David Cole, Vice President of i Fratelli Pizza, joins Zack Oates to share lessons from nearly four decades in the restaurant industry. What started as a small family business has grown into a 16-location operation, built on relationships, consistency, and a clear understanding of the customer.

Relationships Come First (02:03)

“Relationships is everything.”

David explains that whether it is family, partners, or team members, long-term success starts with strong relationships. Early on, the business only worked because the family committed to working through challenges together.

Turning Complaints Into Loyalty (03:15)

“That’s when we can pull out all the stops.”

In a delivery-first model, many customer interactions happen remotely. David highlights how resolving issues quickly and thoughtfully often creates stronger loyalty than a perfect first experience.

Perceived Value Drives Decisions (04:13)

“They have to feel that they’re getting a value product.”

With more competition than ever, especially after the rise of third-party delivery, customers judge brands on both quality and value. Meeting expectations consistently is critical.

Follow-Up Builds Connection (07:53)

“They get a personal phone call from the manager.”

One of i Fratelli’s strongest tactics is simple follow-up. Large orders receive personal calls and handwritten notes, while digital customers get post-meal texts. These small actions create lasting relationships.

Consistency in a Digital World (06:38)

“They’re valuing your pizza on what it looks like.”

As ordering shifts online, expectations are shaped by images and convenience. Delivering a product that matches those expectations is essential to maintaining trust.

Smart Growth Through Location Strategy (11:13)

“We stair-step them.”

Instead of spreading locations too far apart, David emphasizes clustering stores to maximize delivery efficiency, brand awareness, and operational support.

This episode is a reminder that while technology and competition evolve, the fundamentals remain the same. Strong relationships, consistent execution, and thoughtful follow-up continue to define great guest experience.

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-cole-73227537/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/i-fratelli-pizza/about/

https://ifratellipizza.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:08 – 00:00:26:06

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zack Oates, and each week I chat with industry experts to uncover their strategies and tactics to help you create a five star guest experience. This podcast is powered by ovation, the AI feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. Learn what’s actually happening in your restaurants and exactly how to improve while driving revenue.

00:00:26:07 – 00:00:46:04

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today I am excited because we have a pillar of the pizza industry. David Cole, VP at E! For Tele Pizza. He has been involved since day zero 38, going on 39 years slinging pies. How does that feel, David?

00:00:46:06 – 00:00:50:05

David Cole

Makes me old. Feel old. Makes my.

00:00:50:07 – 00:01:13:17

Zack Oates

Bed. Oh, you answered. Well, David, I’m really excited to chat with you. We met because we’re both on the Texas Restaurant Association board, and David has been such an amazing personality. Someone who’s really. You meet him and you just want to give him a hug. He’s just one of these friendly, happy guys. Lifts everyone up around. And so, David, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast.

00:01:13:17 – 00:01:22:16

Zack Oates

Not just because you’re a great person, but because you got a great business. So for those who aren’t familiar with E for tele, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about it?

00:01:22:18 – 00:01:48:04

David Cole

Okay, so first of all, E Fratelli means the brothers in Italian. So it’s myself and my three brothers, George, Mike and Darryl are my brothers that we’re in business with. And we started at 22, 24, 26 years old back in 1987. We had a little bitty 60 seat restaurant. In grew it a little bit bigger than 92. We started the pizza delivery business.

00:01:48:06 – 00:01:51:17

David Cole

And so now we’re up to 16 locations.

00:01:51:19 – 00:02:03:14

Zack Oates

That’s amazing. And what do you feel like has been the reason that you’ve been able to make a family business work where so many others haven’t? Any tips that you would give to people who are in family business right now?

00:02:03:16 – 00:02:26:11

David Cole

Well, when the first biggest lessons we learned was four brothers that were young working with each other. My father, which my parents put in a little head nest egg to get us going back in 1987. And my dad called a meeting and he called it at 7:00 in the morning on a Sunday. And it was because George and Darryl weren’t getting along.

00:02:26:13 – 00:02:45:20

David Cole

So we had to get up early and go have a meeting. And then once that meeting was over, then we had to work our full day. And so we all had a meeting. Just us kind of a t a players only meeting and said, okay, go let Mom and Dad know anything about the relationships. We have to get along.

00:02:45:20 – 00:02:55:20

David Cole

We have to get this done. So I think it is the relationships with who you’re business with, whether they’re family members or partners or whatever. Relationships is everything.

00:02:56:01 – 00:03:15:13

Zack Oates

I love that I think that’s so important and especially nowadays, one of the things that is so true is the relationships matter, but also the relationship with your guests, right? It’s great to have these wonderful relationships with your business partners. But when you look at the guest, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience?

00:03:15:15 – 00:03:38:19

David Cole

Well, a lot of times we’re a pizza delivery. So for a long time our relationship was only over the phone. So the customer didn’t get a good understanding of what kind of company we were until something negative happened. And that’s when we can pull out all the stops. We call it complaint strategy, and that’s how we fulfill their needs.

00:03:38:19 – 00:04:13:19

David Cole

By taking care of their complaint or whatever went wrong. Now everything is electronic. So we get a lot of orders on the app or through ordering apps and that sort of thing. Third party delivery. So I think perceived value has to be the most important, whether they see you or they don’t see you. They have to be able to feel that they’re getting a product and a value product for them to continue doing, basically, because there are so much competition out there.

00:04:13:21 – 00:04:31:06

Zack Oates

Oh yeah. Pizza is a very competitive market. I mean, there’s so many people who are in the space and so many big boys that you’re competing against. And so you’ve got to make them feel special, right? You’ve got to make them feel like I’ve got pizza written on my shirt, but you got to have that pizza written on their hearts.

00:04:31:07 – 00:04:51:10

Zack Oates

And obviously if you can’t tell by this big neon sign behind me, like, you know, I love pizza. But the thing is that where am I going to go? If I could go someplace that has great pizza or some place that has really good pizza. You know, because that’s the benchmark. You can’t have okay, pizza anymore. But if I’m going to choose great or really good, I’m going to go where I know they’re going to treat me well.

00:04:51:12 – 00:05:21:04

Zack Oates

And I think that’s what really matters is because you got to have that benchmark for product, but then you got to actually get in there. And one of the things that we’ve seen, David, and tell me if you’ve seen this as well, when you just look at the dollars, right, a guest who has recovered versus an average guest, they spend five times more money in a given year than the average guest, because they know that you’re going to take care of them, that you’re going to you know, that you’ve got their back and they’ve got that relationship with you.

00:05:21:06 – 00:05:49:02

David Cole

Sure. I agree with you 100%. The big thing for our industry is prior to 2020 and that Covid 19 scare was there was two different restaurants that delivered pizza in Chinese. Yeah, it’s a great point. It’s convenience stores. It’s everybody’s delivery. So we our competition really came into play around 2020, 2021 when the third party delivery really got popular.

00:05:49:08 – 00:06:12:18

David Cole

I mean, there was five star chefs that would be due to go orders because they didn’t want their food in a container. And now, yeah, they’re on DoorDash, you know, so they’re people are spent $175 on a prime rib dinner to get to be delivered in a container in their house. So yes, you’re right. They have to know that they’re going to get the product that they’re ordering.

00:06:12:20 – 00:06:38:01

David Cole

And we just talked about electronic apps. And you can ask anyone if the pictures on the apps don’t look like the pizza when they come, they call and complain about because they’re basing it on the images. They’ve never tried it before. So they’re basically, you know, they’re valuing your pizza on what it looks like from a food photographer compared to what it’s going to look like when they get home.

00:06:38:04 – 00:06:48:01

David Cole

And hopefully in grudge greatly that our pizza does look the same. And it smells a lot better than the pictures do.

00:06:48:03 – 00:07:06:12

Zack Oates

Amen. Yeah, I think that that is something that is so key is you can’t just dial in anymore, right? You got to make sure that your team understands exactly what it should look like, what they’re doing. Well, what they’re not doing well. And you got to train and then track and then track what you trained and train what you track.

00:07:06:13 – 00:07:07:07

David Cole

Right? Exactly.

00:07:07:07 – 00:07:21:19

Zack Oates

And it’s the cycle. So as you’re thinking about tactics that you’ve used to improve the guest experience over the years, what are some things that you would recommend? What are some tactics that you would recommend to other restaurant operators, and how they can improve their guest experience?

00:07:21:21 – 00:07:53:16

David Cole

Okay, so one aspect of our business is we do a lot of corporate lunch business during the day. We would rather base our products on doing three and $400 orders and $10 orders during the day. So we really go after the corporate and we place our locations in an area that does have a vibrant commercial business type. We’re in based in Los Cleaners, which is one of the biggest master plan developments in the country.

00:07:53:16 – 00:08:18:18

David Cole

So there’s a lot of fortune 500 and fortune 100 companies in our area. That’s who we go after. So anyone that orders over $100, they get a five or any big order after lunch gets a personal phone call from the manager on duty asking how the order went and how the pizza delivery driver went and all that sort of thing.

00:08:18:20 – 00:08:42:12

David Cole

At the same time, we’re able to ask them, hey, you have any other meetings the rest of the week to try to get more orders? Plus, those people get what we call a C note and they get sent a handwritten thank you note every week, sent to their office. Now our, let’s say residential customers. Now most of them water off the app.

00:08:42:14 – 00:08:56:00

David Cole

So then we text them so they get a text an hour after they ate. How was it? Please give us a Google review and all that sort of thing so that we can keep in touch with them after the aspect of their orders complete.

00:08:56:02 – 00:08:58:05

Zack Oates

And who do you use for your online ordering now?

00:08:58:07 – 00:09:02:18

David Cole

We go through hunger rush is our point of sale system, so it goes through them.

00:09:02:22 – 00:09:24:07

Zack Oates

Got it. Yeah. I think that’s so powerful. As you look at that follow up and that connection with the guest that is just critical to build that relationship and to make sure that everything’s okay. Because if someone dines in, you’re going to go up David and be like, hey, how was everything? Sure. Right. But when they’re off Prem, it’s really tough to do.

00:09:24:09 – 00:09:46:18

Zack Oates

Now, one of the things is, I love that you have your manager call and follow up. My question is, how do you incentivize the manager to do that? Because it seems like that’s something that would a manager would do for maybe two weeks. And then like stop doing it like across 16 locations. How do you make sure that your managers are actually following up with these larger orders?

00:09:46:20 – 00:10:08:08

David Cole

Well, the first thing we have is we have what we call an outgoing email. So they have to email the corporate office all who those customers were, the name of the customer, the company they were, and what their comments are. And then we get a list of all those orders and then we can spot call. People say, hey, did you get a call?

00:10:08:10 – 00:10:28:09

David Cole

But we’ve been in business so long that we do get calls and texts from people that we know saying, I got the greatest phone call from your manager the other day. So we know something that’s great. I just say I sent some voicemails. You know, I left voicemails because not everybody enters the phone, but we have to spot check them.

00:10:28:09 – 00:10:39:12

David Cole

And I mean, it’s just like you have to make sure your kids brush their teeth. You can’t just expect them to do it. So you sometimes you got to stand over them and watch them do.

00:10:39:14 – 00:10:48:21

Zack Oates

Yeah, I go through that. I feel like every single night of like, did you brush your teeth? Yeah. All right. Well, let’s just does just check that over real quick and. Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a very impressive.

00:10:48:21 – 00:10:51:17

David Cole

It’s wet. Yeah.

00:10:51:19 – 00:11:12:24

Zack Oates

And obviously you’ve been at this now for coming up on 39 years. What’s something that growing restaurant brands typically get wrong. Like if you were to go in and consult a growing pizza chain in Denver. What are some things that you would look at and say, hey, here’s some low hanging fruit that you should work on improving?

00:11:13:01 – 00:11:43:10

David Cole

Well, first of all, I would it’s location. Probably they’re choosing their location. We tried to put ours. We stair step them. So they’re just right outside the delivery area of the one we already have open. Because you may have customers that can’t get delivery in that area that will instantly become customers. Plus, if they see your they may drive around that area and they see your delivery vehicles with the car signs lit up.

00:11:43:14 – 00:12:06:15

David Cole

So they may already be familiar with your product but hadn’t had it yet. And the other thing is, if they get busy, you have a sister location or a location that’s close to that can help out if they get busier or they run out of product or something that you have someone that can help. So I would, instead of put one in Dallas, one in Houston, I’d put them right next to each other.

00:12:06:17 – 00:12:07:14

David Cole

Right.

00:12:07:16 – 00:12:12:12

Zack Oates

Yeah. You’ve chosen to kind of go corporate, right. You don’t you don’t franchise.

00:12:12:14 – 00:12:14:16

David Cole

No. We have eight franchise stores.

00:12:14:21 – 00:12:29:20

Zack Oates

Oh eight franchise stores. So how does that work in terms of like, you know, let’s say that there’s one franchise store that is a little bit swamped and they send over some business, the other franchise store, to the franchisees and play nicely with each other. Have you found that that can cause some contention?

00:12:29:22 – 00:12:50:14

David Cole

Yeah, mostly some of the franchise have opened stores close to theirs or close to one of ours. Oh, God, it’s already so it’s like, hey, we want to go out here. No, you put one close to one of ours that’s been open for ten years. Then you already have business brought in. Then they’ll put theirs next to that, and then we will put a corporate store on the other side.

00:12:50:16 – 00:12:57:01

David Cole

So they’re sandwiched in between us. So because our guys have a little bit more experience that can help, those guys got it.

00:12:57:02 – 00:13:10:11

Zack Oates

That makes sense. And are you glad that you went the franchising route? Do you ever wish you would have stuck it out with just owning all the stores yourself? Or do you think franchising is a good route to go? What advice would you have for someone who’s on the fence about what to do with their brand?

00:13:10:13 – 00:13:42:03

David Cole

Well, franchising isn’t easy. So it is very expensive to do it because you have to have everything that is was our products. We had to make sure they’re made and sold to them. You just don’t give everybody your pizza dough recipe because then they would scale it. So we developed a dough mix so they can mix the dough with the water, the oil and make it without knowing how much flour, sugar, water, yeast, that sort of thing.

00:13:42:09 – 00:14:09:12

David Cole

So the pizza sauce is the same thing. It comes in the bag in a box now, which we used to make it ourselves and just take it to different locations. So and you have to make sure that you have every aspect of your operations written down and bind it so that they can read that so that they can’t go off their own on their own and make decisions that are not like the way that you want your company’s run.

00:14:09:14 – 00:14:33:13

David Cole

Correct. So yeah. Yeah. But it’s hard because everybody has personalities and they want to do business under the family name, but they may want to stretch out and I want to serve balsamic vinegar dressing. And we have to slap hand and say, no, no, no, we have two kinds of dressing and they’re in the manual. And you stick with those.

00:14:33:15 – 00:14:47:17

David Cole

So you have to watch them a little bit. We have great franchisees. So we get along with all of them and we want to support them. They’re actually we consider them as customers of ours because they paid us to do that. And we’re in business together.

00:14:47:19 – 00:15:19:02

Zack Oates

Yeah, totally. And I think about this. I went to a pizza restaurant last week, and it’s a nationwide pizza restaurant. And, you know, they’ve got a couple hundred locations. And I walked in there and it was weird because the pizza is like, it’s a very American and traditional New York pizza. And I see these Brazilian flags everywhere. And then I look over and there’s like another point of sale where you can order assembles and you could order two different kinds of meat and everything.

00:15:19:05 – 00:15:45:09

Zack Oates

And I’m like, this feels really weird. And my guess is that they just didn’t feel like they were getting enough revenue from pizza. And so they just were like, okay, we’re going to start like a Brazilian shop inside of this pizzeria. And I just look at that and I’m like, man, that is like totally watering down the brand because you go into this very New York pizza and it’s like you’re getting Brazilian food, right?

00:15:45:09 – 00:15:51:16

Zack Oates

So I think those are some of the challenges that you’re probably talking about, about, like, how do you have that good balance there? Right.

00:15:51:17 – 00:15:52:11

David Cole

Yeah, exactly.

00:15:52:14 – 00:15:59:15

Zack Oates

I love that. Well, David, who is someone that deserves an ovation, who’s someone that we should be following?

00:15:59:17 – 00:16:30:06

David Cole

Well, someone that the staff of the restaurant or so Texas Restaurant Association had at our past board meeting where we saw each other was Adam Gill, the co-founder and CEO of owner.com. This is a 20 something year old. I call him a kid because I’m in my 60s and he’s been an entrepreneur since he’s been 12 years old, and he’s really making some people a lot of money with the way that he’s doing things.

00:16:30:12 – 00:16:51:10

David Cole

People need to reach out to him to find out what his secrets are, because I’m not going to give that away. But man, I mean, there’s a lot of old restaurant tours and that meeting that we were in, and he opened a lot of their eyes, and I’ve talked to a lot of them, and he’s got some business from them as well, because we didn’t grow up with computers.

00:16:51:11 – 00:17:18:22

David Cole

So we don’t know how to gain new sales while we’re sleeping. And Adam knows how to do it. And I didn’t get to talk to him personally, but I admire the heck out of it. He’s someone that if you’re getting in the restaurant business, I would follow him and figure out how he came up with that area of expertise and call him, see if you he’ll give you some of his secrets.

00:17:18:24 – 00:17:30:13

Zack Oates

Yeah, I’ve known Adam for a long time. I think he’s he’s a great guy. I think he’s doing some interesting stuff. And so. Yeah, great call out there. Well, David, how do people find and follow you and E for tele?

00:17:30:14 – 00:17:52:15

David Cole

So it’s easy for tele. It’s spelled with an eye so not a need. So the eye is the masculine plural. So it’s eye for tele pizza. So it’s Infratil Pete’s on Instagram and C for tele pizza on Facebook. We have a LinkedIn page and I’m David at E for tele pizza on Instagram.

00:17:52:17 – 00:18:02:07

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, David, for showing us that both family and franchisees can work together for good. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Giving Ovation.

00:18:02:12 – 00:18:04:22

David Cole

Hey, thank Zach. Appreciate you having me on.

00:18:04:24 – 00:18:27:12

Zack Oates

Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen. We’re all about feedback here. Again, this episode was sponsored by ovation, a two question, SMS based, actionable guest feedback platform built for multi-unit restaurants. If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovation up.com.