Justin Falciola is President of the Americas at Deliverect, a global platform that helps restaurants streamline digital ordering and scale profitably. With previous leadership roles at Papa John’s as SVP and Chief Insights & Technology Officer, and at CKE as Chief Technology and Growth Officer, Justin brings a unique perspective from both the operator and vendor sides of the industry. Passionate about food, hospitality, and innovation, he focuses on making technology simpler for operators and ensuring guest experience stays at the center.

From Papa John’s to Deliverect (02:23)

Justin shares how his career path took him from leading technology at Papa John’s and CKE to joining Deliverect, where he now helps restaurants connect POS systems, delivery platforms, and first-party channels.

“Deliver is, to me, one of the most exciting stories in food tech today.”

Learning from Blockbuster’s Mistakes (04:22)

Zack and Justin discuss why Blockbuster failed—not because of Netflix, but because they stopped solving customer problems. Restaurants can learn from this by staying focused on the guest.

“They went out of business because they stopped focusing on their customers’ problems.”

The Critical Role of GMs (06:11)

Justin emphasizes why general managers are the backbone of restaurant culture and guest satisfaction, calling them the most important role in the industry.

“They are the hub, the lifeblood, and the culture that the GM builds cascades to everyone else.”

Using Data and Curiosity (11:09)

Justin explains why every team member should think like an analyst, using both feedback and data to uncover insights that improve operations and guest experience.

“Guests are implicitly telling you something through data… be curious.”

Empathy Through Operations (15:18)

He encourages leaders to spend time working in restaurants, experiencing the challenges firsthand to build empathy and create solutions that truly help operators.

The Drive-Thru Opportunity (16:02)

Justin highlights the overlooked potential of the drive-thru, which still accounts for the majority of QSR orders but often lacks innovation compared to digital platforms.

“That whole drive-thru interaction is a problem I think we could love more in our industry.”

Links:

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

https://www.linkedin.com/company/deliverecthq/

https://www.deliverect.com/en

Transcript

00:00:00:06 – 00:00:24:06

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of 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. Learn what’s actually happening in your restaurants and how to improve without just a long survey.

00:00:24:07 – 00:00:50:09

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up A.com. And I’m really excited today to invite Justin Feltz, Yola on the podcast. Justin is not only an industry vet, but he’s been on both sides of the coin, both as a vendor and as an operator. He was at Papa John’s as the SVP Chief Insights and Technology Officer, key as the Chief technology and Growth Officer and now president of the Americas at Deliver Act.

00:00:50:11 – 00:00:52:17

Zack Oates

Welcome to the podcast, Justin. How are you.

00:00:52:19 – 00:00:54:21

Justin Falciola

Doing? Great, Zach, thanks so much for having me.

00:00:54:23 – 00:01:09:07

Zack Oates

First of all, we were commenting that Fashola and Oates, I got a little bit of the long end of that stick. I think mine’s pretty easy. You got some vowels and consonants in there together that make it tough to save for most people.

00:01:09:09 – 00:01:14:09

Justin Falciola

My mom always used to say it sounds like some strange disease, but you got it.

00:01:14:11 – 00:01:31:07

Zack Oates

Well, I love it. When I saw your last name, I was like, I wonder if this guy is a Jersey boy. And then I saw that you went to Rutgers, and I’m like, oh, right there. So anyway, turns out Justin and I have the same area code for a mobile number, so that’s a big deal. There’s not too many of us out there.

00:01:31:09 – 00:01:45:23

Zack Oates

And lest someone cracks the code, I’ll leave that a secret in terms of what it is. But for those who don’t know, Justin, I mean, obviously everyone’s familiar with Papa John’s. And CKE, talk to us a little bit about delivery and what you guys do.

00:01:46:00 – 00:01:51:19

Justin Falciola

Yeah, 100%. Listen, the first shout out, certainly to the East Coast, then pasta and people and.

00:01:51:19 – 00:01:52:09

Zack Oates

Yeah.

00:01:52:11 – 00:02:23:09

Justin Falciola

Pizza. Of course delivery is just this amazing company. I was so excited to join a few months back. For me, like my passion is food. Personally, professionally, quite honestly, I love to eat. I think about all the time when I got into restaurants maybe a decade ago. Zach, I was a little cautious about entering the industry. I hadn’t been in this kind of industry before franchise, and there’s a lot that goes into, as you know, a lot that goes into making a successful experience for people each and every day.

00:02:23:11 – 00:02:48:13

Justin Falciola

And within a year, I was hooked and I said, never want to leave. Deliver is, to me, one of the most exciting stories in food tech. Today. We’re in 52 countries. The team itself, we’re in about 12 countries around the world. But our founders, Ong and the other co-founders, have built this amazing distributed culture where 24 over seven were taking care of customers and brands throughout the globe.

00:02:48:15 – 00:02:59:01

Justin Falciola

A big part of my focus is obviously my home right here in the US, and would love to chat more to you today, certainly, about how we, we’re driving digital outcomes for our customers.

00:02:59:03 – 00:03:02:23

Zack Oates

What are the problems that you’re solving for your customers?

00:03:03:00 – 00:03:19:14

Justin Falciola

Let me take you on a little bit of a journey at a company quickly. I mean, it’s, you know, we’re about six years old. Where we started was connecting really as many channels and point of sales as we could. That’s the problem I deliver, I set out to solve. This is right before the pandemic, and most of those channels at that time were aggregators.

00:03:19:14 – 00:03:40:07

Justin Falciola

So today there’s over 100 aggregators in the world that we connect and over 400 point sales pretty rapidly. The company got into dispatching. So think about maybe your own website or a phone order or your own app. How do I dispatch that either through my own courier fleet or more commonly, through really large players like DoorDash, Uber, etc.?

00:03:40:09 – 00:04:03:19

Justin Falciola

A few years back, about three years back, our customers and partners and really partnerships inside the company was Bill. They said, listen, you’re solving these things. Menu building, order injection, upsell, etc. for us on third party. Can you take some of that same tech and that same team and apply it to our first party problems? So things like kiosks, things like voice, AI, things like websites, apps.

00:04:03:21 – 00:04:22:09

Justin Falciola

And so as we started out, that’s been the journey of the past few years. And really we’re just getting started in the US market. We only started focusing on this market a few years ago, and it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to achieve with our partners and especially our customers. We have some really exciting brands that I’ve been privileged to visit and, privileged to partner with.

00:04:22:11 – 00:04:44:18

Zack Oates

It’s amazing because when you really focus on and this is something that I’ve been learning about, but blockbuster, everyone talks about blockbuster. And the other day someone brought up something that was actually like a novel idea about blockbuster that they hadn’t considered before. Why did they go out of business and they didn’t go out of business just because Netflix came along, or Redbox.

00:04:44:24 – 00:05:22:21

Zack Oates

They went out of business because they stopped focusing on their customers problems. And what were they actually trying to solve? What were the problems they were trying to solve? And it wasn’t a rental, right? It was home entertainment for families and individuals. And if they would have focused on that and been obsessed with how do we constantly evolve this home entertainment business and helping families and individuals to find enjoyment at home on the weekends or on the weekdays, or needing a break like they would have gotten to that Redbox Netflix idea sooner, or at least would have understood what that meant for them.

00:05:22:23 – 00:05:46:04

Zack Oates

And I think that in any company, be it a restaurant, be it a tech partner, it’s about understanding what are the problems that you’re solving and how do you constantly use new evolutions, new technologies, new insights to solve that problem better? And I think that’s where people often get confused, is that they focus too much on the solution and not on the problem.

00:05:46:06 – 00:06:11:06

Zack Oates

And I think that with every restaurant, it really comes down to the guest experience, right? Everyone’s trying to balance the two aspects of I want a more profitable brand with a better guest experience, and sometimes those things come in conflict, but it’s like, how do you do that? And so in your experience, especially focusing on technology, what do you think is the most important aspect of guest experience nowadays?

00:06:11:08 – 00:06:39:17

Justin Falciola

One thing that’s really hard for restaurants and you know, I’ve only been on this side of the table for a few months, and I love getting to partner with all these different varieties of restaurants. But having been in this space for about a decade on the brand side, it’s just in that decade and it’s gotten so much more complex, so much more complex, so you throw in all the different formats in which consumers can, at the top of the funnel, they think about marketing technology or marketing media, right.

00:06:39:19 – 00:07:09:11

Justin Falciola

And then you work your way down through the funnel into ordering experiences and thinking about all the different ways folks in order food today, all different ways. Folks can sort of physically acquire that food. Someone bring it to them curbside drive through, walk in QR code tableside, etc. and then post order. There’s so many things now that can go wrong, and I’m not saying that many of those things didn’t exist in the past, but like the complexity of the interactions have really stepped up.

00:07:09:13 – 00:07:32:04

Justin Falciola

If you’re in restaurants, a low margin business, you’re on your feet all the time. You know, I’ve had a bunch of kids, Zach, and three of them are teenagers, and they’ve all worked in restaurants. You’re going, going, going. And if you’re a GM, you know, most important job in the industry, right. Typically we think of as the GM, you now are confronted with a whole set of problems that are exceptional cases that you didn’t have before.

00:07:32:04 – 00:07:49:17

Justin Falciola

And again, a lot of those I think are linked to this explosion and diversity of technology enablement. And that same enablement, like, is making our life great, right? And we’re so thankful for it. As consumers. I mean, certainly in the restaurant, like a lot of that same technology is making your life easier, but it’s also made it very challenging.

00:07:49:23 – 00:07:57:01

Justin Falciola

I think that’s like a unique problem that, you know, for all of us in this industry, we get to help solve. I think it’s privilege.

00:07:57:03 – 00:08:24:20

Zack Oates

Yeah, I love that. And when you focus in on that and when you focus in on what is this doing for the guest and how do we empower the GM’s to be just a hospitality machine? That is something that I feel like is so critical. And I think if you’re looking at any piece of technology for your restaurant, the question is always, how does this help my GM to create that better guest experience or to improve profitability?

00:08:24:20 – 00:08:36:22

Zack Oates

Because the GM really is where the rubber meets the road. I love how you call it the most important position in a restaurant brand, because it totally is. That’s where you make or break each of the guest experiences.

00:08:36:24 – 00:08:57:08

Justin Falciola

They are the hub, the lifeblood and the culture that the GM builds. I think cascades to everyone else. Certainly. How can we make them really successful and allow them to do what they do best, which is focusing on the team and focusing on their guests? I was pulling up on my phone here, so this is blind luck, but this morning I’m sitting there drinking coffee.

00:08:57:10 – 00:09:18:13

Justin Falciola

Zach, I drank way too much coffee, but I’m flipping through LinkedIn and, colleague Shawn over at Freddy’s. He runs technology over there. He posts on LinkedIn this amazing three sentences this morning. I’m on a ladder back out. I’m just reading it back. I was in a restaurant elbow deep in networking equipment, getting the cable in place in my teeth, trying to get everything open on time.

00:09:18:13 – 00:09:36:13

Justin Falciola

Why? So we’re open in time to serve guests. I show this as a reminder not everything we do is glamorous. In fact, very little is. Keep working hard, my friends. That encapsulates a lot of what I think is important for technologists that are trying to understand how to serve restaurants, and also like what makes a great GM. Back to the GM.

00:09:36:15 – 00:09:58:15

Justin Falciola

The details matter when I think about our mission, both when I was a CTO and now kind of having the privilege of leading this region for delivery, it really comes down to how do I make it easier? It has to be easier for a restaurant to scale profitably. And, you know, for us, a lot of our focus is on digital scale.

00:09:58:17 – 00:10:13:20

Justin Falciola

We have some things related to accuracy, solutions and other solutions for the restaurant, but a lot of it is all around first party and third party digital scale. But if it’s not easier, it’s not going to be good for the restaurant because again, it’s one of the hardest industries out there. I’m one of the lowest margin industries out there.

00:10:13:20 – 00:10:21:16

Justin Falciola

And I think, again, it’s the problem with the proliferation of solutions that we haven’t quite saw is how to actually make it easier for restaurant operators.

00:10:21:18 – 00:10:44:07

Zack Oates

Man. Well, you sold me on this industry. I feel like to be in this industry, we got to have a couple of screws loose because there’s so many things that are tough about this industry. But the thing that I have found to be universal of people who love this industry like we do, is that we care about people, we care about hospitality.

00:10:44:11 – 00:11:09:10

Zack Oates

We want to create these great experiences and to have people leaving filled in, fulfilled. And like that is what it comes down to and like a place of connection. And I think when you focus on that and the hospitality of it all, everything else falls in place. To that end, I’d love to hear anything that, in your experience, some tactics that you’ve seen to improve the guest experience.

00:11:09:12 – 00:11:29:11

Justin Falciola

One is, and I didn’t make it sound like an insurmountable problem is definitely not. It’s just knowing the challenge of being excited by it. One tactic is recognizing that everyone can be an analyst and should be an analyst. And this is where I think we’re really just getting started. Our ski tips are headed down the slope in terms of of analysis.

00:11:29:13 – 00:11:35:07

Justin Falciola

Years back I used to work in finance and insurance healthcare industries. Any new?

00:11:35:07 – 00:11:36:16

Zack Oates

Boring, right?

00:11:36:18 – 00:11:58:12

Justin Falciola

Well, that’s so my kids 100%. There’s a lot more happy with what I’m doing these days. But you have hundreds, thousands of hours cranking away data. The stuff was really complex. Of course, data is still, you know, pretty complex, but the technology and the platforms, it’s like unbelievable to me how much they’ve evolved in just ten, 15 years.

00:11:58:14 – 00:12:29:18

Justin Falciola

And getting to the buzzwords with with AI here, but certainly with the last 2 or 3 years, what we’ve seen. And so anyone can be an analyst. Well, how does that connect to the guest experience? I really encourage people to look at look at what you already have. Guests are implicitly telling you something through data that is recording or being emitted by the platforms that they’re engaging it, and you want to balance that with what they’re telling you through a platform like ovation or a separate platform.

00:12:29:18 – 00:12:47:10

Justin Falciola

Right. And you look at those things together and be curious, be curious. When I was working the other side of the fence, a lot of times we just weren’t curious. We’d see like the outcome metric and we wouldn’t look at what was going into why did that happen? And so, you know, the whole Five Eyes.

00:12:47:13 – 00:12:48:09

Zack Oates

Yeah, guys.

00:12:48:09 – 00:12:56:18

Justin Falciola

And maybe if you ask me enough, you get to the root cause. So yeah, the number one thing be curious being the analyst. Hey, we can do that and we can do that.

00:12:56:20 – 00:13:17:05

Zack Oates

I love that that curiosity is part of that. Excitement is part of that. Love is part of that journey to always be fulfilling the brand promise and making sure that the guest feel seen, feels heard, feels that unreasonable hospitality to come back and to share that experience and to make their day a little bit better. Because I love Kelly McPherson.

00:13:17:05 – 00:13:48:04

Zack Oates

She was the CTO of Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, and I’ve been working with her now for coming up on five years, and she is just a phenomenal person, and she’s been CTO of huge brands and led technology at hard Rock and Planet Hollywood, and Oracle and just and and, and and and one of the things that she says and I bring all that up just to say that this next quote from her is something so interesting.

00:13:48:04 – 00:14:09:18

Zack Oates

She goes, we’re not performing rocket surgery. We’re delivering hot food, hot and cold food cold. And the thing I love about that is like, she’s able to take all of that and just break it down to the fact of like, it’s not terribly complicated, but there’s so many things that can make it complicated, and there’s so many factors that go into it.

00:14:09:20 – 00:14:30:18

Zack Oates

But at the end of the day, it’s about delivering on that experience. It’s about delivering on that feeling. And I love that we’re talking about feelings. And here I am, a guy who’s been fine hands and IT and CTO. And here we are talking about feelings because we’re hospitality folks. Right. And that’s what it’s all about.

00:14:30:20 – 00:14:52:16

Justin Falciola

And old boss at Papa John’s is our CEO. He had this quote that just stuck with me. He’s like, where else do you get the privilege but also the responsibility of giving someone food? So for us, a lot of times that was literally at that door, someone is coming, a stranger is coming up to your door, knocking on your door and giving you through that you’re taking into your family.

00:14:52:17 – 00:15:18:17

Justin Falciola

That’s like a pretty special moment, right? That’s something that you’re going to ingest. That food is a shared experience. Often. You’re right. I mean, what Kelly said that it should be simple at the end of the day. And that’s why I think back to like just being in the restaurant. For those of us in tech or data or marketing or product or whatever your role is maybe above store to just make the time to go in and be a customer, be a consumer.

00:15:18:19 – 00:15:37:08

Justin Falciola

But also if you have the chance or the privilege to work in a restaurant, you know, every once in a while, it’s like the best way to build empathy. That might be my second suggestion is just working there for a little while. You know, a fast casual concept. Pretty different than fine dining, pretty different than a an off camera delivery type business.

00:15:37:08 – 00:16:02:13

Justin Falciola

But we we would encourage and actually in some cases even mandate our folks like you have to take a tour in the restaurant. One of the best things I think, for our team. The third thing, I guess that I’d say as a recommendation, Zach, is maybe peek around the corner a bit at some of those interaction formats that don’t have necessarily the sex appeal or the all the attention on them, but are still like highly trafficked.

00:16:02:13 – 00:16:26:20

Justin Falciola

So if I gave just one example, to me, it’s the most glaring. It’s Drive-Thru for QSR and increasingly some of the the fast casual world. Think about how much attention we put and money we put into the digital experience on a website as we should, or a search engine optimization, search engine marketing as we should, or an app experience.

00:16:26:22 – 00:16:56:14

Justin Falciola

But think how many consumers are going through your drive through. For a lot of drive through concepts, it’s often 50 to 70% at least. You know, depending on daypart, it might be even higher. And a lot of times the speaker posts are great. The audio quality isn’t great if there is a digital menu board, maybe glitchy or glaring, and there’s like a whole lot of like physical and digital things and human things in that experience is just one example.

00:16:56:14 – 00:17:09:18

Justin Falciola

But like back to like loving the problem, like that whole drive through interaction, that whole space, that’s a problem I think we could love, you know, some more in our industry because it’s a complex one. But I don’t know if we’ve paid it enough attention.

00:17:09:20 – 00:17:30:15

Zack Oates

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that there’s some really interesting solutions out there, but I think it’s a matter of be the consumer because there’s so many times that, like I’m using my iPhone and I’m like, Does Tim Cook know the iPhone? Does this, is he using this? Are people using the iPhone? Because if so, how did they miss that up there.

00:17:30:16 – 00:17:46:10

Zack Oates

Just things like that that I find. So the more that you’re a consumer, the more that you can see from your guests eyes. But that’s the whole reason that we started ovation, right, was to help you see through the eyes in a way that doesn’t require you to go every single day. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go.

00:17:46:12 – 00:17:55:15

Zack Oates

There’s different avenues to get that feedback. So, Justin, now you’ve had a great career still having it. But you know, a lot of people who is someone that we should be following.

00:17:55:17 – 00:18:13:14

Justin Falciola

It’s the end of summer and I don’t really want to end Zach. So I’m going to shout out to some of my favorite summer foods here. We’ve got two amazing customers and the dessert space. One is one started in Brooklyn. So I’m a little guy, but originally from Jersey and the New York City area, and you know, Van Loon.

00:18:13:16 – 00:18:33:14

Justin Falciola

If you’re familiar, they’re ice cream and thousands of grocery stores. I think at this point, a lot of retail outlets, you know, the founder of that company, he is obsessed with product quality, and he’s obsessed with everything we’ve been talking about, which is like the basics matter, the details matter. So shout out to them. I think it would be great to fill their doors before the summer ends.

00:18:33:16 – 00:18:41:14

Justin Falciola

And listen, I’m a cobbler guy. Peach cobbler factory is near and dear to my heart. Yeah. All right. And shout out to our friends at each cobbler.

00:18:41:16 – 00:18:45:04

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, just how do people find and follow you?

00:18:45:06 – 00:19:00:22

Justin Falciola

I’m on LinkedIn like everybody else. Our deliver at LinkedIn is pretty easy to find as well. Give us a shout! We love to hear from you, but most importantly, we love to celebrate restaurants. So that’s where it’s at. And Zach, thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here today.

00:19:00:24 – 00:19:12:05

Zack Oates

Yeah, man. Well, like toppings and cobbler. Thanks for showing us that tech and hospitality go together. And for that, today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you for joining us and giving ovation Justin.

00:19:12:07 – 00:19:12:14

Justin Falciola

Thanks.

00:19:12:14 – 00:19:36:08

Zack Oates

So 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 action 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.