Zack Oates talks with Brock Weeks, CEO of Savvy, about using vision AI to baseline in-store operations, spot the root cause of guest issues, and coach teams faster. Brock shares how “Jarvis-style” workflows help managers act on insights instead of staring at dashboards.

What Savvy Does (01:05)

Brock explains how Savvy structures data from existing security cameras to measure the guest experience continuously.

“We use vision AI to create baselines a secret shopper would give you—only it runs all the time for every visit.”

Consistency Builds Trust (03:02)

Speed matters, but predictability matters more.

“Guests will wait in a long line if they know it’s always fifteen minutes. The gamble is when they don’t know what to expect.”

The ‘Time to Engage’ Breakpoint (05:17)

One metric consistently tied to walk-outs is the first greeting.

“When guests wait more than about a minute and a half to two minutes, walk-outs spike. That’s measurable lost revenue.”

Baselines from Vision AI (07:49)

Savvy tracks cleanliness, spills, overflowing trash, and table resets to keep the dining room guest-ready.

“If you only check once a month with a shopper, you miss the real pulse. We can measure it every few minutes.”

Close the Loop with Ovation (12:18)

Pairing leading indicators with guest feedback makes root cause obvious.

“Click the order ID from a negative review, jump to the video of that experience, and see exactly what happened. Then coach.”

Jarvis for Managers, Not More Dashboards (10:25)

The goal is fewer clicks and clearer next steps.

“We shouldn’t bury managers in charts. Tell them the three things to review and approve so they can go coach the team.”

One Focus for GMs (13:26)

Keep improvements narrow and trackable.

“Give the store one goal, improve it, and watch guest experience move in the data.”

Human First, Tech Assisted (08:53)

Brock underscores why this all exists.

“Store managers and shift leads are some of the hardest-working people in America. Tech should amplify them, not replace them.”

Links:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brock-weeks-7b7471a/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/savi-solutions/

https://getsavi.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:04 – 00:00:24:24

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 get to chat with an industry expert 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-tier restaurants. Learn what is actually happening in your restaurants and exactly how to improve while driving revenue.

00:00:25:00 – 00:00:33:07

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today I’m joined by my good buddy Brock Weeks, CEO of savvy. What’s up Brock.

00:00:33:09 – 00:00:34:20

Brock Weeks

All right Zach thanks for having me on man.

00:00:35:01 – 00:00:54:04

Zack Oates

Finally you know what? This is kind of funny. We were talking about this before the show. This is like the third time that Brock and I have tried to record this podcast, but every time we get on to record it, we just start talking, and then all of a sudden it’s like, okay, well, now we only have five minutes to record, so let’s rebook and here we are finally there.

00:00:54:04 – 00:01:05:04

Zack Oates

And the only because we only talk for 15 minutes of our 30 minutes that we have booked. So we’re doing the power podcast today. Brock talk to us about savvy. What is savvy.

00:01:05:06 – 00:01:22:23

Brock Weeks

Yeah I was I was lot of your intro. I was like, oh it’s kind of there’s a reason why we all work so well together. Very aligned. They’re savvy. We just believe that the answer to most of the questions that operators have, our families in the four walls of the restaurant, it’s just really hard to get to the root cause of what’s going on.

00:01:22:23 – 00:01:48:10

Brock Weeks

Right? There’s great tools like ovation that are giving you that pulse check. We want to help give you the leading indicators of what’s going on, by establishing baselines of the guest experience, using tools that are already in place, which is your surveillance cameras. Most people have bought those is put them in as an insurance policy, but with AI and cloud computing, you’re able to start to structure all of that data to actually gather baselines of what secret shoppers would do.

00:01:48:12 – 00:02:10:06

Brock Weeks

But all the time, every single guest experience. How long does your actual experience with a guest take to go through your order process, interact with your guest? How long does it take to actually engage with your guest and be greeted? Because as you look at, you know this better than me. Most negative reviews that prevent guests from coming in visiting these stores has nothing to do with the quality of the food.

00:02:10:08 – 00:02:29:21

Brock Weeks

A lot of it is the guest experience, and when we analyzed it, most of it was actually around the speed and consistency of the service. Right? Cleanliness of the restaurant, order, accuracy, things of that nature that now with AI, those surveillance video clips can actually be structured to give you baseline and understand context, all of that.

00:02:29:23 – 00:03:02:17

Zack Oates

I love that because you have to know what’s going on in your restaurants. You have to know the experience that people are having. One of the things I love about savvy is that you focus so much on the in-store experience and like seeing exactly what’s happening. And while ovation does capture a lot of that feedback in store, primarily the biggest users off prem where people can understand what’s happening once they leave the store and you combine these two things together and you get a complete picture in store off prem of what the guest is experiencing.

00:03:02:19 – 00:03:24:15

Zack Oates

And I love to your point about the consistency, because if you aren’t consistent, you lose the trust of the guest. And the reason that you’re in business is because you have good food. Your food has passed the threshold of owning 2 or 3 locations. So when you’re in like 50, 60 locations, what’s it about? Consistency.

00:03:24:17 – 00:03:47:09

Brock Weeks

Yeah, someone that we’ve forgotten who might have actually been Leeann from Dave’s Hot Chicken at Tech. Or maybe is Richard from Bojangles one of the two to talking about this exact thing said, you know, it’s not so much about the speed. Yes, speed is important, but it’s just what is the consistent experience? Like with certain brands, you’ll get in that long line that you know is going to take you 15 minutes because, you know, it’s going to take you 15 minutes.

00:03:47:09 – 00:04:05:03

Brock Weeks

But it’s it’s like a gamble and you’re on tour. You’re like, ooh, I don’t know what to expect there. You don’t engage really, really fascinating. And our data from drive offs and walk outs and things like that actually shows the same thing. As long as it’s a consistent experience, the guest knows what they’re getting into. They’re choosing to engage with it.

00:04:05:03 – 00:04:24:11

Zack Oates

So yeah, I think that consistency is trust. And the only way that you can figure out are you being consistent is either by being everywhere at once or leveraging tools that will summarize everything at once. And I think that’s it. Those are the only two options you have. And I think that that’s one of the things I love about what you’re doing now.

00:04:24:13 – 00:04:32:13

Zack Oates

You work with a lot of restaurants in a lot of locations. I mean, I don’t know, do you guys publish how many rooftops you’re on with.

00:04:32:16 – 00:04:39:07

Brock Weeks

Current counts, not publish? We should probably end the year contracted in circa, 9 to 10.

00:04:39:09 – 00:04:55:05

Zack Oates

That’s a big chunk of of rooftops. And so you’re able to see a lot. And what are you seeing as being the most important aspect? We’re talking about consistency, the most important aspect of guest experience. But what does that really mean? What is your data showing about consistency?

00:04:55:07 – 00:05:17:05

Brock Weeks

Yeah, one of it was interesting. We were doing, proof of concept. Right. Because a lot of folks have been talking about AI, right. And a lot of brands have recognized that vision based AI has the opportunity to unlock a lot of insights, but a lot of pilots kind of fell in that. Not fortunately, not with us, but just generally, AI pilots have struggled to get off the ground, not just in the restaurant industry.

00:05:17:05 – 00:05:37:07

Brock Weeks

I think MIT and Harvard published between 79% of them never actually make it to fruition. And there’s this how do you connect what the model can actually do? The inside, it can grab to an operational workflow, right. Because those are two very, very different things. The tech can work, but if it doesn’t work for your team in a workflow, you’re kind of just wasting your money.

00:05:37:09 – 00:05:58:19

Brock Weeks

So I give you that context. Just say what we’re seeing around consistency. There’s one brand, there’s all of these different data points. We could gather what we found for this specific brand. It was pizza chain. It was time to engage was actually like one of the key metrics, because we’ve all had the experience where you walk in, right, and you get a shout from the back, be with those.

00:05:58:21 – 00:06:18:13

Brock Weeks

Yeah, you can see in a moment. Right. And you’re like, oh, and then you stand there, right? And no one comes. And after a couple of minutes, right, we started to see that once it gets to a if you wait more than a minute and a half to two minutes, that’s when the walkouts start to happen. So that’s lost revenue.

00:06:18:13 – 00:06:38:07

Brock Weeks

Just take your average take it value. Multiply that by how often what percentage of sales that’s happening. And we’re able to actually quantify that because it’s interesting with these brands. So around that time to engage we go in and we ask and we’re like okay, this is a key metric that’s driving all these reviews. You’re spending so much money to get guests in the door.

00:06:38:09 – 00:06:57:02

Brock Weeks

And then what’s like the first thing that happens with them, right, is the cleanliness, the restaurant and how quick a get. They’re engaged with one of your employees. Those are like the two first things. And we constantly ask a, well, how do you measure that? And a lot of times the answer is like, right. We’re tracking speed of service through the point of sale or through a loop system in the drive through.

00:06:57:02 – 00:07:12:07

Brock Weeks

And it’s like, okay, well, what about the other 30 to 60% of your guests, depending on what percent are happening on prem. And you actually look at reviews and they’ll be customers, it’ll be like, oh, you can tell they’re measuring how well they take care of guests. And the drive through, because that’s where all the focus is, that right?

00:07:12:09 – 00:07:29:22

Brock Weeks

And these other guests are neglected and they start to walk out. How in the world is a multi-site district manager or bust or a management team supposed to know? Because in your reviews, no one takes the time to detail that out. I walked in and I waited 2.5 minutes and all I got was a shout from the back, right?

00:07:29:24 – 00:07:49:15

Brock Weeks

Most people don’t. They just say it was never greeted and taken care of or something to that nature. Right. So that we’re we’re seeing when you can actually measure it and establish a baseline. It’s nothing new. We all know whatever is measured is managed, and whatever is managed is improved. You can finally actually start to measure these things.

00:07:49:15 – 00:08:21:12

Brock Weeks

The AI models can look at a dining room, make sure there’s no spills on the floor. There’s not. The trash isn’t overflowing at the tables aren’t full of junk on the left trash. All of these things that actually matter and affect the guest experience. I mean, if you’re only able to check that once a month with a secret shopper horror the one time a week maybe that a district manager can get out there, I can now just measure that pulse every few minutes, every hour, depending on the cadence, they want to do it, but start to establish baselines so you even know what that experience is.

00:08:21:12 – 00:08:40:18

Brock Weeks

And it’s been fascinating as we’ve gone in and seen, the expectation versus the reality is typically quite a chasm. But how quickly they can close that chasm now that they have the data, because the people at work, like the store managers, shift leads, district managers, like probably some of the hardest working people in America, right, that are running.

00:08:40:18 – 00:08:53:20

Brock Weeks

These are all that they’re managing, dude, they want to do an unreal job, right? They want to continue to do well. You just need to give them the data in a workable workflow that they can actually do something with it.

00:08:53:22 – 00:09:16:08

Zack Oates

And that’s the whole thing that we talk about no matter what we’re talking about. What it really boils down to are the frontline workers. Everything that we’re talking about from obviously, one of the things that we both care a lot about with our businesses and looking at two different ways, is the guest experience, right? You’re this persistent secret shopper and we’re a guest connection platform.

00:09:16:10 – 00:09:44:22

Zack Oates

And those two things combined, it’s not like we’re here to try to replace frontline workers, but we’re here to Tony Stark them. We’re here to give them the Iron Man suit to allow them to do their job. And when you empower your frontline people to both know what they should do to improve and connect with the guest when they don’t, that actually increases retention, increases guest satisfaction because people want to feel like they’re making a difference.

00:09:44:24 – 00:10:02:19

Zack Oates

And if you could help them understand what to do to make that difference and make it easy for them, then they’ll love you for it. And I think at the end of the day, I love what you’re talking about. There’s some of the hardest working people in America. Because the other thing is they’re working so hard and they’re not playing for equity.

00:10:03:00 – 00:10:20:02

Zack Oates

They’re not playing for keeps. Why are they doing this? They’re doing it because they want to have a job and they want to make people happy. So how can we do that better? And I love that this, this concept of technology enabling them to do that. Are there anything that you’ve seen? I love that example of like time degrees.

00:10:20:03 – 00:10:25:02

Zack Oates

Are there any other tactics that you’ve seen that have improved the guest experience?

00:10:25:04 – 00:10:43:03

Brock Weeks

So we’ve been like is you talk about right, amplifying the human element. Should the I’m laughing when you said that because I have a presentation pulled up on my computer that I’m giving at a brand conference next week, and it’s a picture of Tony Stark, right, with Jarvis? Oh no way. Yeah. It’s all of you showing him exactly what he should be doing.

00:10:43:07 – 00:11:03:13

Brock Weeks

But think about all of the mundane, repetitive tasks that have to be completed and our essential right. We talked about cleanliness, things of that nature. Right. Making sure the restaurant is ready for the day. And there’s these compliance checklist and they go through with the iPad. And those are great tools. Right. But like that is just brain suck work.

00:11:03:15 – 00:11:30:05

Brock Weeks

It’s not actually like a human shouldn’t be doing some of these things. And historically we’ve been seeding them. All of this data. Here’s your guest review score. Here’s even your speed of service score. Here’s your loss prevention metrics. Here’s right. And it’s all of this data that’s just thrown at them. And we’re saying, hey, we know you’re busy and we know you’re not a financial analyst who wants to stare at spreadsheets and data numbers all day long, right.

00:11:30:05 – 00:11:50:19

Brock Weeks

And charts and graphs. But that’s a we’re kind of all asking them to do. And we’re all saying, oh, by the way, you need to log into our platform. And so you’re going to have 12 of these. You got to log in to a day like really talk about embedding into workflows. Are we actually making their job easier and amplifying them, or are we requiring them to do more work.

00:11:50:19 – 00:12:18:03

Brock Weeks

And so our whole focus to get to this consistency in things that we’re learning is how do you take those data points? And instead of telling them to try to go find something and figure out how to fix it, we’re trying to bridge that gap to them to show them the consistent metrics and correlate it right. That’s why we integrate with partnerships and things like you, because you can say, here’s a negative review this experience and you’ve heard it a couple times.

00:12:18:05 – 00:12:37:17

Brock Weeks

You then in our system, right, because of the integration, you just click right on that order ID and go right to the experience and watch and see exactly what the team was doing. Because typically the reviews, the lagging indicator, the service breakdowns, the leading indicator when you can marry those together and you’re basically just telling the manager this is exactly what happened.

00:12:37:17 – 00:13:19:17

Brock Weeks

And here’s the result. Just click right here and go watch the root cause. And then they can go take action. Right. They’re just reviewing what the data has told them to do and doing what only humans can uniquely do, which is coach and train right and help improve machines don’t do that. And they can’t do that. So I think it’s behooved upon us as tech companies to really understand the life that a store manager and a district manager is living on a day to day basis, and how do we make our systems operate for them in that Jarvis type workflow that just tells them what they need to review and approve to take action, versus

00:13:19:17 – 00:13:26:01

Brock Weeks

overloading them with data. Like if we’re trying to tell them to do more than 3 or 4 things, it’s not going to work. It’s going to fail.

00:13:26:03 – 00:13:47:24

Zack Oates

Yeah, I totally agree. Which is why, you know, one of the things that we always focus on innovation is like, let’s give the GM’s one goal, one thing to focus on and have them focus on that one thing really, really well and track the improvement of that over time. And we track the improvement based on how the guest experience has been, and you’re tracking the improvement based on what’s happening in the stores.

00:13:47:24 – 00:14:00:01

Zack Oates

And so, like, I feel like there’s a beautiful marriage here. But what I would love to do, though, is obviously, I see you had a lot of trade shows, you know, a lot of people who is someone that deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry.

00:14:00:03 – 00:14:26:23

Brock Weeks

Oh man, that’s there is so many. I’m going to use a couple. One, actually. Tyler laughs at Scooter’s coffee. Yeah, talk about a guy that won their team. Dude, how hardworking they are, what they’re doing and the growth and all of that. But every time we meet with them it’s a true partnership, right. We’ve all had those companies we’re fortunate to work with, but it’s almost kind of just like a let’s check in every once in a while.

00:14:26:23 – 00:14:51:22

Brock Weeks

Status quo is good, where he’s like, look, how can we improve? How can we be better to work with? Help me understand how we could utilize your tech better. And everything is around how they can make the tools that they’ve chosen easier, better to use, more affordable for the franchisee, right? Consolidating vendors, things of that nature. Just relentless in that pursuit of like we’ll hit the goal and then it’s like, okay, great.

00:14:52:03 – 00:15:11:03

Brock Weeks

Now how else can we improve? Right. Like there’s no stopping. He’s one one that we actually don’t work with. But I know you guys work with them. But shout out to the genuineness of the hospitality industry is Jim Medic’s a days hot chicken. It’s not hard to tell and to the correlation why that brand has done so well.

00:15:11:05 – 00:15:28:18

Brock Weeks

Everyone. I’ve been able to interact with the different conferences and shows they’re genuine in the fact, like take time to come, say hello, take time to come connect, ask questions about you, right like and you. I just sit and observe and watch. Right. And it’s fascinating to watch a guy who’s leading a brand. Right. That just sold for $1 billion.

00:15:28:18 – 00:15:41:19

Brock Weeks

But you watch the amount of time it takes to go engage with people and spend time on the road for the brand and with his team and highlighting his team. Just super impressed by it. There’s so many you could just keep, but those are two that stand out.

00:15:41:23 – 00:15:51:18

Zack Oates

Love that. Well Brock, always appreciate you hanging out whether or not we actually hit record. But where can people go to find and follow you and savvy.

00:15:51:20 – 00:16:07:00

Brock Weeks

Yeah get savvy.com and it’s savvy. We’re on LinkedIn pretty fair. Try to be active on there and then we’re at different trade shows will be at create coming up this weekend RFC that’s coming up in the next little bit and a few others. So look forward to connecting with you. Please reach out.

00:16:07:02 – 00:16:15:07

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well Brock for showing us how to be the eye in the sky without the creepiness. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us. I’m given ovation.

00:16:15:09 – 00:16:17:11

Brock Weeks

Oh, that’s going to be our new tagline.

00:16:17:13 – 00:16:20:07

Zack Oates

Without the creepiness. Yeah. Without creepiness.

00:16:20:07 – 00:16:21:00

Brock Weeks

I love it, dude.

00:16:21:00 – 00:16:44:23

Zack Oates

I love it. 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.