Chris Ives, CEO and President of Bubbakoo’s Burritos, believes great restaurants are built on more than operational metrics. Having worked in finance, accounting, and restaurant leadership, Chris understands how profitability and guest experience work together to create sustainable franchise success. In this conversation with Zack Oates, he shares why culture, hospitality, and authentic human interaction continue to outperform technology alone.

Culture Drives Restaurant Performance (03:09)

“9.99 times out of ten, it always comes down to the culture.”

Chris explains why the highest-performing restaurants often share one common trait: teams that genuinely enjoy serving guests and working together.

Hospitality Is Still the Biggest Differentiator (06:03)

“It’s still… basic, genuine hospitality.”

While technology continues to evolve, Chris believes authentic conversations and meaningful guest interactions remain the foundation of exceptional restaurant experiences.

The Last Three Feet Matter Most (07:56)

“Let’s focus on every single guest that’s in front of you.”

Chris discusses why the final interaction at the counter often shapes a guest’s lasting impression more than any operational metric.

Back to Basics (08:15)

“Let’s forget about all the technology. Let’s forget about all the AI.”

Rather than chasing every new trend, Bubbakoo’s Burritos is doubling down on fundamentals that operators can control every day.

Guest Feedback Beyond Online Reviews (11:00)

“They’re not even looking for money. They’re just looking for acknowledgment.”

Chris shares why real-time guest feedback helps restaurants recover experiences, recognize successful teams, and identify operational opportunities before they become larger issues.

Who Deserves an Ovation?

This episode does not include a “Who Deserves an Ovation?” segment. Per your Ovation rules, this section should be omitted because Zack does not ask the question before the episode ends.

Links:

https://www.instagram.com/bubbakoosburritos/?hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-ives-cfe-66b76940/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bubbakoos-burritos/

Transcript

00:00:00:13 – 00:00:24:17

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.

00:00:24:18 – 00:00:46:23

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation. Upcoming. And today. We have a good friend of mine and some of that I really look up to in this industry. Chris Ives, CEO and President of Bubba Burritos. And Chris, you’ve got a really interesting background because not only have you been in the fab space for a long time, but you’ve got the finance and operations background.

00:00:46:23 – 00:01:04:17

Zack Oates

So when you took over the helm as CEO, having that finance background, having that operations background, I mean, really interesting, giving you a great perspective on what’s going on before we jump in. First of all, thank you for joining us on the podcast, man. Yeah man. Absolutely love, love to be here. Appreciate all the stuff that you do for.

00:01:04:17 – 00:01:08:07

Chris Ives

Us as a brand. And I’d love to get back. So happy to chat.

00:01:08:07 – 00:01:24:05

Zack Oates

Yeah. So talk to me about this journey between finance operations, back to finance and now CEO. Like how has that finance background helped you as a CEO? Because obviously operations I get it right. This is an operations business. But talk to you about the finance.

00:01:24:07 – 00:01:39:06

Chris Ives

Yeah it’s been an interesting road. I mean just the level set. I did grow up in a kitchen. So I’ve been in a family run catering business since the age of like eight. I’ve been washing dishes. So that was always my motive not to get into restaurants just because I never saw my parents growing up. But that sort of gave me the ambition to go to school.

00:01:39:06 – 00:01:56:14

Chris Ives

And I just happened to land in accounting, and I started my career at big four. But at the end of the day, it’s obviously the infrastructure of what the business has run on. I’m very keen and very close to the puts and takes of the profitability of what makes operators make money. As more importantly, there are on their investment in our brand.

00:01:56:15 – 00:02:18:02

Chris Ives

So I think I always come with the overall mindset of how is this generating actual dollars, not so much margin to our franchisees. So any discussions that were, you know, we’re you know, we’re session over, we’re constantly just going through it does just make money to our franchisees making the ops and the marketing piece of it. It always just comes down to dollar and cents.

00:02:18:04 – 00:02:35:08

Zack Oates

Yeah. I mean, because what we always say at ovation is like, there’s your pal tells you where you’re at and your guest experience tells you where you’re going and everything that you do in business, every investment that you make is either to help improve the PNL or to help improve the guest experience. And there are some things that do both.

00:02:35:09 – 00:02:53:09

Zack Oates

If there are some things that hurt both. But at the end of the day, it’s like you’ve got to look at both and you’ve got such a keen eye on that guest experience side of things too. How do you look at the guest experience? How does that play a part in understanding the value and the money that’s coming in?

00:02:53:11 – 00:03:09:07

Chris Ives

Yeah, I mean, for me it starts at a high level of what’s the overall experience that’s, you know, is the guest overall happy within the four walls? If they’re happy I’m going in there to see, okay, what is that crew doing differently then the same type of store that’s got the same type of real estate, same type of everything.

00:03:09:08 – 00:03:25:24

Chris Ives

But what is actually driving the business forward? And that sometimes that doesn’t happen from a metric standpoint. You can look at all the KPIs in the world, but you got to go into the shops and really figure out what’s the difference in culture that’s driving it from a guest or, you know, guest perspective. We kick it, scream over metrics, you know, you know, from behind the computer.

00:03:25:24 – 00:03:44:20

Chris Ives

But to really, really understand what’s going on is we’re going out in the field just to figure out why is this franchisee having so much success? 9.99 times out of ten? It always comes down to the culture and the DNA of that franchise operator versus the other operator. You just it’s hard to teach people and some operators get it, some people get it, others don’t.

00:03:44:21 – 00:03:47:16

Chris Ives

And that’s always the hardest part to coach and to challenge people on.

00:03:47:17 – 00:03:53:23

Zack Oates

What do you think? What does that actually look like? Like if you were to give the anatomy of a really good culture, what does that look like that you’ve seen?

00:03:53:24 – 00:04:18:01

Chris Ives

It’s case by case because every culture is different in the store. But I would say at the end of the day, it’s the people within the shop or generally happy to work, whether it’s to the franchisee, as an owner operator or as a manager. If you could get your people to buy in on your overall goals and your transparent and do that servant leadership, it’s not about, hey, you know, we need to save $0.10 on Peko because you’re putting too much peko on, but it’s more like, hey, I intentionally serve more food today.

00:04:18:01 – 00:04:40:09

Chris Ives

Just, you know, to make the guests happy. They were having a rough day and I gave them an extra scoop of protein of chicken, you know on the house. So having that culture of just understanding and being able to adapt to each person because everybody’s different, especially, you know, the kids, you know, the office of the world that are primarily making our bowls and burritos in today’s world, just knowing how to really connect with those folks at their level, it’s just critical.

00:04:40:09 – 00:04:48:22

Chris Ives

And if you don’t, you just get lost and you just have a lot of turnover, and that goes into the overall flywheel of burning money on labor.

00:04:48:24 – 00:05:20:06

Zack Oates

Yeah, I mean, totally. And I love that idea of an extra scoop of protein, because I’m actually surprised that hearing a former CFO and big four accountant talk about an extra scoop of protein, because we all know how those protein costs are going up. But I think it goes back to like this book right behind my head, which is unreasonable hospitality and that whole 95 five of what can you do in that extra 5% because you’re so careful with that first 95% to create a great guest experience, right?

00:05:20:08 – 00:05:20:22

Zack Oates

Absolutely.

00:05:20:23 – 00:05:36:09

Chris Ives

Especially if it’s a first time guess, like if you’re engaging and it’s the first time that they’ve come into, you know, into our four walls and just doing the small things that they’re, you know, they’re picking up on, it goes a long way. And, you know, get that guest back in from a frequency standpoint is everything. So that’s sort of the contribution cost on that, on that one guess.

00:05:36:09 – 00:05:49:22

Chris Ives

But that, you know, again, you could go to five stores and you know, sometimes you could just see five different personalities and you just know right away within the first 10s of walking into the operation, you know, the experience that you’re going to have.

00:05:50:03 – 00:06:03:14

Zack Oates

Yeah. Very true. Right. When you get in and people are like, hey, welcome to Moe’s, as opposed to like welcome to Moe’s, like you, could you feel it? Right. So what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

00:06:03:16 – 00:06:24:13

Chris Ives

Oh, this is I don’t want to say it’s cheesy, but for us it’s still at the end of the day, it’s just a basic, genuine hospitality of speaking to the guests and just not going through the transactional steps of our menu. We are build your own concept. You can have a great employee that could do that. Awesome. But they’re just doing the bare basics of asking them, you know, rice, beans, protein, queso.

00:06:24:14 – 00:06:42:19

Chris Ives

There’s really no engagement. They’re doing it friendly, they’re smiling, but they’re just not having that genuine conversation of, hey, did you watch Next Game last night? You see the win? That was awesome. Or hey, you got a Yankees hat on big Yankees fan. You know love judge. So just coaching on having genuine conversations when they’re paying a premium goes a long way.

00:06:43:00 – 00:06:58:19

Chris Ives

You might not always hit it. Not, you know, ten out of ten on the food quality, but just being a genuine person and getting down to that personal level and personal touch is everything. And that’s very, very hard to execute on. It’s easy, but it’s extremely hard and you need the right person and you got to know your team of where you’re going to put them.

00:06:58:19 – 00:07:10:05

Chris Ives

Because if Susie’s great at the POS, but she’s got a horrible, you know, last touch, that’s your last expression, you know, tough shot your guess is going to have before they leave. So you got to know where you got to put your aces in places.

00:07:10:08 – 00:07:36:10

Zack Oates

That’s a really good point, because one of the things that we hear a lot about is this concept of, you’ve got your last mile that everyone talks about, but really, what about the last three feet when you’re handing something across the counter, when you’re handing something through that drive through window, right. It’s like that last three feet is way more important than anything else, because we were talking about the price of tomatoes before we hit record, and we’re talking about thinking about training and think about all the things that you need to do.

00:07:36:16 – 00:07:56:10

Zack Oates

And if that last three feet interaction is not positive, then every other thousand things that went into that supply chain to get that food to them is kind of is for not right, because it’s about how the guest feels about it. And so when you think about that, what are some tactics that you’ve been using to improve the guest experience?

00:07:56:15 – 00:08:15:00

Chris Ives

Again, we’re getting back to the basics. I mean, that’s been, you know, probably a cliche term over the past few years here, but really it’s let’s forget about all the technology. Let’s forget about all the AI. Let’s just focus on what we can control. We can’t control gas. We can’t control the war. We can’t control the macro. Which war?

00:08:15:02 – 00:08:34:16

Chris Ives

Yeah, exactly. The end of the day, though, what we can control is delivering on, you know, genuine hospitality experience. So just constantly beating it down our throats of literally just making sure that people are coaching, having those prep rallies. But for every shift to make sure that we’re engaging with our guests and thanking them for their business and just having that small talk.

00:08:34:16 – 00:08:52:15

Chris Ives

So, I mean, really, it’s taking away the noise and just focusing on what we can control has been our focus for the past 90 days. We just introduced a value offer, which is something we’ve never done at $10. That’s a very bold value for us, but it’s really with the initiative to get people back into the restaurants to order in-house.

00:08:52:15 – 00:09:08:13

Chris Ives

Forget about the digital side. Let’s go. After getting people back in and showing them what we’re all about, you’re starting to see that more and more. You know, not to go off topic here, but like even like going into Home Depot these days, you have the people coming up to you ask how they can help you. Probably a year or two years ago, people on Home Depot were running away from you.

00:09:08:13 – 00:09:25:01

Chris Ives

They didn’t want to talk to you. So you’re starting to see the brand just really focus on engagement. And that’s something that we just continue to coach on. Stop worrying about the third parties. Stop worrying about the digital side. Every single guest that’s in front of you, let’s focus on them. Let’s win them back and let’s deliver on a great experience.

00:09:25:01 – 00:09:31:05

Chris Ives

So everything that we’re talking about is all about delivering an are three critical standards when it comes to the hospitality.

00:09:31:10 – 00:10:00:16

Zack Oates

I love that and that back to basics is something that you see. Like there’s a couple of bellwethers in the industry, right? You look at Starbucks, you look at McDonald’s, you look at the amount of money that they put into their strategy. And if you kind of align with their customers, you’d be wise to really study that. And Starbucks really going back to the basics, hospitality, McDonald’s really focusing on new innovative items to like, get people in and get them curious again.

00:10:00:16 – 00:10:17:13

Zack Oates

And not saying that you may think as a restaurateur, oh, like, that’s not my customer. But at the end of the day, like, I’ve seen a lot of different kinds of people in McDonald’s now that I got for kids, I go to McDonald’s all the time because the play place and there’s lots of people that go in there.

00:10:17:14 – 00:10:29:08

Zack Oates

I mean, I see some really nice cars in McDonald’s. And so anyway, I just would challenge anyone who says, no, I don’t want to follow them because they’re not my people, you know, occasions man. Right.

00:10:29:10 – 00:10:30:14

Chris Ives

That’s right.

00:10:30:16 – 00:10:35:18

Zack Oates

So as you think about, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask how evasions been helpful for you.

00:10:35:20 – 00:11:00:14

Chris Ives

Yeah. Of course. I mean, I’d been a big, I think when we acquired when Thompson Street acquired us. Ovation was one of my main initiatives to roll out. I just was never, you know, meeting the customer where they are. Emails were a thing of the past. They work. You could probably be a little more creative on what you want to get from them with some of the surveys, but people want fast response and just the overall text messaging opportunity to troubleshoot a poor experience.

00:11:00:14 – 00:11:18:06

Chris Ives

Live the amount of recoveries that you see like, wow, I wasn’t talking to a robot. It they’re not even looking for money. They’re just looking for acknowledgment. So end of the day, ovation gives us I think somebody else might even said it before on one of your podcasts or somewhere else. But it really is like that heartbeat of the business.

00:11:18:10 – 00:11:41:24

Chris Ives

Like really just get a quick sense of, hey, how’s this market doing? Or how’s this store doing every Monday, going in to see what, you know, what the results were last week? Because reviews are always just nobody’s going to really go out of the way to give you a great review. Google is always a lot of negative reviews if they have a bad experience, but to really go after and benchmark a store on great reviews as well as poor reviews, this was really the tool that I thought was the best fit for, you know, for our our brand.

00:11:41:24 – 00:12:04:23

Chris Ives

So again, you know, we live and breathe it every day. We’re now tracking it from a frequency standpoint with another partner. And that’s really what’s important to us to say, okay, is it a pure marketing thing or is it a pure ops thing? The one thing that is a little challenging is people, my team, or whether it’s an operator or a manager, we’re always just focused on the negative reviews and it’s like, okay, you got to sometimes pull yourself out if you have one, okay?

00:12:04:23 – 00:12:22:18

Chris Ives

It could be isolated. Let’s look at it. Let’s not overreact because one person left a scathing, you know, comment through a text message. But that’s just us as humans. That’s how it react. So I just think it’s not being in the stores every single day. It allows us, you know, we’re 150 shops across the, you know, the eastern, you know, eastern seaboard primarily.

00:12:22:18 – 00:12:42:04

Chris Ives

It allows us to see how our guests either love us or, you know, we have opportunities. And that’s what I love so much about the tool, because it’s quick and it allows the guests to give a quick thumbs up or thumbs down. And you’re starting to see some of the the door dashes of the world. They’re starting to even transition to how they, you know, leaving reviews with, you know, that type of feedback tool as well.

00:12:42:04 – 00:12:52:21

Chris Ives

So yeah, overall, it’s been one of my most favorite rollouts, partnerships that we’ve had. That just gives you intangible value of how stores are performing afar.

00:12:52:23 – 00:13:14:12

Zack Oates

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that as I think about the winning side of things, because, you know, you look at the dashboard and that’s why we we ended up putting all of the data and information on the mobile dashboards. That way people can see all the winds that they’re getting outside of just the daily and weekly emails that we put that in the app, and now we’re building out different views of the data.

00:13:14:13 – 00:13:36:09

Zack Oates

So that way you can see the positive things more easily because that is something that’s tricky, right? It’s like you get the instant alerts because that guest who has a problem, that’s an opportunity to recover that guess. And so we don’t want to inundate gems with every single review, because you all get quite a few pieces of feedback that are and the vast majority of them being very positive.

00:13:36:10 – 00:13:50:19

Zack Oates

But it’s like you still got to figure out how to make sure the GM knows they’re doing a good job. So anyway, we got some cool things in the pipeline. And by the way, I’ll I know we got a hard stop here, but once we hit pause on this podcast, I’m going to talk to you about a couple of things that are in the pipeline.

00:13:50:19 – 00:13:55:06

Zack Oates

So but Chris, how do people find and follow you and Bubba?

00:13:55:08 – 00:14:10:22

Chris Ives

Oh, let’s focus on Bubba. You don’t want to follow me barbeques. You can find us at Babbacombe. You know, we’re all over LinkedIn, TikTok, meta. But yeah, you know, hopefully if you haven’t heard of Bubba Coos, you get to try us or look us up. In my opinion. Obviously I’m a little self-assured, but I think it’s one of the best burritos.

00:14:10:23 – 00:14:26:06

Chris Ives

You know, in the space. We’re totally different. We focus on that fusion element, create something different on all of our walls and that, you know, that’s what our mission is, you know, to deliver on a create something different experience, you know, with genuine hospitality, incredible food. So yeah, that’s awesome.

00:14:26:06 – 00:14:52:08

Zack Oates

Well, Chris, for helping crush the burrito market because I sure love Bubba cous. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us on Given Ovation. Thanks for joining us today. If you liked 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.

00:14:52:09 – 00:14:57:24

Zack Oates

If you’d like to learn how we can help you measure and create a better guest experience, visit us at ovation.