Anthony Bambino, founder and CEO of 3Natives, joins Give an Ovation to share how he grew a 900-square-foot juice bar into a thriving restaurant brand with over 50 locations. He explains how slow, intentional growth, guest connection, and empowered employees have built lasting loyalty—and why saying “I’m sorry” is a business superpower.

From SoCal Inspiration to Florida Startup (01:00)

Anthony shares how a small California bowl shop sparked his vision for something different in Florida.

“I just wanted to pay rent. Then seven months in, I knew we were onto something.”

Scaling Without the Stress (03:33)

By growing deliberately and avoiding outside investment, Anthony built a brand that reflects his values.

“We want people to take a 15-minute oasis from their day. That’s what 3Natives is about.”

Promoting From Within (04:52)

Anthony highlights how his development head started as a dishwasher—and why that matters.

“It’s really hard to bring in outside people and keep your culture intact.”

The Heart of Guest Experience (07:12)

For Anthony, success starts with empowered, happy employees.

“People buy from who they like. Customer service is everything.”

Elevating Through Recovery (10:02)

Mistakes happen—but what you do next builds loyalty.

“If you handle it right, they won’t even remember the error. They’ll just remember you cared.”

Why Reviews Don’t Tell the Whole Story (11:15)

Anthony breaks down the imbalance of review culture—and how to flip it.

“The 2 bad experiences leave a review. The 198 great ones? Crickets.”

Hospitality Advice That Applies to Life (14:50)

Anthony reflects on how apology, humility, and kindness win in restaurants—and at home.

“It’s hard to suck up your pride, but so much easier to say, ‘I’m sorry. Let me fix it.’”

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-bambino-a60b45315/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/3natives/

https://www.instagram.com/3natives/

Transcript

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:23:06

Zack Oates

Welcome to give an Ovation the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast. I’m your host, Zach 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 feedback and operations platform built for multi-unit restaurants. It gives you all the answers you need with none of the annoying questions for your guests.

00:00:23:07 – 00:00:51:17

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today we have a gentleman who’s got a name and a face right out of the movies. His name is Anthony Bambino or as is known to call them, Tiny Tony. I’m kidding about that. By the way, he didn’t have a no no. Apparently no one ever calls it Tony, but he is the CEO and founder of Three Natives, which interestingly, began as a 900 square foot juice bar in Florida and now as over 40 locations around the country.

00:00:51:23 – 00:00:58:22

Zack Oates

With a whole menu of better for you food and drink and bowls. And Anthony, welcome to the podcast, man.

00:00:58:24 – 00:01:00:21

Anthony Bambino

Thanks, Zach. Excited to be here.

00:01:00:23 – 00:01:14:08

Zack Oates

And truly though, your name is just legendary. I mean, when I saw that I was going to have a podcast with Anthony Bambino. I’m like, I better call in some back up here. But it’s great to have you on. I’m sure you get that all the time, though.

00:01:14:10 – 00:01:17:13

Anthony Bambino

Yeah. Thank you. Anthony Michael Bambino. Good Irish boy.

00:01:17:17 – 00:01:23:21

Zack Oates

Oh, Mike, I, I love that Mike Anthony. All right, here we go.

00:01:23:23 – 00:01:24:24

Anthony Bambino

So tell us.

00:01:24:24 – 00:01:34:08

Zack Oates

A little bit about three natives. What inspired you to start it. And I know it was like Southern California. Were you living there or were you just traveling through there?

00:01:34:08 – 00:01:55:02

Anthony Bambino

I was just traveling through there. My best friend lived there. He went to the University of San Diego, and he worked at a small little ball shop that’s unfortunately no longer there, but it was admitted beach. I just kind of use that as my hub. I, I was a traveling sales rep, and I would sit there with my laptop and my cell phone, and in between calls and emails, you know, just watching customers come in and out.

00:01:55:04 – 00:02:20:02

Anthony Bambino

And this little bottle shop he worked at, they had like an extensive coffee and pastry menu, but nobody was coming in for the coffee and pastries. They had one at a bar and people were in and out all day long having this one. Also, after working for two years and just kind of seeing, I guess, the trend and way people in Florida were viewing food and health and wellness, I made a decision.

00:02:20:02 – 00:02:41:04

Anthony Bambino

This is something that I really wanted to try on my own, and luckily at the time and how young I was, if it didn’t work, I would have enough time to rebound and go on to something else in life. And if it did work, I think Florida was a great place to really roll these out. As for the longest time, Florida just had greasy spoon diners and a chain barbecue restaurants.

00:02:41:04 – 00:02:47:24

Anthony Bambino

And, and I’m going to make fun of my Italian heritage. But really bad Italian food. Yeah. So it’s kind of food.

00:02:47:24 – 00:02:49:21

Zack Oates

Bagels. Yeah. Bagels.

00:02:50:02 – 00:02:55:14

Anthony Bambino

Yep yep yep. Them good bagels. So it was a no brainer to give it a shot.

00:02:55:16 – 00:03:08:15

Zack Oates

And when you started it 900ft² what was your vision. Was it like, hey, I want this to be a successful location or were you thinking in the beginning, I want this to be a franchised nationwide brand?

00:03:08:17 – 00:03:27:03

Anthony Bambino

No. At first, because it was such a risk and so new. I just wanted to pay rent. Yeah. So if we could pay rent, then it was, hey, we could go to the next step after our, I’d say first seven months. That’s when it really hit me like, wow, we’re on to something. I want to try this again.

00:03:27:03 – 00:03:30:11

Anthony Bambino

And then we started looking for our second location about seven months in.

00:03:30:15 – 00:03:32:14

Zack Oates

Wow, that’s really fast.

00:03:32:16 – 00:03:59:07

Anthony Bambino

Very fast, very nerve wracking. Probably pushed my body to the limit because as most people who have done anything with a multi-unit, you cannot duplicate yourself. So you got to learn really, really, really quick how to be a leader, how to delegate, how to get people to respond. It was tough. It was a very challenging. I would say 6 to 8 months in my life, but very thankful we did it, because then it turned into a third location and then turned into franchising.

00:03:59:09 – 00:04:07:13

Zack Oates

In the last two years, you’ve doubled your footprint. So talk to me about the challenges that you’ve experienced in that growth.

00:04:07:15 – 00:04:27:14

Anthony Bambino

So I would say three native’s mantra. We’ve kind of like slow and steady wins the race. There’s a lot of the brands out there that have expanded really, really fast. A lot of other brands, they’ve already tapped into the private equity funds to grow faster. Even though our franchise I still look at us as a very mom and pop brand, and my father, the only owners we have.

00:04:27:14 – 00:04:53:08

Anthony Bambino

No. No way. Yeah, there’s no outside investment. There’s no board meetings. This is still a brand that if someone is involved, your voice is heard. If you look at our menu, a lot of the stuff that comes on our menu, especially LTL items, that all comes from franchise feedback. So the one thing I will say with us in the last two years when we, you know, we doubled our size, which there was about 16 stores that we added.

00:04:53:08 – 00:05:11:24

Anthony Bambino

My team has been with me for nine years. It was not nearly as daunting as a task as going from 1 to 2 or from 2 or 3. It just felt right. We’re all ready for it. We were like, we’re ready for the next step. Let’s now add a couple corporate stores, and here, let’s add some more franchise and let’s continue to expand throughout Florida.

00:05:12:01 – 00:05:33:17

Anthony Bambino

And we I think out of that tranche of stores we did, we’re opening the last 3 to 4, which will put us over 50 stores. And we’re now back to where we were two years ago, where signing a bunch of Eloy sign and leases attract the new franchisees looking at new corporate stores to, the goal is to go from 50 to 70 5 to 80.

00:05:33:19 – 00:05:52:06

Zack Oates

I love that. That’s awesome. And the fact that you’ve done it slow and steady, the fact that you’ve been building and learning as you go, as opposed to when you get a lot of money, a lot of times it’s easier to make the mistakes that you would learn at a less risky time of the business.

00:05:52:08 – 00:06:10:05

Anthony Bambino

100%. And I think one of the things I started, Three Natives is I wanted a healthy outlet for people on the go, and stress is a big factor in everyone’s life. And there was a big thing for us is we could go out there, we could raise a bunch of money, we could have a bunch of people sitting on a board telling us what we need to do.

00:06:10:05 – 00:06:29:16

Anthony Bambino

But at the end of the day, it’s noise and it’s stress, and we just want to be able to manage having a healthy business where people can come take their little 15 minute oasis from their day to day. And for us, you know, peace of mind, that’s the same people that work for us, their family. They’ve been with us from day one, so we don’t want to overboard anybody.

00:06:29:16 – 00:06:47:09

Anthony Bambino

It’s also, once you have a culture, I will say it’s really, really hard to hire people from the outside that have maybe had much more experience at another level or at another restaurant, another concept, and then bring them into your culture. So we found it’s easier to just grow organically, even on our corporate level. It’s all people that have started.

00:06:47:09 – 00:07:02:23

Anthony Bambino

One of the guys was Adam I development. He was a dishwasher when he hired. Then he went to delivery drive from delivery driver to running a store. It just so I would say, there is a little bit of a struggle to try to bring some outside money in when everything we’ve done has just been so mom and pops and grassroots.

00:07:02:23 – 00:07:12:10

Anthony Bambino

But with that being said, same store sales continue to grow, so I do think there is a lot to be said about just focusing at one thing and being very, very good at it.

00:07:12:16 – 00:07:26:24

Zack Oates

Yeah. Love that. And one of the things that obviously you’re very good at is your guest experience. I mean, that’s what it’s all boils down to. So I’d love to understand your philosophy and guest experience. What do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

00:07:27:01 – 00:07:46:07

Anthony Bambino

So I’m a firm believer, even though we’re doing a podcast, I had made a joke beforehand. You had asked me a question and I’m like, I’m sorry, I don’t have social media. I’m kind of a caveman with technology, so I’m the biggest believer that people buy from who they like. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a restaurant, whatever industry you’re in.

00:07:46:09 – 00:08:07:14

Anthony Bambino

So as we’ve grown, unfortunately, I can no longer be the face of the restaurant, which I was for the first eight years. But now my managers and my staff, they understand that their presence is the first thing a customer comes in before they even get a bite of the food they’re eating with their eyes, and they’re eating with their nose first.

00:08:07:14 – 00:08:34:12

Anthony Bambino

So customer service, is it just everything? And in this space there is so much competition. And it’s funny. We get franchisees who get a little nervous. They’re like, oh, this brand’s opening up or this brand was here first. And I’m like, guys, competition is a good thing. People want quick service, fast, healthy food. That’s the space brand. Now you just got to when people with kindness doing that little bit extra that our competitors aren’t as what separates us.

00:08:34:14 – 00:08:56:22

Zack Oates

And it shows. I mean you’re online reviews are great. You’ve got some stores that you know, over 100 reviews in 4.9, but 4.8, 4.6, like, you’ve got customers that love your brand. And I think that goes to show that you’re really putting the guests first. And I think that’s really powerful. And what would you recommend to any restaurant owners that are looking to improve their guest experience?

00:08:56:22 – 00:09:00:03

Zack Oates

What are some things that they should be looking at? Doing some tactics.

00:09:00:05 – 00:09:18:21

Anthony Bambino

Number one thing, and this is the number one thing I tell my franchisees, you have to invest in your employees because again, your employees are the face of your business. So if you want a better customer experience, you have to give your employees a better experience, because when they come to work happy and energetic and excited to be there, that radiates right to your customers.

00:09:18:23 – 00:09:39:18

Anthony Bambino

When they come in and they feel like they’re getting gypped on their pay or their hours aren’t what they should be. When the guest is there, all of that gets spewed onto them indirectly, but everyone picks up on that energy. So my biggest thing and it’s very, very easy to do with corporate stores. It’s harder to do with franchising because it is their business.

00:09:39:18 – 00:10:02:04

Anthony Bambino

But at the end of the day, our managers, they are the face of our stores, the staff members are the face of art. You have to empower them to do what’s right and to make that customer rave, because we all know and 2025 everybody knows what I was able is now. It’s not that this item that was there was sought after because it was so new and unique.

00:10:02:08 – 00:10:21:17

Anthony Bambino

There’s a lot of places that opened up you got to be able to offer and I say able, but you can have that and incredible experience to go with that food. And that’s what we do. We empower our employees. They go above and beyond, make someone’s day, make it excited. I don’t know if you saw this, but I find this really, really amazing Starbucks, which is the behemoth in the industry.

00:10:21:19 – 00:10:42:21

Anthony Bambino

They’re focusing now on handwritten notes and ceramic mugs to go back to what Starbucks was, which I think if you have a brand that’s that big and their CEO is saying, guys, this is where the focus is, every other brand doesn’t matter if you’re a mom and pop, you need to follow customer services. The difference maker right now.

00:10:42:23 – 00:11:09:06

Zack Oates

In this day and age, we cannot afford to have somebody walk out of our door not to come back. We have to focus on that recovery and that retention. Because if you make and competition is so steep right now and there’s so many people giving discounts that if you mess up, it’s really easy to fall out of the rotation of someone’s top five places that they go to.

00:11:09:06 – 00:11:15:12

Zack Oates

And when you fall out, it could take a really long time, if ever, for you to get back in that rotation.

00:11:15:12 – 00:11:37:11

Anthony Bambino

It’s very long and we’ve noticed too. And this going back to your reviews, say, for example, a store does 200 transactions a day and two of them are really bad. Chances are you’re going to get a review for those 198 that went spectacular. It’s really hard to get somebody to take that extra 30s to write a review for you.

00:11:37:13 – 00:11:54:19

Zack Oates

It’s a whole concept of the vending machine, right? If two candy bars come out of the vending machine, I’m like, oh wow, that’s really cool. If the candy bar that I paid for came out, I got what I paid for. If the candy bar doesn’t come out. Anthony, I know that you’re calling your cousins. You’re breaking some kneecaps of those vending machine people.

00:11:54:24 – 00:12:01:15

Zack Oates

It’s a dollar, but it’s not a dollar. It’s the principle. Right? And that’s exactly how it is in restaurants.

00:12:01:17 – 00:12:30:02

Anthony Bambino

100%. And as things are just everything’s more expensive in every space. And customers really value their hard earned money. And that’s again, that goes back to customer service. We offer an amazing product. I’m not going to take anything away from what we offer, but more importantly, we offer great customer service. And that allows you and I tell this, the new franchisees, if you messed someone’s order up, Zach, if you came in and you ordered a tuna wrap and I gave you a chicken salad wrap, you’re going to be upset at first.

00:12:30:04 – 00:12:50:05

Anthony Bambino

But if we handle it and go above and beyond, we give you a gift card. We can’t. The meal. Hey, I’m so sorry for the mistake. You’re not even gonna realize a mistake was made. You’re going to come back. It’s like, oh, no, we’re it’s just going above and beyond and doing what’s right. And I think a lot of times people get stuck in the day to day motions and they forget the little simple, hey, how are you?

00:12:50:05 – 00:12:55:16

Anthony Bambino

How is your food? Can I get you anything else? It just goes so much further into the customer.

00:12:55:18 – 00:13:14:10

Zack Oates

I totally agree with that, Anthony. And the way that I look at it is what’s written on my hat. Do good and eat well, right? And that’s the whole concept of let’s be kind to people, let’s hire people that are kind. Let’s be kind to those people. Because as we say in this podcast all the time, the guest experience cannot exceed the employee experience.

00:13:14:15 – 00:13:39:15

Zack Oates

And so you make sure that your team members really feel empowered to do good things. And I think that that’s amazing what you’re doing. Love the brand, love the philosophy. Totally agree on that recovery piece. What we found in our data is that a guest who has a negative experience and is with proper service recovery is 24 times more valuable than your average guest.

00:13:39:17 – 00:14:04:08

Zack Oates

I mean, that’s bananas. And we see people walk out the door who have a bad experience and we’re like, oh, well, it’s like, no, no, no. Imagine 24 people just walked out. And then imagine that there’s 30 people who don’t come in because of that negative review they posted. So now you’re losing actually 50 customers and thousands and thousands of dollars because you’re not focused on that individual.

00:14:04:08 – 00:14:07:02

Zack Oates

And I think that’s amazing. And I love that that you’re doing that.

00:14:07:02 – 00:14:13:12

Anthony Bambino

Anthony and adds, you know, it’s really, really simple to say, I’m sorry I messed up. Let me fix this for you.

00:14:13:14 – 00:14:17:02

Zack Oates

Yeah. I mean, is your pride worth 50 customers?

00:14:17:04 – 00:14:36:02

Anthony Bambino

And then I will tell you this. And this is for anybody who’s starting their own business because it’s your baby. You’re emotional. You care about things that you probably shouldn’t care about. You’re like, oh, this is going to eat into my food costs. And at the end of the day, having somebody walk out of your restaurant upset is going to hurt you more than making another item.

00:14:36:04 – 00:14:50:07

Anthony Bambino

Yes. The joy that you bring somebody, the anger that you have taken away, it goes so much farther. And it’s it’s one of those things it’s hard to suck up your pride, but so much easier. Say, I’m sorry we made a mistake. Let me fix this right away.

00:14:50:09 – 00:15:01:15

Zack Oates

Hey, man. Oh, man. Anthony. Love it. By the way, for those listening, just let’s all remember that’s not just good business advice. That’s good life advice and really good marriage advice.

00:15:01:15 – 00:15:04:02

Anthony Bambino

And I said yes.

00:15:04:04 – 00:15:32:21

Zack Oates

And quite frankly, it’s good parenting advice. I recently read an article about parenting and this whole concept of service recovery paradox. It’s not just in business, but they found that marriages and even kids parent child relationships, if you go and you mess up and you apologize to your child, even a five year old kid, if you say, Marty, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled at you, your relationship is going to get stronger.

00:15:32:23 – 00:15:47:17

Zack Oates

And now we all know that. That doesn’t mean that we should go and yell at kids to have the apology, but it means that we’re humans. And as that happens, show your humanity. And that creates that connection and that creates that love.

00:15:47:19 – 00:15:59:01

Anthony Bambino

You’ll love this. My wife, she’s pregnant with our first. So I’m saying Mazel tov. Thank you, thank you. I’m saying I’m sorry a lot, right? Yeah. I don’t even know what I do it, but I’m so sorry.

00:15:59:02 – 00:16:12:06

Zack Oates

Sorry. You know what you did, Anthony? You know, anyway. Well, Anthony, who is someone that we should be following in the restaurant industry.

00:16:12:08 – 00:16:31:06

Anthony Bambino

So I want to give a shout out to Melissa. She’s the general manager of IBO and the book behind you, Unreasonable Hospitality. She gave to me about two years ago. My wife makes fun of me. She says Anthony only reads chapter one. I have a whole bunch of books and it’s hard for me. I won’t tell you this unreasonable hospitality.

00:16:31:06 – 00:16:53:14

Anthony Bambino

I’ve read it twice. I’ve cried at the end of it both times. I think it doesn’t matter if you’re a five star restaurant or you’re small mom and pop, right? The stuff that he talks about, about going above and beyond. If you can switch your mindset to give the customer whatever they want. And again, in that book they go to an extreme, which is amazing.

00:16:53:16 – 00:17:14:01

Anthony Bambino

If your customer experience is through the roof and they will keep coming back and they’ll bring their families in and they’ll bring their friends in, and then you are now a part of their life. And that was one of the big things with Melissa. She said, Anthony, I’ve watched people come in after their baptism with their newborn to, first communion, to, graduating middle school, to graduating high school.

00:17:14:01 – 00:17:24:01

Anthony Bambino

She’s like, we are a part of these people’s lives. So once I read that book, it was another way for me to just, hey, customer service is everything.

00:17:24:02 – 00:17:40:11

Zack Oates

Love that. And I would encourage everyone to go to our podcast and go check out the episode I did with Will Guidara. I have to admit, I was total fan blowing out and it was probably the worst interview I’ve ever done, but it was such an honor to have him on the podcast, so go give that a listen.

00:17:40:11 – 00:17:50:21

Zack Oates

If you’re not familiar with the book, go buy it. I love that shout out, Anthony. Now how do people find and follow you? But as you said, you don’t rely on social media a whole lot. So maybe three natives.

00:17:51:00 – 00:18:09:07

Anthony Bambino

Yeah, we have Facebook, we have Instagram. I am new to LinkedIn, so if you want to connect you can find me at LinkedIn. I believe it’s at Anthony Bambino. And then our social media handles. It’s all three natives. Very very easy to find. And I’m excited. Thank you for having us. This was a great podcast.

00:18:09:08 – 00:18:28:18

Zack Oates

Well hey, you made it great, Anthony. I’m just a microphone. You’re spit in the wisdom. And for giving us a masterclass on creating a great guest experience from the Great Bambino. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us and giving ovation. Thanks for joining us today. If you like this episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite place to listen.

00:18:28:24 – 00:18:45:15

Zack Oates

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 Ofcom.