Step into the dynamic world of hospitality as Jordan Cusner shares how he transitioned from musician to lawyer, and now guest insights as he executes enhanced dining experiences with data-driven creativity. Jordan reveals his philosophy on cultivating ideas and reflects on the industry’s most mouth-watering advancements, this is an episode you don’t want to miss!

What is the most important aspect of the guest experience?

“As an insights person, my mandate is to infuse the organization with a guest-centric approach, and a lot of times that’s very easy, right. We think about our innovation process or copy testing and making sure that we’re using guest insight to inform those decisions. But that’s the easy one. When you’ve got folks that are a little bit further outside, think about our legal team, of that core work ultimately we’re all working towards the same goal and we all have to have a deep understanding of who our guest is and how the decisions we make and the actions we take impact those interactions. So I think the guest experience needs to be at the forefront of everything we do.“

How do you effectively act as the voice of the customer?

“We are tasked with building that understanding and being the curious people in the room, but also tasked with being the objective voice of the guest. Newsletters, reports we do all of that, also thinking about taking those insights and delivering them throughout the organization. We have frameworks like a guest segmentation that looks at who our guests are, how they think about our brand, who they are as people beyond just being guests of our restaurant. The goal is to share that information broadly across the organization, having an immersive space where everybody can put themselves in the shoes of our guests and really experience and see the world through their eyes.“

Who in the restaurant industry deserves an ovation?

Ben Kaplan, PLNT Burger