, I wasn't necessarily like making tacos or whatever, but,
you know, was definitely exposed to it pretty much all my grown up years.
And it does kind of get in your blood. So
it is definitely in the blood.
And it's funny to me that you got the accounting bug early and you ended up
going into like corporate accounting right on like more of a finance.
And did you ended up gravitating back towards the restaurants?
Was that just just a dynamic move?
Was that just a lateral?
What sort of made that cause that shift for you?
Yeah.
So I went into auditing
and I was living in the Twin Cities, and I'm the oldest of my three sisters.
And so I just felt like I was missing out on them growing up.
They were still in high school playing sports and all of that.
And so then an opportunity came up to work in the Taco John's office.
And so I decided to take that and come back and be closer to family.
So that was really kind of what drove it. So
and it sounds like there's a little bit of CPA in the blood for everybody.
You mentioned half your family's involved now in the county of things.
So I'm curious when when you came back, what was the state
of the accounting office at that point?
Was there a tech stack at all? Was what was it?
Was it shoeboxes of invoices and receipts?
Where were. Yeah.
Oh, well, you're giving me too much credit.
All that credit goes to my dad.
So he's been very technologically advanced since the beginning.
So when he came on working for this franchise group, you know,
they've been in business for 50 years and he's been with them 31.
And so he put in place Microsoft Dynamics.
He cleaned up all the whole shoeboxes.
So they had a lot of really great systems in place when I was there.
But it was still, you know, the 20 tens.
And so there weren't the,
the things like there were now, but they were pretty sophisticated.
We imported almost everything via some type of automation or whatever,
and we would use macros to like macro things into the accounting system.
And so yeah,
that was kind of amazing.
Old school days, I guess.
And so how, how how did what
led you to restaurant 365 and ultimately starting your own accounting firm?
Like what?
What's the order of operation here? Which came first?
Well, you know, I said I worked with my brother in law and his wife.
My sister had a baby.
And so he went on paternity leave, and I got to do his job for two weeks.
And I was like, I cannot handle this.
Like, this is way too manual.
And I had told my team I was like, we're going to look at a GL conversion,
but we probably won't look at it for a year or two. And I was like, yep.
Never mind, we're doing it now.
This is just not we can't do this anymore.
We need to get with the program.
And so we started looking at things and because at that point in time
we also did payroll like full on, like in-house payroll, like,
and we used another piece of software just like sort of help file the taxes.
But like we calculated everything.
And so we're like, well, we have to get the payroll
out of the ledger first, because if
we get the payroll out of dynamics, then we can move the GL to something else.
And so we moved all of the payroll and HR stuff out to pay.
And some of that came with our slim chickens as well, because they used
an electronic RA system.
And I tried it out our first year in insulins,
and I didn't love it, but I was like, we have to do this.
Like we're just pushing way too much paper on our Taco John's business.
And so we went out and we found Pelosi, which we used for both brands.
And if you want to search, you can find our case study,
because they came and did a little video and everything.
But so that really modernized our HR and payroll experience.
And so then once we got that out of the GL,
then we were free to move the GL.
And my dad had heard of restaurant 365 and we started looking and we kind of
did a full blown RFP process.
We had a requirements matrix.
We had the vendors
fill out things, give us demos, and we just really liked the product.
And you know, I'm a big believer that if I demo a product,
I need to be able to understand, like how it's going to work on the back end.
So there's things I've said no to where I just don't get it.
Like I don't get how it works.
Like I don't see how we could use this.
And so we say no.
And that was kind of
we looked at dynamics Business Central and that was just so wide open, like
you could make it anything you wanted, which is probably great.
But it was like, I don't even know where we're going to start on this.
And then we also looked at sage intact, and I'm so thankful we said no to that,
because I have a client now who uses that and terrible interface.
And so our 365, we liked the grids like don't ever get rid of the grids.
If any product engineers are watching this please listening product.
Did you hear that? And it's just so easy to use.
And so then I asked my team kind of like postmortem.
Six months later, I'm like, are you glad we did this?
I know it was painful.
And they're like, you cannot take this away from me.
Like they love it so much.
And it has just improved our workflow tremendously.
We had someone retire in kind of our HR
admin function, and we ended up just not replacing her role
because we had gained a lot of efficiencies between Pulaski and our 365.
And so it's been a tremendous move for our company.
Huge. Yeah.
I feel like I'm hearing another case study that needs to come out from our
side now.
It's perfect.
It's it's in progress.
So so what did that then lead to?
The founding of the accounting firm of Dada.
Like what's the Genesis story there? Yeah.
So then the last thing we did is we went cloud servers.
So we got everything off of the servers that we had in the building
when everything into SharePoint and OneDrive.
And so then we're like, okay,
we have the tech stack where we can efficiently support other businesses.
And so we started
with just really low barriers to entry.
We started making some digital products for restaurant owners.
And I sent one of them to someone I had met like 12 years ago
in a networking group for the local chamber
who runs an ice cream shop, now in Sioux Falls, where I live.
And she was like, well, yeah, tell me more about this.
But also, can we meet?
Like, I don't really have a ton of other resources in the community
who operate restaurants, especially others who are female.
Like, can we just talk? And so we just got together and we talked.
We talked about her business, how it was going.
You know, she needed some help on labor and things like that.
They had an in-house office person who was doing their books
but were having some problems.
And I was like, well, would you just let us try to do it for you?
Like, can we just try this out?
And she said, yes.
And that has been the gateway
to a lot of other things they've referred to as other work.
I mean, they've been a tremendous client of ours.
But and with that, we took on their books, but then we've also done
some consulting with them.
They had never taken inventory before.
So I went into the restaurant with her, and we basically looked
at every single skew of which there were many, and we figured out
pack sizes and that for all of them and got them taking inventory.
And they improved their cost of goods
by 300 basis points in the first year that we worked with them.
And so, yeah, just by having awareness case study right there.
Right. Exactly.
Yeah.
So just by having, you know, getting her people aware of it,
getting them counting and tracking so product doesn't just disappear
knowing that there's accountability over the costs and that, you know,
someone was watching those numbers
and they did work on some portioning and some things like that with that.
But you know, so that helped them out quite a bit.
And then yeah, it's just grown from there.
So we're still small, we're still growing and kind of, you know,
getting into it. But
it's been going well. So
small but mighty.
That's right.
But leveraging technology to make it scalable right.
So you know, you
you're able to
bring on more business without bringing in a bunch of extra bodies right.
And I love this idea that you came in and sort of
blew up the accounting solution pretty much immediately.
And now they they're like, you're not taking it out of our cold dead hand.
Like they love it.
It's like fewer clicks, it's more automations.
It's making their lives easier.
Yes. The the fear it clicks alone is a huge thing.
And just even like, oh, in dynamics, if you messed up an AP transaction,
you would have to avoid it.
And then if you did your voice wrong, then you'd have to avoid your void
and pretty much have like 28 voids of the same transaction.
You just made a mess of the gel, you know?
And like obviously some people get nervous,
like, oh, you can edit or delete transactions.
Like you can restrict that.
So only certain people can do it. Right.
But just the fact that you can raise that, you can if you need to, so that you can,
you know, just like not make a mess of your deal by voiding everything.
And yeah, it's been it's been great.
And then we really also over the last year I've been getting into a
lot more automations. And so we've been using
just really as AI became more popular,
not so much using AI for the automation itself, but
like I would talk to ChatGPT and have it help me build the automation,
including adding steps in the code, which I don't know how to code, but.
So you don't need to know code now.
That's right.
And so we use some workflow automation tools.
So for example, one of our point of sale systems,
the way our franchise or has it set up is it combines third
party delivery and first party orders into the same channel bucket.
And we want them broken out on our penal.
And we've asked them to do it on their end, but they don't want to
for whatever reason.
They have other reasons and they're like, no, we're not going to do that.
We just want you to 5%.
Yeah.
And so we call the API into the POS and then basically have it
this automation tool, it's called Natan, but we have them, it splits out the entry,
but then it can drop it to the R3 65 FTP site.
So every day that entry just gets recorded automatically.
So having you know, R3 65 has an FTP site, which works great.
They also have some pretty good like API,
OAuth type connections or OData connections rather.
And so we try to use those wherever we can.
I feel like that was the
greatest acronym salad that I've heard,
just piecing everything together in the best possible way.
But like just connecting all of those different systems
in a way that's being automated.
And like you said, you're not a developer.
You're not writing the code. So.
Right.
It's we talk about a lot of the show, how AI has been having such an impact,
especially in the restaurant space,
because restaurants were the last ones to kind of adopt technology.
And now just hearing that is awesome to see,
like how that's having such a big impact on the way that you guys are doing things,
especially in order to get you the information that you want to see
for your reporting in a way that, you know, shocker, that a franchise
or was not going to change their system to give you what you need,
but you just found a way to work around it and still get to the end result,
I love it.
Yeah, well, and I'll do a shameless plug here.
So I'm going on a webinar with Kevin at the end of the month.
So April 27th I believe is the day.
And we are going to be talking about AI.
So you'll hear more of some of that story there.
But for anyone who's watching this and isn't sure where to start and I
yes, had acronym word salad like I literally started with ChatGPT.
What is an API like?
I don't know what this means that like like how do I, you know, it was like
the equivalent of being like press start, click all programs like.
And so I was like, what does this mean?
And it would give me some answers. And I'm like, I don't get it.
Break it down further.
Like give me the exact portions.
No, no, not even 12, five, five. So
that's the great part with AI now right.
Like you can for me, like if my other half is, is a developer and fully understands
all of the acronyms and how they and like, can write it all from scratch,
I've had to go into like Claude and ChatGPT and just be like,
explain to me how to use you, you know,
as an AI like to get the most out of it and like, break it down.
Like, I barely know how to use a computer and I'm more tech literate than that.
But just being able to to have the systems and the tools
to teach you the best way to do it and adapt to how you've learned
things is been exponential in my learning of all of these tools.
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, it's it's not a search engine. Right.
That's I think that's the first mistake most people make with it.
And to your point, Rich,
like if you want to learn how to get better at it, just ask it like,
hey, give me a 12 week crash course on AI that's spends,
you know, 20 minutes a week and it'll it'll build it for you.
Like it'll build you a curriculum.
It'll do all of those things for you.
But and Kristen, you obviously are self-admitted data nerd.
It sounds like you've been in the end of the data since you were six,
but you're also you're what we call an R3 65 solutions partner, right?
And so you're engaged with a lot of our clients.
But the thing I love
about what you're doing is you're not just a CPA, right?
You are.
You are definitely applying a consultative level of,
you know, deliverable to your clients.
We're not just delivering a pal,
which ultimately is the deliverable for your team, but you're teaching them
how to do you know, how to be more efficient, right?
How to do things better.
Can you talk a little bit more about sort of that approach?
Does that just come naturally?
Yeah.
So our goal as an accounting firm and as a solutions partner
of 365 is, is really, like you said, to partner with our clients.
Like we don't ever want a relationship where it's like,
oh, you send us your stuff
and 15 days later we give you a peanut and we say, here it is.
You know, and like or however many days, you know, but and so we're really trying
to give our clients operational insights and help them with their businesses.
And so that comes in a number of different ways.
We depending on the plan that you're on with us,
a lot of times we'll send them a video recording going through there
and saying, you know, hey, we're noticing this.
And one of the things we're huge believers in is having an organized chart
of accounts.
And so I'm going to maybe take some pot shots here at some people.
But we we're like,
if you just alphabetize your controllable section,
which is very common, here's looking at you standard NRA chart of accounts.
But if it's just in alphabetical order,
then you have maintenance in the EMS and you have repairs in the Rs.
And now my HVAC guy came and he serviced my building,
which is a maintenance plan, but he found something wrong,
so he had to do a repair.
So do I need to split that invoice up or what am I doing here?
And it just becomes unusable.
But if you group those together
into a section that's called repairs and maintenance.
Now I can tell you just based on history.
So we used to run benchmarking studies in Taco John's.
My dad started that years and years ago, and I've done them in Slim Chickens
as well.
But you know, if you're building is newer, you should be under 2%
for repairs and maintenance.
If you're kind of a middle aged building, you know, 2 to 3% is normal.
And so it really gives you we can give you that granularity as you
look at your pal, you know, like
supplies, 1.25% or better is what you need to be targeting for supplies.
You know, cost of goods, labor.
You need to be sub 60% prime cost if you want to have any chance
of making money on the bottom line.z And so just because we've looked at all
this data over the years,
we're really big believers of teaching our clients
that so that they can run their business better,
organizing their PNL in such a way so that it's readable and understandable.
And you can gather those insights, because if it's just all in one bucket,
then it just becomes a backward looking tool that's not useful for anything.
Right?
But if you have it organized and sectioned off, then you can,
you know, call those answers and analysis from it.
And I can go back to my operations guy and say, hey, here's supplies are running
too high at such and such Slim Chicken's location.
And then he might say, well, why?
And I say, well, it's in this jail account.
And that's primarily gloves.
So who's just burning through the gloves in the restaurant
and really trying to tie it back to real life, right.
Yeah. Like it has to matter in real life.
Otherwise you're just a data cruncher and don't cares about that.
And so we really try to let real life and real operations
drive how we do our accounting and how we service our clients.
I love
that as the former operator who, like at first couldn't understand,
like why credits and debits were important and like,
you know, just tell me what the bottom line number is, right?
That's all I have to care about.
And then finally, especially as I was using the software as a customer,
you know, kind of learning how to drill into the numbers
and really see where, where did that come from.
And then how is that having an impact on the cost?
Let me be able to use that to teach other folks.
Like, you know, the first time I looked at a pal,
I had no idea what any of it meant.
And I just somebody was talking about Ram.
And I'm thinking, well,
I have a vendor called Ram and I'm looking for that on the pal.
And I was like, oh, repairs and maintenance. Okay.
But being able to, like you said, find find where that cost is
kind of creeping up and then where we need to benchmark it and say,
all right, here's where we got to go.
And then drill down and figure out where is that problem.
And it turns out it's me. I'm the problem.
I use way too many gloves, you know, just some of those types of things.
So I think it's awesome the way that you can kind of tape
that financial aspect and tie it back to the operation,
really give them some some meat on the bone to understand it better.
Yeah.
Well, when we look at like our accounting team structure and things like that
and it's like, well, most of them are way more than accountants.
Like, you know, they've learned over the years to
I can't tell you how many leaks we've found from the financial statements
because they're like, hey, the water bill at this location is high.
And they reach out to the GM, and then the GM is like, you know what?
I went and checked and the toilets been leaking.
I'll get a plumber out, you know, and so like
but we found that from the side, not from anyone noticing that
it was just running all the time.
And so yeah, we tried to do that for our internal
financials and businesses and for our clients as well.
I thought you were making a financial metaphor that the water was in the know.
No, an actual actual driving up. Yeah.
An actual water utility or like that's awesome.
You know, we had these
we have these sinks in our slum chickens and they take a while to fill up.
It's like a three comp sink, but it's a power soaked sink.
So it basically has like a Jacuzzi in it.
That's what we call it.
And but I'm like, why is the water bill at this location so high?
We'll come to find out.
They would turn the water on to fill it up and then forget
that they had it on, and then it would all of a sudden be going over.
And so they did that like three times in a month.
And then, you know, it's like, well, let's try to stop that, please.
Numbers don't lie I love it. Absolutely.
And so I'm curious
we were talking about AI
like where are you sort of applying that internally in your day to day.
Like I'm seeing people use it for reconciliation.
I'm seeing people use it for data, you know, transformations.
Like what sort of additional automations have you found from an accounting level
with AI?
Yeah.
So we've I started honestly, my journey with AI a couple of years ago.
I went to the R3 65 conference in Nashville, and there was a speaker
there, Chris, I not remembering his last name,
but he spoke on AI and he said, just keynote.
Yes, yes, just start using it for legal.
And so I started just using it for legal, like it would draft me like,
oh, I needed a catering agreement for a local high school for their concessions,
you know, so dropped me a little two page agreement and then,
you know, smaller things like that.
I felt comfortable just sending on our own.
Otherwise I would have it be like a first drafter and then send it to our attorney.
And then he would essentially, you know, give me feedback on it and whatever.
But then, yeah, so we've expanded into the accounting side
and so somewhat for reconciliations, a lot of it for building automations
like that, where it's more of a we don't necessarily have
AI in the automation itself, but we use AI to help set up the automation.
So we have a fair number of workflows that just run in the background
every day to either push push data from our back office
or POS into our 365
and then, yeah, just trying to keep using it.
So recently Claude came out with Coworker on Windows, which is a new thing,
and so it can actually work in a folder versus before they had limits
on, for example, how many files you could attach in the chat with an AI.
Right?
Well, so I had 70 PDF files that were not even saved
down there, like scanned in that I had to go through for something.
And so I had cohort go through it and log all of the data in a spreadsheet.
And so it would just sit there and, you know,
open them up in the background and log the data and go on to the next one.
And it did a beautiful job. And so
just trying to leverage it where we can.
All right.
Because who wants to do that. Right.
Well to sit down and go through 70 PDFs
and yeah, they're like, you know, AI is coming for somebody job.
I'm like, it's not coming for anybody's job.
Nobody wants to do that.
To your point, Mark.
Like, I got better things to do.
And I have this conversation with people all the time.
I don't think we need to think about in terms of replacing.
Think about it in terms of replacing tasks. Right.
Ultimately, the end goal here is more output with less input.
That's it.
It's productivity
multiplied like that's the way you need to be looking at it and using it.
Yeah I think it's task replacement.
It's not job replacement.
And yeah, nobody wants to do that job.
You tie it back to the stuff, you know, again taking it back to operations.
Right. Like you can sit there and slice something.
You know, you can slice a meat by hand and that's going to take you X
amount of time. Or you can use an electric slicer.
And that's going to cut down the time.
You're not getting rid of the person who has to do the work.
Somebody still needs to be there for that.
Or you step it up another level and you get an automated electric slicer
that can do a lot of that.
So now you're
just monitoring what it's doing, but you're increasing your productivity.
It's the same thing with AI.
You're giving it some of those tasks that nobody wants to do and spend so much
time doing. Yeah, exactly.
Have you had any misses with AI?
Any time you thought, hey, this is going to be the solution?
And it just was like, no, this is not what I thought it was going to be.
I would say probably not.
Complete misses.
I mean, there's times where I'm like, especially if I'm building
an automation or something like that, it will give me here's some code to use.
And then I'll put it in like,
yeah, that didn't work at all, or it didn't behave as intended.
Right.
But I think the key is you just have to go back then to Claude or
go back to ChatGPT or whatever you're using and say, like, that didn't work.
Here's what it did.
It didn't do what we had talked about it doing.
Like, can you please fix it?
And so, yeah, lately I said, I have a client on Sage and Tact.
The user interface is difficult at best in some of the screens.
And so I just started up a chat with Claude coworker in this instance,
and pointed it to an empty folder and said, like, what can we build with this?
Could we build a Chrome extension?
I'm in an automation community for accountants.
It's called Automation Town.
It does cost to be a part of its $50 a month,
but it is so worth it because I learned so much from the people in there.
And someone had been talking about a Chrome extension.
And so I was like, Claude, can we build a Chrome extension
to make this easier to use?
And so so we did.
So now it does silly things for me, like
check boxes on the pay bills screen
automatically, instead of them having to be manually checked.
Like I just paste in a list of the invoice numbers
that need to be paid and it will check the boxes or
and so I'm building that to my team.
Can can use it right.
Then they can deploy that because like I mean a lot how it works
a lot of times is if we take on a new client, like,
I'll help set up the processes
and then hand it off for someone to do on the regular.
And so this was a newer client and I was trying to figure out the process.
And so yeah, I built this beautiful little tool
and it just bolts on and just makes the user experience better.
So we've been using
AI and applications like that just to help make things easier to use.
That's fantastic.
And I feel like you've mentioned the power of networking twice now.
And I think that that's something I don't think we talk about a lot.
Like our community is vast, right.
And, you know, finding I think there's
there's something to be said about that local community
that you've definitely tapped into, right, with your with your core
accounting group.
But then that global community, whether it's via LinkedIn or forums or R3
65 on our events, like, you know, getting tapped into the community
that's going to help you level up is so critical,
not just as a restaurant operator, but as right now, I would say a technology
like as an AI adopter, like there are so many for
there are so many places to go see what other people are doing
and how they're using tools like R3 65 or clod or GPT.
If you're not doing that, do it.
It is.
It is a game changer.
Yeah.
And a plug for the R3 65 events to I know they're going
I think two different structure this year, but I've gotten tremendous value
from those just from connecting with other operators but also with R3 65 staff.
Because like if you have a very specific problem,
like when we first started with R3 65, our sales rep said, hey,
you should come to this one day event in Chicago, like I'll get you tickets.
And so we did.
And then we were having a specific issue with reporting,
and we booked a little appointment at the Solutions bar.
And Mark, you helped us.
And that was a that was like a great thing, you know.
But then you have those connections because then, you know,
certain people I've met at those conferences who are R3
65 team members, I've reached out to later and said, hey,
do you know anyone who could help me with this issue?
Yeah, you know, more
that broader things that are just beyond like a support ticket,
like I'm trying to conceptually understand how we could make this thing work.
And so and that's been a great benefit.
So definitely lean into that.
You know,
R3 65 community, if you're a client, if you're not a client, you should be one.
So there you go.
Shameless plug.
Thank you
for you. All right.
We are shifting.
So we're going to be we're doing a single event now.
It's a big annual sort of national conference.
It's transform.
It'll be in November in Scottsdale.
I'm sure you'll probably be there on a panel.
I bought my ticket if you haven't been asked to be asked,
but but that's sort of our theme for the years transformation.
So I'm curious as we look forward, what what's what's transforming for
the Slim Chickens maybe, or for a dotto, like what's on the horizon?
I think it is a lot of that just continued application of AI
in our business, and how we can leverage that to
be more efficient and just really serve our clients.
You know,
I think the commonality between our restaurants that we operate
and our accounting business is we may be using AI in the background,
but our guests interaction, our client interaction is still very much a person.
We tried AI in the drive through at both of our concepts, two different providers.
It was actually it was quite good, like it was excellent, but yes, hated it.
And surprisingly enough, our staff hated it.
Like I put it in because I was like, I have this location.
It's very hard to staff.
It was like, let's try the AI because, you know, Suzy calls off for work.
You can just turn the AI on
and you have another body and you're not working shorthanded.
But they didn't like it
because I think they liked interacting with those regular people.
And then the other thing it came down to was the order injection.
The timing of it wasn't as fast
as somebody listening over the headset and keep punching it in, like.
And so it was just how the data connected to the point of sale
on one of the concepts.
But so anyway, we've decided kind of that our philosophy and
I've seen this from other people as well, but is used by in the back of house
and in the office, keep the front of house with that human interaction.
Well said.
Yeah, yeah, there is a little bit of that uncanny valley
when it comes to some of these solutions where you're like, is
that is that a real thing? Is that not really.
You know, in the minute your brain starts to do that,
you're you're disengaged, right?
The experience has been totally cut off.
Yeah.
So I'm curious.
It's the obviously, you know, the busy time of the year,
busiest time of the year, I would imagine for accounting world.
I got to ask, are
you like team coffee or team energy drink when you've got like busyness going on?
You've got deadlines trying to crank things through coffee all the way.
Hotter, iced.
This is controversial for me. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, okay.
I'm more of an iced coffee guy, but it's okay.
We can still coexist. So.
I'll bring you.
Yeah. Go ahead. Rich, go, go.
Oh, I was going to say just kind of like, from your perspective,
especially, like, you know, on the accounting side,
but being able to relate it back to operations.
Where do you think most restaurants lose money without even realizing it?
Oh, that's a tough one.
Water leaks.
Yeah.
Water leaks overflowing the sink.
Probably in food costs if they're not taking good inventory
just because it's really, really easy to like, waste off.
And if you're not,
if you're not tracking your waste, if you're not fanatical
about your portion sizes, if you're not taking your inventory
like you can bleed money out the back door without even realizing it.
If you fries in somebody's mouth, a meal in the garbage,
a meal out the drive thru window to somebody is spread
mint made products like I mean the ways to bleed money on food
are so many that if you just
if you don't have a good system for tracking it, it's problematic.
So that's why, you know, like one of our other clients
that we brought on there on toast for their POS, and then we got them
going on our 365 inventory, just like, you know, they're a homegrown concept.
So they don't necessarily have theoretical or recipes or things built out
yet as they grow.
That's on the roadmap.
But let's just start counting inventory at least, right.
So we can know what's coming in and coming out.
And if you don't do that, if you don't count inventory,
then your Cogs is a roller coaster.
And it's just based on the timing of purchases.
And that's not really valuable to anyone.
And so I guess I would say food costs because probably the easiest bleeder
and that is a roller coaster ride I don't want to be on.
Right.
Well, but it's funny, you bring up a point that I always like
to drive home with the Ave, like people are so focused on the A, the
A without the T still a valuable piece of your puzzle, right?
You're still getting that journey of what did I start with?
What did I buy? What did I use? Where did it go?
The theoretical is going to help you figure out what went wrong,
but, you know, get the actual stood up as soon as possible.
Because to your point,
you were talking about a client at the beginning of the good
300 basis points, right?
Like just counting something can move the needle tremendously.
Yeah.
And that client doesn't have theoretical I mean, so we just did the actual
they got the A yeah.
They got the A.
They'll get to the the A is just as important.
That's right.
I'm always kind of curious
to like for in that case with that client,
was it something where they just didn't see the before you got involved.
They just didn't see the value in counting inventory
or because we talked to folks all the time,
they're just like, I don't see the point or, you know, my labor is so expensive.
I've got to pay somebody to do that.
Like when you've encountered those types of objections, like,
how do you kind of handle that
to get people to understand, like inventory is that important?
Yeah.
So in the case of that very first client, they are a franchisee,
but it's a local concept.
And so they just don't even really have the system for it.
And the franchisor doesn't have the systems.
There's just a few number of units.
And so it was more like a we just don't even know where to start.
Like, yeah, we think we should probably do this, but how do we even start.
And so that was where like, well, it's totally overwhelming.
You know, we'll come in
and we're just going to go through all of your products
and we're going to get units of measure,
you know, like how does it come in the back door.
What's the case size. How does it break down into pack size.
Because if you don't have units of measure you can't count it. Right.
And that's fundamental to any inventory setup is
what is the unit of measure structure.
And so I think just having someone there to walk them through it and explain
like what does it mean.
You know, and and then their case to then sometimes it's like,
well it comes in a pack of 400, but we split it up into bags of three,
you know, 100 each.
And so which is fine, but just having all of that documented
so that then when they do their count, you know, it's like, well,
this doesn't have to take 12 hours to count your inventory.
We can organize, help you organize your store.
We can get all these pack sizes sorted.
And then you can say, okay, yep, I have three bags and I know they're 100 each.
Like boom, done.
But first we're going to organize your chart of accounts.
Step one one.
And that is it's not just food cost.
It's dairy.
It's produce. It's grocery.
It's all the things we need to track.
And then a client like that, that was the very first meeting
we had with them after they signed on
is let's talk about your business and understand it.
What are your major categories in your cost of goods?
We're going to reorganize your chart of accounts.
And then what other things matter to you.
Because if it's not, you know,
accounting 101, they teach you in the first day like there's data
and then there's information and data with meaning attached to it is information.
Information is useful.
Data is not.
And so
and then the other thing is
the goal of accounting is to make the information useful to the end users.
And so it has to be meaningful to you. Right.
It doesn't work if you're an ice cream shop.
And I put chicken on your pal like that's not going to help anyone, right?
And so make making it so they can understand it.
And so they can use it like that's you know, that's our main goal I guess.
Yeah.
I mean that's the that's that holistic
sort of consult of approach is not everybody's doing that.
So that's, that's awesome that that's
that's the foundation of what you're sort of building which is, which is fantastic.
Well, look,
we always like to sort of wrap these things up with a bit of a hot take.
And I feel like you definitely have a few anything about the industry.
And this could be accounting specific.
I know we've already talked about Chart of Accounts,
but something about the industry you love,
you hate, you want to see come back or go away.
So you're a hot take on the state of affairs right now.
Oh I would say I'm not a fan.
So we have kiosks in some of our restaurants
and I like them. But I've been adamant with my team
that they still have to have a person out there.
I don't like the whole, like, unattended dining room in QSR.
Like there's a couple of certain concepts where it's like,
if you need something, you're basically hollering back into the kitchen
like, hey, you can someone help, you know, not a fan.
Like when I go to Home Depot and I stand there and I just I'm waiting
like somebody asked me if I need something, please, please.
Right.
So not a fan of, like, completely unattended dining rooms, like,
we got to have a little bit of the human, like, have a little floater out there,
you know.
Absolutely.
Let people do things more for themselves.
Because we talked about this recently where, you know, everyone's
getting so used to using the kiosks to kind of do some things on their own.
But yeah, everybody we've talked to you that's seen a lot of success
with the kiosks specifically talks about they still have somebody involved.
They still have people that are there to answer.
If I'm a first time guest, you know, like answer those questions, guide them
through the process, make recommendations, and then as they get comfortable,
then it becomes something that becomes more second nature for them, for sure.
And like I don't have any issue using the kiosk
like I like ordering on it, but it's like, oh, you forgot my ranch.
Well, now there's no one there to even ask.
So you literally are like hollering back in the kitchen.
And I never want that to happen at our restaurants.
And I'm sure there are times when it does, but we really try to keep someone
out front for that reason.
Few and far between.
It happens, but we try to minimize it.
That's right, I like it.
That's right people first.
That's always that's that seems to be the ongoing theme here.
We love to talk technology and AI and all the fun things that are happening,
but people first still seems to be the the agenda.
Yeah, you got it. Just good hospitality.
It's always going to be people first no matter what we do.
That's right.
Cool.
Well, Kristen, thank you so much for joining us today.
For everybody listening and checking out the podcast.
You can find Kristen and data accounting services all over LinkedIn.
And next time you're in Iowa, check out one of their slim
chickens or one of their Taco John's locations.
Yeah. Thanks, Rich.
And yeah, recommend.
Chris is a great follow on LinkedIn.
She's always posting very interesting use cases
and keeping everybody updated on what she's doing in Claude and AI.
And if you haven't connected or you're not networking yet, start there.
I guarantee it's a good follow.
And of course, thank you for joining us.
We hope you have a great day, a great shift and a profitable.
Well, it is Friday, so hopefully you're having
a profitable Friday wherever you are.
But don't forget don't forget like and subscribe to the show everywhere.
It's no small ass, but it really makes a difference and we appreciate it.
And of course you can find restaurant 365 on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
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You can also follow us on all the social medias Instagram, Facebook and
of course, at restaurant 365.
Kristen, thanks so much for spending some time with us, sharing your insights
and looking forward to you doing $64,000 a day very soon.
Well, thanks so much for having me. It was great to be here.