John Laun, Chief Marketing Officer of Earthbar, joins Give an Ovation to share how a wellness pioneer has expanded into more than 60 locations nationwide while staying rooted in its mission of functional nutrition. He explains how Earthbar leverages partnerships with Equinox, focuses on team energy to create “master mood shifters,” and uses real-time feedback to turn guests into loyal advocates. John also dives into the role of AI as a trusted advisor, helping the brand maintain consistency and alignment across its rapidly growing footprint.

Wellness Roots (01:07)

Earthbar started with supplements and became an early leader in functional wellness. Smoothies remain the “tip of the spear,” delivering nutrition in a convenient, tasty way.

“We really focus on giving your body what it needs, when it needs it.”

Energy as a Core Value (04:00)

Team members are trained to be “master mood shifters,” ensuring guests leave feeling better than when they arrived.

“Our ability for you to walk out of an Earthbar in a better mood than you walked in is really important.”

Feedback in Real Time (05:11)

Using Ovation, Earthbar turns instant feedback into on-the-spot service recovery, often fixing issues while guests are still in-store.

Marketing Through Happy Guests (06:30)

John explains why loyal guests are the brand’s best marketers. Social media helps, but word-of-mouth is the true driver of discovery.

“Our best marketers are happy guests.”

Operations + Marketing Alignment (09:32)

Exceptional marketing depends on exceptional operations. Guest feedback and AI tools help align goals, customize store targets, and improve training.

AI as a Trusted Advisor (17:21)

John views AI not as a replacement but as a strategic consultant that accelerates decision-making while still requiring a human filter.

Brands to Watch (20:27)

John gives shout-outs to Carla Cafe and Proudly Serving, two innovative local brands that have grown from grassroots beginnings into destination concepts.

Links:

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

https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=Earthbar&sid=UbS

https://earthbar.com/

Transcript

00:00:00:06 – 00:00:24:10

Zach Oates

Welcome to another edition of Cuban 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-layer restaurant. Learn what is actually happening at your restaurant and how to improve without just a long survey.

00:00:24:10 – 00:00:50:00

Zach Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today I am so excited because it’s really interesting being a part of ovation and being able to see the back end of what brands are surfacing to the top. And there is one brand that I have seen consist entirely, not just care about the guest experience, but see how much their guests love them has been inspiring.

00:00:50:00 – 00:00:56:11

Zach Oates

I’ve got John Lorne, he’s the CMO of Earth Bar, and John, welcome to the podcast, man.

00:00:56:13 – 00:00:58:15

John Laun

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Excited to be on.

00:00:58:17 – 00:01:07:03

Zach Oates

You’ve been doing some amazing things and so maybe not everyone might be familiar with Earth Bar, though you do want to give a little update on what is Earth Bar.

00:01:07:05 – 00:01:26:24

John Laun

Yeah, happy to Earth Bar is a really exciting brand. I’m proud to be a part of it. Then here just under four years and as a company, the brand itself has been around since 1971. So one of the wellness OGs, as we like to say, back from the early days of people would eat red meat and smoke cigarets and go to the doctor when they got sick.

00:01:27:01 – 00:01:27:19

John Laun

Things started the.

00:01:27:19 – 00:01:29:21

Zach Oates

Movement. Those are the days, just the the.

00:01:29:21 – 00:01:45:23

John Laun

Day the bad, one of the Mad Men days. And really, as things shifted to people being aware of how food can be medicine, oranges have vitamin C, and if you eat enough oranges, maybe you don’t get sick so you don’t have to go to the doctor. And then I moved into, well, what if I don’t want to eat 12 oranges a day?

00:01:45:23 – 00:02:06:09

John Laun

What if you get your vitamin C from a pill? So Bernie Buchman, who’s one of our founders, still very active in the brand today. If you go by our West Hollywood or Brentwood stories, you may bump into him. He was one of the first people to put vitamins in a retail environment where you could go buy vitamin C pills and take them as part of your morning routine, proactive wellness and how to really get ahead of the curve.

00:02:06:11 – 00:02:25:11

John Laun

And as that evolved, that really became the underpinning of the brand of giving your body what it needs, when it needs it. And as the smoothie craze caught on, we were at the forefront of that in the 90s. And smoothies are a great way to get those whole fruits and vegetables, which are packed with great nutrients. But also a way to work those supplements into a smoothie makes it even easier to take something.

00:02:25:11 – 00:02:44:09

John Laun

You know, we were both chatting. We both have kids. Any time you can make something a little tastier, a little bit easier, and more enjoyable, it’s easier to do regularly and make a part of your daily habit daily routine. So smoothie is really became the tip of the era for the brand. And it’s our supplement delivery system and we really focus on amazing functional wellness.

00:02:44:14 – 00:03:08:11

John Laun

But if you walk into an Earth bar location today, we’ve got over 60 locations across the country, predominantly in California and New York. But we’re really focused on functional wellness solutions. What your body needs when your body needs it, especially post-workout. We’re proud to have a national partnership with Equinox. We’re in over 50 Equinox locations across California, over 30 in Manhattan, and we really love showing up for that Equinox member, as well as street stores across the country.

00:03:08:13 – 00:03:31:11

John Laun

And for anyone that doesn’t live near Earth Bar, we sell some of our leading supplements, including our Earth fusion plant protein, which has been in literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of smoothies a year. We sell that on earth Wspa.com. So we really want to make sure people get wellness solutions when they need it. But one of our big gaps and learnings with that many locations is how do we without scaling a very large internal team, how do we keep a pulse on that guest experience and keep that consistent?

00:03:31:17 – 00:03:43:00

John Laun

We’ve doubled our footprint. We had around 30 stores a year ago. Now we’re over 60. So in scaling at that level, we really want to make sure we have the tools to keep a pulse on the customer and guest experience every step of the way, too.

00:03:43:02 – 00:04:00:10

Zach Oates

And I think it’s so powerful that as you’ve been able to expand, even in nontraditional locations, it’s really tough to do that. It’s tough to do that successfully, and it takes a focus on the guest experience. So what would you say, John, if you’re looking at the guest experience, what is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

00:04:00:12 – 00:04:16:15

John Laun

So I think one thing that we really focus on is one of our core values is energy. And I think people leaving the gym, if they’ve just finished a walk, a workout, they’re just out for a break and they need something. Food is energy. Food is energy, food is medicine. And generally people coming into an earth bar, they want to feel better.

00:04:16:15 – 00:04:35:16

John Laun

Either they feel great and they want to feel amazing, or maybe they’re under the weather. They want some immunity support, but people are coming into Earth because they want to feel better than they feel before they walked in. And so our team members ability to exude that energy, we call them master mood shifters, right? Our ability for you to walk out of a bar in a better mood than you walked in for that visit to be the best part of your day.

00:04:35:16 – 00:04:51:08

John Laun

The thing you look forward to is really important, and that’s the hardest thing to quantify. We can quantify speed of service. There’s a way to figure out how fast you got through the line. We can quantify how well we’ve helped people add on to their check and our average ticket. There’s a lot of things we can quantify if they use the app or not.

00:04:51:10 – 00:05:11:19

John Laun

One of the hardest things for a brand to quantify is what was that experience like? And surveys and things like that can be a lagging indicator. But we really love the tool of ovation because we get that real time feedback. And in a lot of cases, our ability to handle that guest experience in the moment, we’ve really been able to democratize the way that we respond to guest feedback through the ovation tool.

00:05:11:21 – 00:05:34:03

John Laun

And so we’ve even seen situations where a guest has a negative experience. They send in instant feedback about that experience on ovation, but they’re in the space still. They’re having their avocado toast, they’re still talking with friends. And we’ve been able to fix that experience or rectify it. And someone’s like, oh, you know. And more often than not, what you find out is for whatever the issue was, it’s sort of the bark is worse than the bite.

00:05:34:03 – 00:05:49:22

John Laun

And sometimes, especially with social media, someone gives feedback and then you help them like, oh, like like you didn’t have to do that. Like, you know, I wasn’t looking for any major resolution. I just wanted to let you know. But it’s really important for us that anything we can do to be the best part of that person’s day, to make sure people feel the energy we have.

00:05:49:22 – 00:06:11:05

John Laun

And that really helps us find out within our organization who’s really crushing it, who’s really helping elevate the guest experience. It gives you metrics about your team that you wouldn’t find ordinarily, just from what you can get from your report, from your POS system, for example, you really find those diamond in the rough team members who are creating amazing moments that exude our culture, that tell you what we’re about.

00:06:11:07 – 00:06:16:01

John Laun

And it’s a way to sort of to cut a second layer deep and really find out what drives the business.

00:06:16:03 – 00:06:30:12

Zach Oates

And I love that here we are, your CMO show and you’re talking about guest feedback. Normally when people talk about feedback, they’re like, oh, that’s an operations thing. Why is feedback important to you as a marketer?

00:06:30:14 – 00:06:48:06

John Laun

Well, I think even discovery today, the way people discover brands that people make shopping decisions based on friends recommendations, social media recommendations. We have a beautiful Instagram feed. I love the work we do on social media. I love our email. That’s all foundational stuff that when you go to find out about Earth Bar, you find out what we’re about and who we are.

00:06:48:08 – 00:07:13:19

John Laun

But when it comes down to making a decision, more often than not it’s a friend saying, you got to check this place out. And then when they go to our website, they go to our Instagram. It’s deepening the connection to I love Earth Bar because they do X, Y, and Z, but our best marketers are happy guests. If we focus on happy guests and we focus on that relationship, and especially in the environment we’re in, we’re very unique concept because we’re inside of Equinox, but we’re not part of Equinox.

00:07:13:19 – 00:07:33:22

John Laun

But that Equinox member, even though many of our locations are open to the public, that Equinox member makes up a large percentage of that business, which is a double edged sword, because if they love you, that’s great, and they’re going to be loyal. But if you have a negative experience with somebody that walks by you every day, it’s easy for them to make that decision of, oh, I just don’t do Earth Bar after my workout anymore.

00:07:33:24 – 00:07:54:06

John Laun

That’s not a guest you get back necessarily, because the Get the Gym has so many members. And so it’s really important to take especially good care of the experience of that guest. Because if they’re loyal, you have a really loyal repeat guest. And if you create a negative experience that you’re not able to really help work through with them, a negative experience will happen all the time, and we welcome it because we learn from it.

00:07:54:06 – 00:08:00:18

John Laun

But if you don’t do anything about it, that repeat guest intent starts to drift over time and that’s where you lose connection.

00:08:00:20 – 00:08:20:08

Zach Oates

I love that you said a negative experience could be a positive thing, right? Because you learn from it. I think that that’s something where as humans we tend to shy away from that feedback. We tend to shy away from someone who had a negative experience. I don’t necessarily want to dive into why is that? Or like, why does this person not like me?

00:08:20:10 – 00:08:36:08

Zach Oates

And as humans, we have the ability to kind of like pick our friends, and we don’t need very many friends to be happy. But as a restaurant, we don’t have that luxury all the time. And yes, there’s always going to be cases where we should be able to fire guests who maybe aren’t a good fit for the brand.

00:08:36:08 – 00:09:07:03

Zach Oates

And that’s okay. But for the most part, you need a lot of people to come in and buy a $5 smoothie in order to make a successful business. Right. And so I love that you’re focusing in on what does that guest think, and then how do you improve that. And one of the things I see you guys using well is the goals I would you’re able to take that feedback, look for those trends and actually then recommend the goals to the DMs to help them improve.

00:09:07:05 – 00:09:32:23

Zach Oates

And your gyms. You’re doing a great job at making sure that they’re improving category by category every single goal period. And I think that’s impressive to see. And especially coming at this from a marketing perspective, one of the things that we always talk about is that if you want great marketing, you need to have exceptional operations because you can’t do all this work to bring someone in or bring someone back.

00:09:32:23 – 00:09:48:11

Zach Oates

And then there’s a negative experience because there wasn’t good training, because there wasn’t good preparation, because whatever the case is, restroom isn’t clean, right? The operations really are so critical to be married to marketing.

00:09:48:13 – 00:10:09:15

John Laun

We’re fortunate. We have an amazing relationship with our operations leaders, and we’re in constant communication, constant contact and all those tools. You know, we love AI. We lean on on AI and everything we can advances in technology to make sure that we’re serving each store and each guest correctly. And we do. We are. We’ve got a really wide variety of store types, sizes, layouts, and setup.

00:10:09:15 – 00:10:28:02

John Laun

And so we’re not a one size fits all concepts. And so a goal that makes sense for one location just simply doesn’t track for a new location. And one example of that is we have an app, and our Earth Bar app is a great way to order ahead. And save time. And whenever we open a new location, it’s very easy to get everybody on the app.

00:10:28:02 – 00:10:49:00

John Laun

It’s everyone’s first day at the gym, and it’s a little bit of like, this is where this is how you do the lockers, and this is where you get the towels and you order on the app. And so it’s almost like first day of school. Everybody just gets in line. And then there are other locations where we’ve taken over from a previous operator that didn’t rely on the app so much, and it was more of a walk up or a wait in line or a different flow.

00:10:49:02 – 00:11:05:21

John Laun

And so that’s a really slow boat to turn, because now you’re changing behavior of thousand plus people a day, that this is how they get their smoothie after the gym, which is very different than a place that might be three blocks that way in Manhattan. And so to tell those two stores you need this to be your app adoption percentage isn’t realistic.

00:11:05:21 – 00:11:23:16

John Laun

And so it’s really important for those new stores to have goals that are, that are meaningful for them so that they know what success looks like. And also for us to really understand the ins and outs of every store across the system and all the changing dynamics, it takes a lot of manpower. It takes a lot of people, a lot of analysis and a lot of data flow.

00:11:23:22 – 00:11:42:03

John Laun

And more often than not, I will do that more nimbly to just the same degree, if not better, of analysis, and it will learn and see what’s happening. And so we’ve really found it’s a great way to help the stores find room for improvement. And then also of whether the goal makes sense or not, we can help train the system a little bit.

00:11:42:03 – 00:12:07:20

John Laun

So it’s really a it’s a just the same way marketing and operations work together. We as a business are working with AI to not just take whatever AI says as I guess that’s what we’re doing now. But as a trusted advisor with a ton of feedback, it’s basically like if you could press pause and go spend a month asking a ton of people across the industry how they do something, you would still synthesize all that data and decide what you buy and what you don’t and what really aligns.

00:12:07:20 – 00:12:25:07

John Laun

And what doesn’t. And I just speeds up that process. It’s a way to get a lot of collective feedback in a short time, but it’s still just like any tool, it’s what you do with it. But for us, it’s an incredible game changer because our entire customer service operation runs through one individual, and she’s a very talented individual and she’s got a lot on her plate.

00:12:25:09 – 00:12:48:22

John Laun

But without those tools, there wouldn’t be a way to to give thoughtful feedback to every single store in the system. And so rather than have one person for every five stores just sort of watching the data all the time, it’s really important for us, not only for us to have that bird’s eye view, but for those operators to have access to those tools, having the innovation app, and to sit down with the general managers and see, here’s what’s happening with your store over time.

00:12:48:24 – 00:13:07:04

John Laun

So we’re most efficient where we teach our operations leaders how to use the tool to guide what’s needed. Each store and we focus on is the tool. Serving the stores is to all set up correctly to the reports, look correct? Are we measuring the right things, training on the right things? And that’s where our training team comes into play, our operations team.

00:13:07:06 – 00:13:27:18

John Laun

So it’s really helped us just orient around. It’s a single source of truth for what’s the guest experience. And there’s always different angles and feedback and and any concept in some of these locations without a ton of feedback. If you get five pieces of feedback that are really actionable in a month, and two of them are about your price, you have to make sure to not overreact and say, well, our prices are too high.

00:13:27:18 – 00:13:46:24

John Laun

We have to slash prices. And the same thing. If three people say, you’ve got incredible service, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the best story that’s ever existed. But over time, the totality of all this data, they’re all data points that you take into account. And it gives us that single source of truth, of everyone and orient around this, this one metric or this one tool.

00:13:47:01 – 00:14:07:05

John Laun

And just from my standpoint, it just being able to see the alerts on my phone and Klay saying, who’s our CEO? He wants every alert on his phone all the time. It gives you this great pulse. And so for him especially, he’s got this amazing ability to his gut feel of just I feel like I’ve been seeing a lot of questions about this in this location more often than not is right.

00:14:07:05 – 00:14:23:11

John Laun

And so that’s another example of you can get buy in from across the organization without everyone having to dive into the data. So depending on how people learn or react or how people want to be engaged with, gives you a lot of different ways for people to engage. Some people that love the data want to dive into the spreadsheets.

00:14:23:13 – 00:14:38:11

John Laun

Some people want to see a daily recap, and so they just get the daily recap. Some people want to see the weekly recap. So it also gives us a lot of ways to get leadership buy in and connection to what’s going on without us having to send out some massive daily. Here’s what’s happening in the world of customer service.

00:14:38:11 – 00:14:43:11

John Laun

And it’s it’s more of a self-serve solution for our internal leadership to have a pulse on the stores.

00:14:43:13 – 00:15:02:22

Zach Oates

I think it’s so important to keep that connection. Right. Because for ovation we actually use ovation, right? So at the bottom of every email that you’re talking about, we have smiley faces where people can give feedback on what they love or what they don’t love about ovation. And similarly, I get everything to my inbox and right to my phone, actually.

00:15:02:22 – 00:15:21:21

Zach Oates

And like if there’s an issue that I see, yeah, we jump in and we help navigate through any of those issues. And I like that. How you describe that though of like that company alignment where we’re all seeing the same things. And so it’s not like someone’s shocked that, wait, what happened over there? But we’re all on the same thread.

00:15:21:21 – 00:15:28:09

Zach Oates

We’re all working towards the same goal, which is creating a great guest experience and building value.

00:15:28:11 – 00:15:46:08

John Laun

It takes any politics out of it. Also, where it takes out this notion of like you’re telling on a store, if it’s like, hey, like I saw this thing on customer service and now I’m going to tell leadership that one store is having an issue with one thing. It’s really more, hey, we’ve all been seeing this trend or I hey, we can all see or we can all agree or the numbers say this.

00:15:46:08 – 00:16:08:03

John Laun

And so it it takes any personal feelings out of it. And so the data is the data. We all see the numbers. We all see it in real time. And like I said, we’re a brand that we welcome feedback. We’re not a huge corporate infrastructure. We’ve got a lot of stores spread out nationally, and that footprints growing. And so the only way we’re going to be able to keep a pulse on the quality of the experience and how guests are feeling is using technology and using tools.

00:16:08:03 – 00:16:27:14

John Laun

And so all feedback helps us get better at any piece of feedback that leads us to a solution, saves us. Someone having to fly out to that market, to that store to troubleshoot what’s going on, to see declining sales four months later and find out that there’s just been some gap that’s creating a negative guest experience. It’s turning members off over time.

00:16:27:14 – 00:16:46:20

John Laun

That’s like that’s we don’t have time to wait for the problem to show up. And so it’s a great early warning system for anything that might become a larger problem down the road. It’s helped us a ton on product quality too. We’ve certainly made decisions from a product standpoint where we thought that we could change this ingredient for this ingredient, and we’ve tested it and we try it and we take a lot of pride.

00:16:46:20 – 00:17:02:21

John Laun

And when you do something at scale across the market, you find out that the guests experience something different than you did. We’ve been able to reverse course on decisions before, so you’ve just based on feedback. So it’s really helpful for us. It’s like having thousands of secret shoppers across the country. That’s invaluable feedback and things we wouldn’t see ourselves.

00:17:02:21 – 00:17:04:12

John Laun

We find out all the time.

00:17:04:14 – 00:17:21:03

Zach Oates

Well that’s awesome. John and I was going to ask you about tactics, but I feel like we’ve been talking tactics this whole time. And especially I think the one thing that I really want to pull out for our listeners is the fact that I is a trusted advisor. You shouldn’t look at it as like, hey, this is going to do my whole job now.

00:17:21:03 – 00:17:42:18

Zach Oates

But you look at it like a if you hire a restaurant consultant that comes in and they say, hey John, here’s ten things that you should do. And you’re like, okay, based on our brands and our goals and what we’re doing, these three are the most important. And so it’s about really focusing in on using AI as a way to enhance yourself and not as a way to replace yourself.

00:17:42:20 – 00:18:02:09

John Laun

One thing that that I’ve shared with my team and across the organization is it’s tricky because I looks like a technology and it is it’s it’s based on technology, but if you treat it like a technology, you won’t get much out of it. So if you treat AI like Google or if you treat AI like email, you won’t get much out of it.

00:18:02:14 – 00:18:21:05

John Laun

As we try to roll out AI across even our teams, some, like you, get questions which are totally valid questions of can we get training on AI? Or how can we get some training on how to use AI? And we’ll use it more. What I share is almost like just pretend I said, hey, the thing that you do for your role, I’ve got somebody for you to talk with that’s done it before.

00:18:21:05 – 00:18:33:21

John Laun

That’s really good at it. Take it all with a grain of salt, but I’m going to give you their info. And they love to do like a 30 minute call with you and that person wouldn’t say, well, can you train me on how to have that phone call? Can you train me on how to talk to the contact you’re connecting with?

00:18:33:21 – 00:18:51:23

John Laun

You say, oh yeah, I’ll see what they have to say. And so it’s awkward because it’s a computer program. It’s a keyboard, but you almost have to talk to it, and you have to be more honest than you would be even on that phone call with that expert and say, hey, I’ve got a question. There’s something that I should know how to do in my job, and I just don’t.

00:18:52:02 – 00:19:13:17

John Laun

And where should I start? Right. And my bosses have asked me to do something and I don’t know where to start, or I’m having a challenge with something that doesn’t quite make sense. What are five ways I should attack this problem? Right? We’ve even done it just from doing internal surveys with our team, right? If we wanted to do X, Y, and Z with a future product launch, what do we want to ask our team members?

00:19:13:17 – 00:19:31:02

John Laun

Right. So it’s really treated as an advisor and a sounding board of bounds and have a conversation with it. And you’d be surprised how it learns over time. And that’s been a big shift for us as well as just don’t be shy to show your Thorne’s ask. It’s a great place to ask the silly questions you might be embarrassed to raise your hand about on a call.

00:19:31:04 – 00:19:55:00

John Laun

It just speeds up the iteration cycle so much. And then the caution of all that is to make sure that you don’t copy, paste, and lose yourself in the process, right? And make sure you still apply your own filter, your own layer, your own expertise and and you don’t get lost in. That’s better than what I would have come up with, because that’s where you sort of can go sideways with it, but, you know, manage correctly and, you know, treat it like someone who’s having a conversation with you.

00:19:55:01 – 00:19:57:16

John Laun

You got to come back from that conversation and share your best ideas.

00:19:57:18 – 00:20:18:03

Zach Oates

One of my coaches, he’s like, hey, I had an hour conversation with ChatGPT yesterday or had a two hour strategy session with ChatGPT on Saturday. And so like he talks about it just like that, of not using it as like a plug in plug out. But ChatGPT does strategies so well. And so that’s something to to leverage. I love that, John.

00:20:18:05 – 00:20:27:09

Zach Oates

Now, you know, a lot of people in this industry, I know we’re we’re out of time here. But like I’d love to get any advice on like who is someone that we should be following? Who? Someone that deserves innovation.

00:20:27:11 – 00:20:48:13

John Laun

So there’s a brand that it says in the restaurant space that’s called Carla Cafe, which I just love. And it’s a couple that during the pandemic started make sandwiches out of their house and then started making them available for friends. And then before, you know, it was one of these Instagram, if you know, you know, kind of things where you could you could DM them and you could Venmo them and pick up a sandwich.

00:20:48:13 – 00:21:09:03

John Laun

It was at there’s a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard that was obviously closed during Covid, but out the side window you could pick up your sandwich after you’ve been mowed for it. And they were just amazing, amazing sandwiches and great quality. And there wasn’t much to do at the time. And so I would drop my daughter off at preschool and go wait for my sandwich, and my wife thought I was crazy.

00:21:09:03 – 00:21:28:07

John Laun

She’s just going to go sit in your car and wait for your $17 sandwich. I was like, there’s not a whole lot else to do. And watching them grow. And they’ve opened their first brick and mortar location and it’s just a it’s a fun brand. But I think what what I love about it is they’re really committed to the food, to the quality and to not cutting corners, and they stand for something in their food.

00:21:28:07 – 00:21:39:21

John Laun

And the sandwiches are amazing. And I’m a huge sandwich and salad fan. I love a good tuna chop, which is my favorite there, and we love to do something with them. One day we’ll see if there’s ever an earth bar Carla Cafe collab in the works, but.

00:21:40:02 – 00:21:44:10

Zach Oates

I could see like a protein smoothie sandwich. You know something there? Yeah for.

00:21:44:10 – 00:22:05:09

John Laun

Sure. They do great. They do great cafe drinks. It’s been a fun brand of follow. I love stories like that and stories where there’s a similar one down the street for me here in Redondo Beach and Hermosa called proudly serving a similar story with burgers and someone that started making burgers and a driver too during the pandemic. And is now open two locations and just very innovative, very committed to the food and very committed to the vibe.

00:22:05:09 – 00:22:20:15

John Laun

Just creating a great guest experience and great vibe. And when you see brands like that, you know what they stand for. There’s a real fingerprint on it and I love to see that. So it’s been then fun to watch those two brands grow, which are local brands, which I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about in the future. But I’m big fans of both super cool.

00:22:20:15 – 00:22:30:05

Zach Oates

John. Well, John, thanks so much for joining us today and for Coast to Coast, helping us live healthy and happy. Today’s ovation goes to you. Appreciate you so much coming on here with us.

00:22:30:07 – 00:22:31:10

John Laun

Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Have a good.

00:22:31:10 – 00:22:54:24

Zach Oates

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