Mitch Baker, VP of Marketing at Robeks, knows the restaurant marketing game inside and out. From Hollywood entertainment and Disney to his second tenure at Robeks, Mitch has spent years shaping hospitality brands that stand out. He shares how guest data, omnichannel branding, and strong collaboration between marketing and operations create a seamless guest experience—and why consistency is key to long-term success.

Key Highlights

From Hollywood to Hospitality (1:05)

“You have to be constantly evolving and adapting to your audience.” – Mitch Baker

Mitch reflects on his journey from entertainment marketing to hospitality, explaining how guest preferences shape branding and why brands must continuously adapt to stay relevant.

The Role of Data in Marketing (3:14)

“We use guest data to understand what they’re ordering, how they’re ordering, and how we can improve their experience.” – Mitch Baker

Mitch breaks down how Robeks leverages customer insights to create promotions and refine their offerings, using platforms like Big Key and their mobile app to drive engagement.

Technology Without Losing the Human Touch (7:30)

“Over 76% of our orders are digital, but we never let technology replace the guest experience.” – Mitch Baker

With the rise of mobile ordering and kiosks, Mitch shares how Robeks integrates tech to streamline service while maintaining a strong hospitality-first approach.

Marketing and Operations: A Critical Partnership (9:12)

“Marketing and operations have to be aligned—if they’re not, the guest experience suffers.” – Mitch Baker

Mitch highlights the importance of close collaboration between marketing and operations, ensuring that promotions are executed properly and that messaging remains consistent from digital ads to in-store signage.

The Secret to a Consistent Guest Experience (11:25)

“Service and order accuracy are what drive customer loyalty—mess those up, and you lose guests.” – Mitch Baker

Zack and Mitch discuss why guest satisfaction depends on getting the basics right: great service, accurate orders, and delivering on brand promises at every touchpoint.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (13:40)

Mitch gives a shoutout to brands like McDonald’s and Apple for their ability to continuously evolve while maintaining strong brand recognition and consumer trust.

Follow Mitch and Robeks:

Robeks Website: https://www.robeks.com/

Mitch’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitch-b-334b965/

Tune in to hear how Mitch’s insights on marketing, operations, and guest experience can help your restaurant thrive!

Transcript:

00;00;00;01 – 00;00;21;34

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give and Ovation, the Restaurant Guest Experience podcast, where I talk to industry experts to get their strategies and tactics you can use to create a five star guest experience. This podcast is sponsored by ovation, an operations and guest recovery platform for multi-unit restaurants that gives all the answers without annoying guests with all the questions.

00;00;21;36 – 00;00;43;01

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation up.com. And today, I’m excited because we don’t only have someone who is just sharp. Guy done a lot of cool things, but someone who is, At this point I consider him just to be a friend. I mean, he’s like super cool guy. VP of marketing at Roblox. He’s got a great career in hospitality.

00;00;43;05 – 00;01;01;42

Zack Oates

This is actually his second round at Robux, but he’s been in the marketing industry for years. He knows a ton of stuff. And for those who can see, I’m actually wearing my watermelon shirt today because I went through my closet and I was like, for Mitch, I want to wear something that has that healthy, robach’s vibe to it.

00;01;01;42 – 00;01;15;04

Zack Oates

And I looked at my closet. My closet is so unhealthy, Mitch. I have hamburgers, pizza, hot dogs, and one shirt with healthy food on it. So anyway, apologies that this is all I got, but welcome to the podcast.

00;01;15;04 – 00;01;22;12

Mitch Baker

Okay. It’s okay. Thank you. Thank you. So good to see you. I know we usually see each other in person in the different conferences, but good to see you again virtually.

00;01;22;18 – 00;01;41;03

Zack Oates

So now, Mitch, you’ve had such a great career in hospitality marketing and just kind of like from a high level. What’s your philosophy when it comes to marketing? Like what are some of the guiding principles that you’ve taken with you from Hollywood entertainment blockbuster, American Cancer Society, Walt Disney World to rollbacks?

00;01;41;08 – 00;02;00;36

Mitch Baker

I think overall you just have to be constantly evolving. You have to understand who your customers, who your consumer is, and then be able to adapt your marketing message to that audience. You know, that can be challenging. Sometimes you’ve got so many different types of audience members and breakdowns of different audiences.

00;02;00;36 – 00;02;07;16

Zack Oates

And how do you look at that? Like when you’re looking at your audience, how do you determine here’s what they care about?

00;02;07;21 – 00;02;29;28

Mitch Baker

Well, I think first and foremost it’s research, right? It’s utilizing the tools that you have at your disposal as your company. Right. Understanding guest performance, understanding the guest data, looking at what they’re ordering in our case, what they’re not ordering, what they’re adding, how frequently they’re coming in, and a lot of those things come into play. We use a platform called Big Key to understand some of the customer, you know, insights and trends.

00;02;29;28 – 00;02;48;25

Mitch Baker

And then through our mobile app, we’ve got, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of users that we have their information. We could see what they’re ordering, how they’re ordering, what they like, what they don’t like. In fact, we’re working on a new promotion to launch really at the end of March, focusing on our boosts and enrichments, which are hugely popular.

00;02;48;30 – 00;03;08;58

Mitch Baker

That’s, you know, adding immunity or adding whey protein or adding energy to a smoothie or even to a bowl. But one of the things that we’re looking at is trying to understand what people specifically are ordering and putting a boost into is primarily our classics category that aren’t prepackaged with boosts, or is it our performance category where they’re looking to add to it?

00;03;08;58 – 00;03;17;33

Mitch Baker

So again, the bottom line is it really comes down to the data that you have at hand to understand as much analytical information from the guest as possible.

00;03;17;42 – 00;03;30;00

Zack Oates

And I think that using a platform like Mickey is so powerful, because they do such a great job of aggregating data and helping you understand your guest more. What role does technology play for you in marketing?

00;03;30;04 – 00;03;51;52

Mitch Baker

It plays a huge part. I mean, we’re really strong partners with our technology team because they’re the one sort of behind the curtains, helping us get the information that we need. On my team, our senior digital marketing manager has access to our tools, whether even be through a third party delivery platform, where we have a little bit of insight into what customers are ordering our mobile app.

00;03;51;52 – 00;04;02;32

Mitch Baker

You know, we have consumer data that we get from feedback, from surveys, things like that, that we’re able to sort of all put together and extrapolate, you know, what the direction should be or could be.

00;04;02;41 – 00;04;30;55

Zack Oates

Yeah. And I think that as we look at it, you’ve done a great job at leveraging technology but not removing the hospitality from it. So coming from a marketers perspective, how do you market something when in restaurants? We are such an operations focused industry, and it’s not like you can ship the product to someone and it’s going to be the same exact thing every time, because everything that happens inside of a robot is going to go through the hands of an employee.

00;04;30;55 – 00;04;40;06

Zack Oates

And so there’s such a huge operational aspect, how do you work with operations as opposed to getting mad if something doesn’t go right?

00;04;40;11 – 00;05;14;59

Mitch Baker

Like you said, it’s working with that team again. I’ve got a great relationship with our head of operations and his team as well. And listen, as anybody that’s listening and or watching that’s in the franchise system, they know that it’s very difficult to enforce compliance. One of the things that unfortunately, when we’re sitting and putting together a program or an LTA or a promotion or putting together which elements are going to be in the store to promote it, you know, we put together really detailed instructions for the team members, for the franchisees to review with their teams and their managers.

00;05;14;59 – 00;05;41;04

Mitch Baker

And still you go to a store and it’s completely the opposite of like, we’ve spent hours putting this together because there’s a reason. As an example, window decals should go from the outside right there because you’ve got tinting. You’ve got, you know, any variety of things. So it is a challenge. It really is. And unfortunately, as I’m planning with my team, what we’re going to do next, are we thinking like, oh my gosh, I think we’re going to put out these decals, but I know they’re going to keep the other ones.

00;05;41;09 – 00;05;55;02

Mitch Baker

It’s a constant battle, really. It is. But that’s where, you know, you’ve got to have a strong operations team that is in the field and saying, okay, here’s your promotion, here are the elements and here’s where they should be because we’re giving you a plan. Ingram. This is what you need to correct it.

00;05;55;07 – 00;06;18;42

Zack Oates

And I think that that works so well. That idea of working closely with marketing and operations. And I know that one of our partners doghouse, they actually have a group. It’s called Mark durations. And they meet three times a week because you can’t run a marketing program without the operations on board. And you got to know what your marketing and operations needs to know what to put out there and how to implement it.

00;06;18;42 – 00;06;20;04

Zack Oates

And so I think.

00;06;20;05 – 00;06;21;08

Mitch Baker

There’s yeah.

00;06;21;13 – 00;06;33;56

Zack Oates

There’s just too many brands right now where there is an unhealthy tension. From what I can see between marketing operations and the restaurant industry, more so than other industries that I’ve been involved in.

00;06;34;01 – 00;06;53;43

Mitch Baker

You’re probably right. I mean, I’ve actually talked to C.J. about this same thing. He’s brought up that term before, and now we’ve discussed how the two, you know, are integrated. And you’re right, without a doubt, marketing operations are the two. They’ve got to be hand in hand. I really feel that we are I think we’re well aligned. I think, you know, they come to the rescue and we need it and we come to the rescue when they need it.

00;06;53;48 – 00;07;16;49

Mitch Baker

I think at the end of the day, we’re on the same page, certainly to ensure our franchisees are successful and are doing the things that are going to help drive their business. But like you said, you know, we could put programs out there, but if they’re not implemented the way that we’re recommending, I mean, you get to rely on your operations team to follow up and again, the circus we want, as an example, a calling this way on this window.

00;07;16;49 – 00;07;37;23

Mitch Baker

There’s a reason, as I said it. And if you look at marketing the business from sort of an omnichannel approach, you’ve got outside stuff driving people and whether there’s an e-book or social media or a rewards messaging website, you name it, search. And when they go in the store, we want that messaging to continue. And it makes sense.

00;07;37;23 – 00;07;48;25

Mitch Baker

So ultimately, when they go up to the kiosk to place the order or they go to the team member, they at the cashier station. So we’re sure are sort of you got to oh yeah, you guys are promoting superfoods. I want that one.

00;07;48;30 – 00;07;49;37

Zack Oates

Yeah, yeah, we.

00;07;49;37 – 00;08;01;18

Mitch Baker

Win because now we’re able to follow through on that promise to our franchisees of course, but to our customers. Hey, listen, here’s what we’re promoting. You’re going to love it. You’re seeing it here. You’re seeing it here. You’re seeing it here.

00;08;01;33 – 00;08;25;24

Zack Oates

I love that idea of just that omnichannel messaging and carrying that same message from, hey, I saw an ad, I saw a Instagram post, I got a push notification, I go in the store and I see the sign. It’s like, yes, this all makes sense. It looks professional and it feels unified, I think, which is really critical because at the end of the day, all of this, what we’re talking about here is the guest experience.

00;08;25;24 – 00;08;29;49

Zack Oates

Right? And so what do you think the most important aspect of guest experience is nowadays?

00;08;29;54 – 00;08;53;56

Mitch Baker

I mean, we know service in the eyes of many consumers are is really important service accuracy that you’re fulfilling your promise of your brand. The great thing about our brand, our mission statement, is we make delicious food that makes people happy. It’s the easiest, no brainer, low hanging fruit, whatever you want to call it, a statement to be able to execute on for our franchisees and for us as well.

00;08;54;01 – 00;09;10;37

Mitch Baker

All we’re doing is saying, okay, great, here’s this great looking product. It’s colorful, it tastes good. I mean, who doesn’t feel good and happy when they drink a smoothie? You may have a little bit of odd taste if you’ve, you know, straight kale and spinach and just add a little wheatgrass shot in there or something like that. Yeah.

00;09;10;41 – 00;09;30;09

Mitch Baker

But for the most part, you know, and for us, flavor is number one. It’s the number one thing that we launched our business on years ago, 1996. And we maintain that to this day, even if it’s something in our functional category, first and foremost has got to taste great. And there’s some great competitors in the category, and they all do a good job.

00;09;30;14 – 00;09;52;12

Mitch Baker

But it just amazing to me how their product just great. It’s functional, but just some of the tastes are like, oh my God. And the great thing for us is, you know, once our customers taste that product, that’s what sort of pulls them in. I mean, it’s really again, it’s I think it’s executing on your brand promise. You know, if you are going to tell somebody, you’re going to have a great experience all around.

00;09;52;23 – 00;10;08;42

Mitch Baker

I think you should back that up every step of the way. With the consumer experience in the store, the cashier, how you’re using the app. In your case, you know, how does someone get a survey that they could, you know, engage with quickly and easily everything across the board, our socials, how can they engage with us on social?

00;10;08;46 – 00;10;10;53

Mitch Baker

Is there a consistency there as well?

00;10;10;58 – 00;10;33;30

Zack Oates

And I think what’s really interesting is we get a bunch of data. We did a bunch of research to figure out what are the most likely reasons for restaurants to get negative reviews, and they were the two things that you just mentioned, service and accuracy. And I found it really interesting. It wasn’t about the food, because if a restaurant is still in business, the reviews aren’t going to be all complaining about the food.

00;10;33;41 – 00;10;52;36

Zack Oates

It’s the service and the accuracy. Because if you aren’t treated well, you want to feel vindicated. And so you will be out for blood. And these consumers, they go to Google, they go to Yelp to really get their pound of flesh if the order is inaccurate. I drove ten minutes. I picked up my order. I drove ten minutes home.

00;10;52;41 – 00;11;12;26

Zack Oates

I opened it up to give it to my family, and I ordered five things. And for them are there. I’m so frustrated. Right. And those two things I think are so critical because it creates a very viscerally emotional experience I could handle. Hey, I wanted to order here and the food wasn’t that good, so we’ll go someplace else next time.

00;11;12;37 – 00;11;21;54

Zack Oates

But if you make me feel like I’m not important, that is going to get a negative review more often than any other mistake that you can make in the restaurant industry.

00;11;21;56 – 00;11;49;20

Mitch Baker

Yeah, you’re right, we see it. You know, if you look at it, you know, we review our input, our customer data, customer feedback regularly. But if you just look at even across the board reviews for brands in general and just generalize, that’s the majority of complaints, especially for restaurants. And now introduce, you know, a couple years ago, obviously because of Covid, a sort of took off but third party delivery that we really have no control over our, our US in the restaurant space have no control over.

00;11;49;20 – 00;12;11;31

Mitch Baker

Right. The order gets placed. I mean, many of us using a preferred provider to deliver that product into the homes and then, of course, there’s the individual. You know, if somebody order from overreach is going to come from UberEats, but there’s minimal control on that. We make sure that when it goes to the driver, when it’s ready to go, it’s packaged, it’s accurate, it’s verified everything else.

00;12;11;36 – 00;12;18;55

Mitch Baker

But if there’s something that happens, you end up with an outraged customer. Sure, you can give them a refund, but it just puts a bad taste in their mouth.

00;12;18;57 – 00;12;24;00

Zack Oates

Totally. And so with that, what are some tactics that you’ve used to improve the guest experience?

00;12;24;04 – 00;12;43;10

Mitch Baker

Again, a lot of this I think falls onto the operations side. It’s just verifying if any one of the complaints that we would get from our mobile app is that people would place an order and they would hit the wrong location. Oh yeah, what happens is an order is ready somewhere else or it doesn’t get delivered. So really focusing on that.

00;12;43;10 – 00;13;10;31

Mitch Baker

So what we did is we recently updated our app and we have an extra step there to verify, hey, you’re ordering from this store on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles versus another store. That’s one of the ways again, but operations really is the one that that falls on. Because again, we’re sending people in, we’re promoting products. It’s got to be executed by our operations partners with all the things they’re training, deliver it to our franchisees and to their team members.

00;13;10;36 – 00;13;36;54

Zack Oates

Yeah, I love that. I think it’s so important. And I think the the message about this unification of messaging to the guests and making sure that you have a unified face, like, you know, if my wife and I disagree on how to parent our kids through a situation like, maybe I shouldn’t talk about this in the podcast, but my kid was getting like, he was getting pushed around by this other kid, and so he popped him in the nose and gave him a bloody nose.

00;13;36;54 – 00;13;56;48

Zack Oates

Right. And so my wife’s reaction was like, hey, way to like, stand up for yourself. My reaction was, let’s use our words. Right? So her and I had to get on the same page on how do we handle that? But same thing with operations and marketing. Like you have to provide that unified face. And I think that that messaging throughout I think is so critical.

00;13;56;48 – 00;14;09;08

Zack Oates

And I love that you really touched on that, because that’s something that often gets overlooked and it’s not sent out as a campaign. It’s sent out as like a one off. And it’s so much more powerful when it is a campaign.

00;14;09;15 – 00;14;33;33

Mitch Baker

Yeah, there’s a balance between, you know, our operations, for example, being police officers and being coaches. As an example, we have a monthly, our franchisee webinar. We have a bi annual conference, and we drive these things home. And we take feedback from franchisees. Of course, as well. But again, you know, just trying to yes, be uniform, be consistent by trying to explain a franchisee to a franchisee.

00;14;33;33 – 00;14;42;17

Mitch Baker

Here’s why we’re doing something. And here’s the importance of it. Besides the fact that you’re obligated through your franchise room to right follow this. But I mean, just.

00;14;42;26 – 00;14;46;25

Zack Oates

This is going to help you. And I think that that’s really the what’s in it for me, right.

00;14;46;25 – 00;15;03;14

Mitch Baker

And when you get a, you know, brand been around for, you know, as long as we have 25 years. We tried a lot of different things over the years. What we did years ago when I was at Rolex in the mid to late 2000, is different, you know, then we’re doing now as far as tactics and training our franchisees to get out and market their stores.

00;15;03;28 – 00;15;08;45

Zack Oates

So, you know, a lot of people in the industry who’s someone that we should be following, who’s someone that deserves innovation.

00;15;08;50 – 00;15;41;41

Mitch Baker

This is going to sound somewhat silly, but as a consumer, I look at everybody’s Starbucks, right? Which they do great. Starbucks, Apple, Nike, they all do a great job on the Nike, sort of lost a little bit of its flair lately. But one thing I continually see is McDonald’s. They’re always reinventing themselves. Whether the look in the field, either the marketing messaging they use, whether it be broadcast media or even in the store, they’re always evolving to not only are the customer wants, but I think to attract a different customer, a broader customer.

00;15;41;41 – 00;16;03;10

Mitch Baker

And I see just in their messaging, it seems to be very, very clean. They don’t take a lot of chances because how many variations can you do on an egg McMuffin before the McRib? But that’s one of the brands that that stands out in just being diverse and being unique and keeping a real high level of quality. You know, of course, Apple, because it’s simplistic.

00;16;03;14 – 00;16;22;31

Mitch Baker

They definitely, you know, have for years, you know, focused on the brand and it’s all about the brand. At the end of the day, you can have a phone over here or a phone over there, a computer, pretty much. It’s going to work the same way. So it’s just about the whole essence of being part of the brand, making you feel like you’re part of that movement.

00;16;22;31 – 00;16;23;31

Mitch Baker

So to say.

00;16;23;35 – 00;16;29;01

Zack Oates

Yeah, love that match. Well, how do people find and follow you and Robach’s?

00;16;29;06 – 00;16;57;12

Mitch Baker

Gosh. Well, on social media, obviously, Rob express uses in smoothies. Rob X.com is the website I’m on LinkedIn. Mitch Baker for those franchise folks that are viewing and listening, albeit the international franchise Association annual conference starting on Sunday, I’m actually part of the Marketing and Innovation Committee, which is headed up by just some great folks are Sherry Fishman, who’s a long time veteran in the franchise industry, is our chair.

00;16;57;17 – 00;17;09;33

Mitch Baker

So we’re doing some great things to help franchisees and franchisors be able to, you know, market their stores and use best practices. So anyway, long story short, I’ll be there. And as I mentioned, of course, LinkedIn.

00;17;09;38 – 00;17;18;41

Zack Oates

Awesome. Well, Mitch, for giving us a Mitch Baker’s dozen worth of insights. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us on Giving Ovation.

00;17;18;46 – 00;17;20;13

Mitch Baker

Thanks, Zach.

00;17;20;18 – 00;17;42;45

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 ABC.com.