Avery Ward, CEO of Little Italy Ristorante, joins Give an Ovation to share his journey of transforming a small, family-owned pizza place into a multi-location restaurant group. From his start as an Apple Genius to running a thriving business, Avery explains how staying true to the company’s roots while embracing innovation has been key to their success. He also talks about the power of content creation through the Slice of Life series, a behind-the-scenes look at their business that fosters a stronger connection with both employees and customers.

Creating a Family-Oriented Culture (3:00)

“We’ve always focused on building strong relationships with our customers and employees. It’s what keeps the heart of the business alive.” – Avery Ward

Avery shares how Little Italy has maintained a family atmosphere even as the business grows, emphasizing the importance of relationships with customers and team members.

Leveraging Content for Community Engagement (6:12)

“We want our customers to know the story behind their food, from the ingredients to the people making it. Slice of Life allows us to show them just that.” – Avery Ward

Through Slice of Life, Avery showcases not only their restaurant’s operations but also the hardworking partners and suppliers who contribute to their success, highlighting the power of storytelling.

Building a Brand Beyond Pizza (9:45)

“It’s not just about serving great food, it’s about creating experiences that customers will remember and want to share.” – Avery Ward

Avery discusses how Little Italy isn’t just about the food, but about creating lasting memories for customers through exceptional hospitality and community involvement.

The Role of Innovation in Scaling (12:30)

“Automation and technology help us keep things consistent as we grow, but it’s the people who make the biggest impact on our success.” – Avery Ward

Avery explains how technology and automation have been integral in maintaining consistency while scaling, from their pizza-making process to streamlining customer service.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (16:00)

“A big shoutout to David Scott Peters and Matt Platt for being key figures in both our operations and marketing. They’ve really helped us elevate our game.” – Avery Ward

Avery gives a shoutout to David Scott Peters and Matt Platt for their invaluable guidance in restaurant operations and marketing.

Thanks, Avery!

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/averyward/

https://www.youtube.com/@LittleItalyGroveport

https://www.instagram.com/littleitalygroveport/

https://www.littleitalygroveport.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:23:16

Zack Oates

Welcome to another episode of Give and 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 insights you need with none of the annoying surveys for your guests.

00:00:23:17 – 00:00:47:10

Zack Oates

Learn more at Ovation Up A.com. Today we have a hero of mine, someone who not only is in the pizza industry, but somebody who wears it on their sleeve. The man with the shirt. Avery Ward. He went from Apple Genius to CEO of Little Italy restaurant. He’s also the creator of Slice of Life series and just Digital Master.

00:00:47:10 – 00:00:52:06

Zack Oates

You do such incredible videos and content, and it’s the honor to have you on Avery.

00:00:52:07 – 00:01:04:12

Avery Ward

Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for the kind words. I love that you recognize what you’ve been working on over the last few years. It’s been a lot of growth, a lot of hard days, but makes it all worth it to come talk to great people like you and thanks for the shirt inspo.

00:01:04:14 – 00:01:28:04

Zack Oates

So there’s a pizza neon sign behind my head that Matt Plop gave to me and Matt. He saw my shirt. He liked it. You work with Matt. You saw the picture of the shirt. You liked it. So Matt found a guy, and you now make your own custom pizza shirts with drippy pizza and pepperonis and your logo on it, and they look awesome.

00:01:28:06 – 00:01:34:18

Zack Oates

And it’s super cool, man, because I think that it makes a lot more sense for you to be rocking a pizza shirt than me.

00:01:34:20 – 00:01:47:10

Avery Ward

Well, I mean, I saw you and I was like, man, that’s because. So, Matt, you know, he talks about wearing your brand, right? He’s always like, you know, you got to live the brand. You got to wear the brand. You got to be able to talk about the brand. His thing is orange, you know, he’s got the orange cars.

00:01:47:11 – 00:02:04:02

Avery Ward

He’s got the orange shirts and the orange shorts and everything’s orange. And I’m like, man, I need something like that. So I was on the search for probably six or so months, and he was doing a podcast. I think he was like, that’s it, a pizza shirt. That’s it. And this guy stole it is a pizza. And then I learned that you didn’t have a pizza shop.

00:02:04:02 – 00:02:10:03

Avery Ward

And I was like, the pizza shirts. It I can wear it. It’s open. It’s free game.

00:02:10:04 – 00:02:27:22

Zack Oates

That’s. Yeah. Because they’re done. They don’t make the pizza shirts anymore. And so it’s great that you did your own new and improved version of it. But I want to talk. Avery, I know that we’re. Maybe we’ll see you have the time. He works out on this because we just have so much to talk about. I want to talk about guest experience, but first I want to talk about content.

00:02:28:02 – 00:02:49:09

Zack Oates

There’s a lot of restaurants out there who are, like, afraid to make content. And I feel like there’s very few who are just crushing the game. You’re doing it, Shawn Wall, chef is doing it. There’s a few others, but what is the benefit? Like, have you seen more business by doing social media?

00:02:49:11 – 00:03:19:05

Avery Ward

This is one of the hardest questions to answer, right? I get asked that question so often of what’s the value that it brings you? And it’s truly immeasurable. I can’t necessarily translate the work that we’re doing online to a dollar value that that’s helped us grow. And everybody’s always like, you know, they hear my story and they see that we went from this $500,000 a year pizza place home while mom and pop to this $5.5 million restaurant location, which is soon to be a restaurant group with multiple locations in the pipeline plan.

00:03:19:07 – 00:03:40:22

Avery Ward

And we’re going to be a $24 million restaurant group in ten years or less. And so everybody sees that growth and they’re like, how are you doing it? And I can’t give you an answer because there’s a hundred thousand things that we’ve got on our plate that we’re working on to make that happen, right. And social media and our content game is just one of those strategies in that pipeline that allow us to get to that end result.

00:03:40:24 – 00:04:00:02

Avery Ward

But what I can measure is the people that come in our store and have a conversation with me going, hey, I saw what you guys did last, or I saw where my salad comes from and the lettuce sits on my plate. That was crazy to see how that’s grown. And those are what’s measurable, what’s also measurable that I never anticipated.

00:04:00:02 – 00:04:15:12

Avery Ward

The Slice of life series would bring us our culture change. We’ve always had a really good culture, and I’ve always known the restaurant culture that I wanted to have for my space. I didn’t want to have a workplace where employees would grab the door handle and sigh before they open that back door to come to work that day, right?

00:04:15:18 – 00:04:37:22

Avery Ward

I always knew the type of workplace I wanted to have, but I always struggled getting everybody in my business, and especially as we grew from a point of 12 employees to now 95, getting everybody in the company to understand not only where we’ve come from, where we’re going, but more importantly, the work that they don’t understand their managers and leaders do every day to make this place better.

00:04:37:24 – 00:04:54:15

Avery Ward

And so slice of life is quite literally allowed us to showcase that to them in a visual way, where they’re seeing the work that goes in week after week, and the growth and the change in front of their face in the restaurant. But also they’re seeing the story of how those changes come to life. And it’s been a really powerful story.

00:04:54:15 – 00:05:13:22

Zack Oates

So and it’s not they don’t just like sell pizzas, but they sell vision, they sell engagement, they sell loyalty. And I love that you’re sharing these stories, not just of the food, but of the origin of the food and of your story, too, of like the origins of the ideas and stuff. It’s powerful 1,000%.

00:05:13:22 – 00:05:40:17

Avery Ward

And, you know, the thing about slice of Life is we’ve been going at this for a little over a year now. I think we’re up to 60 episodes last week. It’s not about just us. It truly pulls back the cork curtains to allow us to showcase our team members and the great, great work that they’re doing, behind the scenes of our kitchen life and the work that goes into making the dish community involvement, what we’re doing in our community and, different organizations that we partner with on a regular basis.

00:05:40:19 – 00:06:03:07

Avery Ward

But then also my favorite part are industry people like yourself. People like the guy who makes my sub buns to the company who makes my lettuce. I want to showcase the hard work that they do that goes into that piece of lettuce. Because sometimes people get a plate of food and they don’t really realize how much work, love and care goes into each ingredient on that plate.

00:06:03:09 – 00:06:23:10

Avery Ward

And we’ve been able to take the slice of life into some amazing places, and we have some great episodes coming up in the next few months where we go in to some food service partners of ours and show the process, show the people that go in to that bun that lettuce, that pepperoni, that sausage, all of the things.

00:06:23:12 – 00:06:40:02

Avery Ward

There’s a people and there’s a process, and people are really curious about that. But we’re ultimately curious about it because we know that we’ve picked the right customers for us to serve, but also the right vendor partners yourself. And there’s people behind these brands that we work with, and we want to share the amazing things that they’re doing.

00:06:40:03 – 00:06:41:04

Zack Oates

I love that.

00:06:41:06 – 00:07:04:15

Avery Ward

And so last piece on that, our community, because we’re doing all that, they get to feel a part of our story and they don’t just yeah, dude, they see not only our values, but the care and the detail that we put into everything that we do. And that’s been immeasurable. So how do I measure it? I can’t, but the conversations that I have and the work that we’re doing with Slice of Life that’s measurable and it’s beautiful to see.

00:07:04:17 – 00:07:21:02

Zack Oates

It’s like Gary Vee, one of the things that he tells a story about his head of marketing who was like, what’s the ROI of a follower? What’s the ROI of a follower? And he finally goes to her and says, what’s the ROI of your mom? How do you just put a value on all those little things that she did for you?

00:07:21:03 – 00:07:45:21

Zack Oates

What is the ROI of a fan? What’s the ROI of the media? Some things are hard to track, but in aggregate they create a brand. They create a experience that helps people feel connected. And when you feel connected, that is what drives true loyalty. And so I think that what you’re doing is incredible. What would you say to anyone who’s worried about creating content for their restaurant?

00:07:45:21 – 00:07:48:21

Zack Oates

Not sure if they could do it or if they should do it.

00:07:48:23 – 00:08:07:17

Avery Ward

Get uncomfortable. Every business has an evolution and a revolution. The revolution is that we need to do something where at this point we realize there’s opportunity, and then you get to that point of an evolution. It’s like, oh, we did that. We look back and we go, oh, I can’t believe we were struggling with that right where we were at 60 weeks ago.

00:08:07:17 – 00:08:26:21

Avery Ward

A slice of life. It turned into this. It was this little fun side idea, side story, this I always wanted to be a TV personality. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a weatherman. I was no. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s bad. It’s my dad. When he pulls out the VHS, man, stuff goes wild. I literally set up a VHS recorder on a tripod.

00:08:26:23 – 00:08:38:17

Avery Ward

And there was a blizzard in 2008 that white through Ohio. And I was literally outside, like, the wind was going wild. I was holding on to my jacket and I was filming the weather at like, no. Oh yeah, it’s stupid.

00:08:38:17 – 00:08:40:08

Zack Oates

Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

00:08:40:09 – 00:09:01:02

Avery Ward

Nathan, my creative marketing director, saw that. He was like, dude, you’re meant for the camera. And I had done some other things with other organizations. You know that one of the highlights and stuff. But the first episode was called Avery Goes Back to School and we went to the local school. They wanted me to come in and talk to some middle school students about career path and stuff like that, and we filmed it and I watched the episode.

00:09:01:02 – 00:09:28:13

Avery Ward

I was like, dude, this is killer. And he’s like, we could do this every week. And I was like, let’s do it. And so that week forward, man, we have not missed a week. And it’s no way I’ll tell you, it’s 2024 was over and we did a recap on 24 and just look back on what we did that year because we started it in around January and it was so amazing to watch that video and quite literally see my whole life flashed before my eyes over the course of the year and all the wins and all the struggles and just it was a beautiful thing to watch, truly.

00:09:28:13 – 00:09:29:09

Avery Ward

It was.

00:09:29:11 – 00:09:50:22

Zack Oates

But what great advice. Get uncomfortable, flip that camera around and hit record and just do stuff. We were talking right before this podcast about like recording equipment and how when I started this podcast, I literally didn’t even have a microphone. And then now I’m trying to do like in-person podcast. And so, Avery, you were the one who showed me the mics that you use.

00:09:50:22 – 00:10:07:20

Zack Oates

So I bought those same mics and then I don’t have a camera yet for that stuff, but I’m using my laptop. It’s just a matter of like, just start with what you got. Doesn’t need to be perfect, doesn’t need to be polished. But what it does need to be is consistent and try different things until you feel something that fills your niche.

00:10:07:23 – 00:10:31:23

Avery Ward

Critical right there. It’s restaurant owners all the time. They see all this content online, whether it’s from amazing coaches that are out there like David Scott Peters, great friend of mine and awesome guy. But people like that can quite literally change your life if you let them. And you take their advice and make change. But sometimes people hear individuals online talking, or maybe it’s me right now and they hear all the things we’re talking about, like, I could never do that.

00:10:31:23 – 00:10:49:05

Avery Ward

It’s just another thing in their bank deposit in the back of their head. Oh, I want to work on that. Oh, I need to do that. Oh, man, I suck at that. Oh, I gotta do this. But if you just keep letting those things bank up and stack up behind you and you don’t ever start to chip away at them or document them somewhere and going, oh, I need to do that, I’m going to do that.

00:10:49:05 – 00:11:07:17

Avery Ward

And not that you need to, you’re going to and so start tracking. You’re running what I call issues list. You’re tracking your issues that are happening in your business, whether they’re a short term issue or long term issue. And you’re creating in your head a process that you can go down to fix it right. And you just got to start doing it and put in the work to do it.

00:11:07:17 – 00:11:20:13

Avery Ward

You can’t give up. So when it doesn’t work, you identify how you make it better or how you fix it right. And it’s not just like anything didn’t work. Yes, I tried it. No will work. You just got to do it.

00:11:20:15 – 00:11:39:12

Zack Oates

Yeah. I look at this podcast, probably our first 50 episodes. It was like me and my grandma who listened to them. Right. And now we’re closing in on 400 episodes and you learn how to do it, and you learn how to get better and what works and what doesn’t. But it’s about that constant evolution and changing and trying new things.

00:11:39:12 – 00:11:46:14

Zack Oates

And. Yeah. So tell me about your philosophy of guest experience. How do you create a great guest experience?

00:11:46:14 – 00:12:13:23

Avery Ward

Yeah. So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and I’ll be very brief with this. We’re a 45 year long legacy restaurant. Start with my grandparents in the 60s is a grocery store. They were business owners at heart and always wanted to venture into owning their own grocery store, because my grandpa was a produce manager and they got this great offer traveling through town to purchase this business $18,000 and ran their own grocery store for almost 20 years.

00:12:13:23 – 00:12:36:23

Avery Ward

And my grandmother’s little side gig of love of cooking Italian specialties, meatballs, pastas, how you know, scratch made noodles and dressings and all that stuff became what people came for rather than their grocery store. So they’re coming to the grocery store to get groceries. Yet leaving with grandma to go container clamshells of food for dinner that night. So that’s kind of where the light bulb in their head went.

00:12:37:00 – 00:12:52:17

Avery Ward

We got something here. And so they purchased a little piece of shop down the road. And kind of the rest is history. So literally, my dad ran that business for 40 years, and my dad was a very much so do it yourself, know it all, got a handle on everything or else it’s not. Yeah. Yeah right. Right. I grew up in that business, you know.

00:12:52:17 – 00:13:16:07

Avery Ward

So my grandma’s house, which she raised, my dad and his three other siblings in, was inches away from the grocery store, which then turned into the restaurant. So summers and after school I was at grandma’s house. But I’d always end up in the restaurant with my dad. And so I watched a lot of things that he did well and I watched a lot of things that he didn’t do well that I knew I didn’t want to replicate.

00:13:16:07 – 00:13:38:19

Avery Ward

And so I never wanted to be in the family restaurant business. Like you said, I worked for Apple for about five and a half years. That was my passion. But you say what makes us unique? And I think what makes us unique is going back to the foundations of how we got started. And that was that. My grandma and my dad and my grandpa did really, really well, was building connections in this community.

00:13:38:21 – 00:13:58:16

Avery Ward

So they established really great relationships with their clientele, so much so that those people considered them like family and went and told the whole world about this little grocery store and or our little pizza shop that you got to check out in Groveport, Ohio. So when I came back to the family business, it wasn’t because I wanted to.

00:13:58:16 – 00:14:20:19

Avery Ward

It was kind of a necessity. My dad had a brain aneurysm in 2015. He wasn’t able to do his same level of doing it all any longer. And so I very quickly saw that I need to delegate really well. I need to grow a team. I need to grow the business sales because at the time, they were about to go bankrupt, because it was going down, because my dad couldn’t be the be it all guy anymore.

00:14:20:21 – 00:14:41:06

Avery Ward

Through that, I looked back and I took a really long, hard pause to think about how do we get to where we are? How are we in business for 40 years as a pizza place and 20 years as a grocery store before that, and still be here today? And it was because they created lasting memories that are worth sharing.

00:14:41:08 – 00:15:07:15

Avery Ward

And so our tagline that I created now for our restaurant group is Creating Lasting Memories worth sharing through exceptional hospitality, great food, and even better people. And so my dad and my grandparents were huge about the way that they treat their customers, the way they establish relationships. And it wasn’t just Mary Sue who comes in, it’s Betty Sue who’s married to Bob, and they got a son named Jim, and they come here once a week.

00:15:07:15 – 00:15:38:12

Avery Ward

And little Jimmy loves the ravioli. And are you getting Little Jimmy’s ravioli today? So that’s the level of relationship building that they did. And when you have that type of relationship with your customers, they want to go tell everybody about this place because there’s not many of those that are around any longer. Right? There’s when we think back to the 1950s and 40s and 60s, I get so many photos of when it was a grocery store, and it’s a beautiful thing to see, but you can see people connecting with one another at a counter holding up this piece of meat.

00:15:38:12 – 00:15:55:03

Avery Ward

Right. And you could just see the level of engagement that they had with that person you don’t have anymore. You walk into your big chain grocery store and it’s, I’ll take a flight. Okay. Anything else? Sir, here’s your flight. Taking that same mentality that it was back then, because worlds were a lot simpler. We didn’t have these phones that we’re connected to.

00:15:55:09 – 00:16:20:15

Avery Ward

We didn’t have these laptops that we got on on. Talk to a guy who’s halfway across the country on a podcast. We didn’t have those forms of communication. So our best forms of communication was in-person connections. So that’s what we do differently. We build great hospitality through great food, but even better people and the relationships building that we do inside of our four walls, and we turn that into a business model that honestly builds people.

00:16:20:17 – 00:16:26:23

Avery Ward

It creates a legacy, and it connects them with our community in a way that most restaurants will never think about, even touching.

00:16:27:00 – 00:16:45:07

Zack Oates

You’ve done the hard work and you’ve done the hard work consistently, and it’s not like there’s an overnight menu fix to to tweak this or like the one hire that you need to make, but it’s like doing the right things long enough, yield the right things. And I think that you’re just proof of that. So kudos to you, man.

00:16:45:09 – 00:17:04:02

Zack Oates

Now we already give a shout out to David Scott Peters and DSP. He’s my man. Go check out his other podcast episodes with us here at Giving Ovation and go check him out. He’s great and gave obviously a shout out to Matt Platt that love him. Anyone else that you think deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry anyway that we should be following every.

00:17:04:04 – 00:17:22:23

Avery Ward

Those are my people, man. Those are my two. David’s quite literally taught me how to get out my own way and run the restaurant like a business. And he coaches operators to build a sustainable and system driven business. And he’s kind of that no BS mentality. And math’s the same way. But on marketing side, how do you take what you’re doing and ramp it up and tell your story?

00:17:23:00 – 00:17:42:02

Avery Ward

Those are the people. But honestly, I think there’s a lot of great people in the industry. I mean, it’s just I love meeting new people and connecting with them on a different level, whether it’s learning what they do and what makes them tick, or how that relationship could eventually benefit the both of us. But yeah, man, get involved.

00:17:42:04 – 00:17:49:03

Zack Oates

Those two are fantastic people to give an ovation to and Avery, how do people find and follow you in LA? Literally.

00:17:49:05 – 00:18:08:12

Avery Ward

So you can follow our journey on YouTube. That’s kind of our our infant platform that we’re really trying to grow the slice of life on. Just search the app, sign Little Italy Grove port, we post our weekly slice of life log on there, and it’s great for industry folks to watch because it’s more than just our restaurant. It’s other businesses in the industry.

00:18:08:14 – 00:18:31:05

Avery Ward

And so we post that weekly vlog on Wednesdays, and it’s showing everything from community projects to behind the scenes kitchen life at our restaurant. And we also we’re on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, and it’s just at Little Italy Grove Port. And I’m also on LinkedIn a reward. And on there I more so talk about kind of the systems thing and leadership and stuff like that, that I’m doing in our business to make it grow and be better.

00:18:31:05 – 00:18:36:23

Avery Ward

But whether you’re in industry or just love hospitality, trying to build something that’s worth people watching and tuning in for.

00:18:36:23 – 00:18:54:02

Zack Oates

So love it, man. And hey, by the way, I just sent you a LinkedIn request. I could not believe that we weren’t connected on LinkedIn already. So excited to follow your journey on LinkedIn. But Avery, for giving us a slice of your wisdom from a slice of life and for keeping the pizza shirts alive, baby, today’s ovation goes to you.

00:18:54:02 – 00:18:56:11

Zack Oates

Thank you for joining us and giving ovation.

00:18:56:13 – 00:18:57:18

Avery Ward

Thank you.

00:18:57:20 – 00:19:20:07

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.