Building A Brand With Personality with Phyllis Williams-Strawder

SPEAKERS

Phyllis Williams-Strawder, Zack Oates

Building A Brand With Personality with Phyllis Williams-Strauder

SPEAKERS

Phyllis Williams-Strauder (preview)

I want you to bring all your your crazy to the table, put it out on the porch with a drink, and let everybody experience that because that is what’s going to bring personality to your brand. And what a lot of restaurants don’t understand is like, “Well I can’t do that, I’ll turn somebody off.” You’re supposed to be turning people off! If you don’t have any haters and you don’t have any people that love you.

Zack Oates

(Intro) What’s up? Zack Oates here – author, entrepreneur and customer relationship guru. Welcome to Give an Ovation: growth strategies for restaurants and retailers, where we find industry leaders to share their secrets to grow your business. This podcast is sponsored by Ovation, the actionable guest feedback tool that works on or off premise, and is easy, real-time, and actually drives revenue. Learn more at Ovationup.com.

Welcome to another edition of Give an Ovation. I am joined today by Phyllis Williams-Strawder, who is a business coach, brand strategist who successfully ran two restaurants for over 10 years. She’s also an author of That Damn Girl Stuff and Morgan Mischief. She works with restaurants around the country. She is one of my clubhouse buddies, you could check her out on clubhouse, she’s in a lot of great rooms. And she is someone who takes passion from a spice to the main course because she’s got so much of it. Phyllis! We are excited to have you on Give an Ovation today.

Phyllis William-Strawder

Oh, I’m excited to be here. I’m like, whoo, I love this kind of energy, I can do this.

Zack Oates

Oh, man. So first of all, tell me a little bit about what you do and how you work with restaurants.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Oh, my goodness, I work with restaurants. What I do is I’m the ghetto country brand strategist. And what that means is I was raised hood-adjacent by a country mama. And when I talk to you, sweetie, you don’t have to worry about me putting my ghetto country in your copy. It’s just how I roll. That’s how I vibe. But I make sure that my restaurants – I want you to get authentically branded AF. And the reason I want you to do that is because I want you to bring all your crazy to the table, put it out on the porch with a drink, and let everybody experience that. Because that is what’s going to bring personality to your brand. And what a lot of restaurants don’t understand, it’s like, well, I can’t do that, I’ll turn somebody off. You’re supposed to be turning people off. If you don’t have any haters, then you don’t have any people that love you.

Zack Oates

Boom. So so I think that’s one of the things a lot of people are so afraid about. And one of the really unique opportunities about virtual kitchens is that I don’t want to go to an Asian restaurant that sells pizza and hot wings and hamburgers, right?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Yes! Oh my God.

Zack Oates

I want to go to a pizza joint, I want to go to a wing joint, I want to go to a burger joint or an Asian joint and virtual concepts allow you to have that branding, right. But I think you’re exactly right, which is, you know, branding is like a it’s like a magnet. It’s going to attract people and repel people. The stronger the magnet, the stronger people are going to come in, and the stronger people are going to walk away. But guess what, it’s a lot better than just having, you know, a really weak magnet where no one is that loyal right?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

And that’s what a lot of people are doing because I go into some restaurants. And I’m like, why do you have 50 million things on the menu? Sweetheart get good at one thing, because what you’re telling me at this, when I look at this long laundry list of stuff that you that, I ain’t good at a daggone thing. I’m not good at nothing, so I’ma throw it all at you. And so when you don’t have that, it just means like, You’re no different than the person that I just passed, I could have saved myself some steps, some gas, some something, and went on back to where I came from, because you’re not giving me anything that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

And when I talk to my clients, and they’re like, well, I don’t want to miss out somebody who’s gonna come in here for such and such and such and such. Okay, they’re not for you. When we had our restaurant, people like, do you have anything vegetarian? I think that Turkey we just cooked was vegetarian. That’s all I can tell you. That’s all I got for you. There is nothing vegetarian when you’re offended by our pig that like, oh, that pig should not be smiling. Sweetie, back up off me because I am so not for you. So don’t come for me. It’s just realizing that you can’t make all the money, because it’s just not possible. It’s just like when you’re working with SEO, I can get you to the top page. That’s a bunch of malarkey. Because everybody can’t be at the top page. But you can be at the top of your own page. How about that? Yeah, because if you Google my name, that’s the only person you’re gonna see on that page. But if I google your name, how many 50 million Glorias are gonna show up? Because you haven’t made yourself distinctive. And you haven’t made your restaurant distinctive. When I’m looking for the best burger in town, you know what Yelp will give me? The first top 10 that they think only because they got a certain score. The only person that should care about you is you’re on their top list. When you become top of mind when they’re looking for that burger. How are you going to do that? How are you going to make that happen? Today if I don’t know you exist, you can’t do a daggone thing for me. So it’s like understanding how that’s supposed to work for you. And a lot of restaurants don’t understand that. They don’t get it.

Zack Oates

But here’s the problem Phyllis – is every menu item is a, is a baby, it’s someone’s baby, right? How do you go throw the baby out of the dumpster? Like come on now? It’s like, hard. How do you decide which which ones get kept and which ones you got to get rid of?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Okay, it depends on how you’re trying to come at it. If you’re coming at it from the real Oh, I’m turning grandma’s recipe into a restaurant, then you know what you need to pimp, I’m sorry, y’all don’t get offended. But y’all need to pimp out Grandma. Y’all gonna have to tell her story tell how she came up with it, you’re gonna have to do all these things to make sure everybody and their mama know who grandma is. But if you sit here, and you said, Well, I started this restaurant because I thought my grandmother, don’t nobody know that story but you. I just wrote a piece where a restaurant that I went to, I had to go find the manager in order to get the story. And it was a great story. But it’s like, I asked her cashier, she like, Oh, you need to talk to him. He likes to talk. Really, that tells me that chick is only there for the paycheck, and when the next bigger paycheck come along, she gonna leave you. So you have to make sure that when you’re branding, your branding, internally, as well as externally, you treat your your your staff like crap while you try to kiss your customer’s behind. So if you sweetie, I’m sorry, you gonna have to kiss mine, too, if you want me to stay back in here in this, excuse my language, hot ass kitchen! But they don’t they don’t see branding for what it is. You brand internally, because your staff is now going to make sure that you’re branded externally.

Zack Oates

So that’s a great point, especially with those legacy recipes. If your recipe has a story, and you don’t want to take it off the menu, then you better make sure that everyone knows that story that you’re telling it. Because Because food tastes better when it has a story attached to it. Right? And what about the rest of the food? Like how do you how do you recommend restaurants go about paring down who they’re targeting for to come in the door?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

If you’re if you’re talking about building it as a brand, if you have 30 items on your menu, and you’re trying to figure out what to take on, first of all, which one is the lowest selling? Which one offers you the least profit? Dump that son of a gun, as soon as you get back to your restaurant, take it off the menu. Because not only is it not selling, it’s taking up space in your in your kitchen. And we know that kitchen space is very limited. So that would be the first one you drop. Then if you have something that is high profit, and you know that it’s good, your customers are telling you it’s good, because that’s what’s you know what I’m going through my receipt – dang we sold a lot of pasta today. Dagnabbit let me come tell you about the pasta that we had. And you pimp out that pasta, you have to find what your customers are looking for. If those are the people you want to talk to, if you don’t want to sell pasta, take it off the menu. But the reason you put it on because it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s fast. And it has a high profit margin, but you don’t even care. So why should they?

Zack Oates

Yeah, it you know, we run into this issue with technology as well. You know, we took everything that we do. We’re like, Oh my gosh, all of our restaurants love every single feature. Well, one day we’re like, you know how many people actually use this feature? We’ve spent so many hours building this out. And we were like, Wait a second, no one even uses it. Okay. There’s like five people that use it. Let’s turn it off and see what happens. No one, nobody, right. And so I think that’s the mentality that we need to take with restaurants, is getting less emotional about it. And we do some great work with Ed Zimmerman of return on ingredients. And where he talks about, Hey, this is what we need to do here. Here are ways that you can logically go about it, but you do like you’re talking about Phyllis, you got it, you got to take your emotion out unless that unless that story of that recipe is critical to your brand. If you’re you have a brand called grandma’s fried chicken..

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Then Granny need to be on the menu!

Zack Oates

I love that. So on your LinkedIn, you talk about this. And I’ve heard you mentioned it before, where 80% of restaurants go out of business within five years.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Oh my god, yes.

Zack Oates

So why? Why, Phyllis?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Because they’re like my husband, and I’m using him as an example. My husband had a recipe and a dream that he did not want to do the business. And when you find out how much back house or administrative I’ll put it like that not even back of house, when you find out how much administrative stuff goes into actually running a restaurant. That’s not your baby weight. That’s not your thing. That’s not your vibe. So you either screw it up or you dole it out. And when you dole out now you got to pay more money, but because you’re not marketing because you didn’t build a brand. None of it’s working. So it’s like, okay, now you wonder why the banks won’t give you any money. I just told you 80% and you’re gonna go out of business in five years. I’m not gonna get my money back. I’m not giving you a daggone thing. S0 you have to realize when you go out here and you start deciding that you know what I’ma open a restaurant. Because I make this so much better than everyone else who you’re gonna convince? The people that are actually checking for that? Oh I’m the peach cobbler Queen over here. Sweetie, when’s the last time somebody actually told you that? What are your customers saying about your peach cobbler?

If they’re telling you that something’s wrong this week, stop using that as your tagline stop using that as your thing, because it’s not that great, but they might be raving about something else. We’re not telling you to take the peach cobbler off the menu, because it’s part of what you do. But we’re telling you, you know what, I need you to talk about this, because this is what’s really poppin. excuse me, this is what’s really poppin for our customers. But like I said, grandma’s chicken is the thing and grandma’s chicken ain’t selling, you gonna have to go ahead and shut down because your game is over. Because what you’re gonna start doing, I’m gonna add some burgers to the menu, I’m gonna go sell some fries. And I’m gonna add some of this. Because grandma’s only person who thought grandma’s chicken good was good was you.

Zack Oates

That’s one of the things you know, there’s a restaurant that I heard about that. They have the word biscuits, in their name, not in their tagline, in their name, the name of the restaurant has the word biscuits in it. And I talked to somebody who had eaten there recently. And he goes, you know what’s weird? I go what? He goes, the biscuits were terrible. Uh oh!

But I think that’s that’s a great point, though Phyllis is, you know, making sure that if you have a recipe and a dream, you gotta have the infrastructure behind it. Right? Because it’s, it’s so easy to just get started. But you got to have you got to have all those pieces in place. And I think that’s why it’s really smart for people to work with people like you, who have seen a lot of things. You work with restaurants all around the country, you know, what’s working, what isn’t. And you can increase your chances of success greatly by by learning from those mistakes.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

If you know exactly what it is that you want to accomplish, because part of it why it’s called brand strategy is because you’re actually building the brand to reach a certain goal. You’re trying to say that you know what, by this time, I want three restaurants. So what do I have to put in my strategy to make that happen? And then you turn around and use that branding strategy to work on your marketing strategy. Because you cannot market if you don’t have a brand. If you do, sweetie, I promise you all you’re doing is advertising you’re passing out coupons. And once the coupons is gone, nobody’s in your house. Yeah, nobody showing up because they were there for the fast, cheap and easy. You took that away. So they’re not checking for you anymore. Mm hmm. And so when restaurants do that, sweetie that’s just you spiraling to the bottom. Yeah, that’s you trying to compete with McDonald’s, and you’ve not even on McDonald’s level, you’re actually better than them, but you’re too scared to prove it. So you won’t raise your prices, you won’t be nice to staff, and you sideways crazy. It don’t work. That’s where you’re at.

Zack Oates

So speaking, speaking of, of what we need to do to compete, one of the biggest things that we have, as the non McDonald’s of the world, is the guest experience. So what do you think is one of the most important things for guests experience nowadays?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Um, I think your brand needs to have personality. And I promise you, if y’all say quality and customer service, I’m gonna jump through this microphone and I’m gonna choke somebody. I get so tired of all that nonsense. Oh, I serve a quality product. Really? So does every other business that’s supposed to be doing right by their customers, they do the exact same thing. Everybody has customer service. So you are not distinguishing yourself. You’re not making yourself distinctive

Zack Oates

That’s table stakes. That’s what you need to just open the doors, not keep them open.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

So if you’re gonna be that hot chicken place dagnabbit. I’m gonna need you to put that up there and watch. Let me watch your drizzle and work out that hot sauce that you put on my stuff, do something that’s gonna make them…

We used to, the way our restaurant was set up before we had this glass partition and people will be lined up on the glass. I said, alright, I”ma need somebody to drop it like it’s hot so they can get a taste of this brisket that I’m cutting off. I promise you everybody in that line was started dancing. And everybody in that line was starting getting brisket. Oh, you can’t get that low can you? It was something that they came for. Even before that somebody was asking me? Like how do I embrace technology? The way we embrace technology when we first started, my husband and I used to have Twitter fights. Actually on the on the on on Twitter. Dude, I’ma need you to stop eating a brisket and hurry up and do this because you need to get home. And people started following us because we would have these open conversations via Twitter, about our business and our home life. I heard you got fussy yesterday I saw it on Twitter and they would come in just to be able to say that, but they will come I love you guys. I just have to come in here because I love seeing you guys fight on Twitter. Really?

Zack Oates

I think that is that is a great opportunity for people who you know you don’t have this giant corporate brand. And that’s not a weakness. That’s a strength because then you can do things like that. You know, Sean Walchef, we’ve been on clubhouses with him before, you know, great branding guy, great barbecue, but he’s someone where he has created a brand around his barbecue and people come because they love him. You can get barbecue that’s a little bit better, a little bit worse. But when you have that personal connection, like I said, Everything tastes better witha story. And when you’re involved in that story, it taste much better.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Yes. So what happened when they know the owners? like really? Come on?

Zack Oates

Exactly. So what are some successful things that you’ve seen or tried lately?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Oh, my goodness, that successful things? Well, it for me, since I’m not in the restaurant industry anymore, it doesn’t, it doesn’t vibe the same way. But what I’m seeing people do is how they’re, they’re they’re creating ways to use technology, because a lot of companies are not embracing it. And that is another failure on their part. Sweetie, stop complaining about the 30% and learn how to pimp out that 30%. What are you getting for you 30%. And I’m not talking about saying paying extra to rank at the top of some some app or whatever.

But how are you clipping that out with your with your customers, when you tell them that you know what, when you order here, this is going to do this, this and this, because that third party app is not going to let you raise your prices or they don’t want you to so how are you going to make that worth your while? How are you going to get a good return on your investment when you do that? What is goin in that bag is gonna make your customer come back and say, hey, I want to order some extra this, I want to do some more of that. How are you going to get more money off of that. So if you’re learning to leverage that, and mine, I tell you my little sideways shady when I did, because when my regular customers when I was using doordash and grubhub. And y’all better not go out and do this because they’re going to they’re gonna find out my shakiness. But anyway, when I was doing it, my regular customers, whenever I sent them something, there was something in the bag. And so what they got in the back was the off menu, stuff that wasn’t on here, stuff that wasn’t on on the doordash or grubhub website. And there was extra. So it next time, when you call me when you’re going on to grubhub and you want this extra, you gonna have wanted to pick up the phone and call me. Because you cannot get this on that menu that you can’t get on my house menu and you can’t get it on their app, you can only get it by calling me and now I got my extra 30% back because I’m charging full price and not sharing the profit and it’s going in your bag. GrubHub don’t have to know doordash don’t have to know.

Zack Oates

I’m doing the same thing though, in terms of like, you know, one of the things that we do is you you offer them some kind of a discount $5 off your next order when you give us your feedback, right. And yeah, but things like that. It’s so important. CJ doghouse CJ Ramirez. Oh my gosh, what a brilliant marketer. And one of the things that he does is he’ll put in a little bit extra, saying, Hey, here’s like a free little thing. Hopefully you order directly from us next time. Thank you. Right like?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

and what that when you talk about ordering directly. It wasn’t even so much that that it was the sideways shady part, what it was is that we actually they actually got to talk to us when I called it was that personal part? Oh, you think enough of me to give me this extra in this bag? You know, just call me. I got you. Yeah, this so it was that personal interaction? That was the real value for us. Because our customers got to know us on that level. And they thought that they were doing sideways shady – ooh I’m gonna help her make some extra money. They think they’re helping you. So it’s like, when you when you give them that opportunity to actually buy into making your restaurant better. It gives them a sense of purpose other than just coming to eat.

There was a woman that was sitting there and we have big Mrs. Warner woods. She was sitting here in labor. She would not leave until she finished her food. You better not Hannah. But she went out and she told everybody Mrs. Mr. sat down with me while I was in labor and eatin her pancakes. Who gonna tell you that. Who else is gonna tell you that? Because I’m gonna need you to get up out of here. Come on, but her husband was sitting across from her he could not get her to leave. That tells you something about not just about the food but about how we served our customers. Yeah, we’ll have regular customers that came in and that’s kind of where I started my whole vibe of how you deal now. My regular customers come in with their kids. Okay, I got the baby while you go eat. Me and the baby be back in the kitchen eatin cornbread and whatever else and Mama daddy they fine. It’s just being that personal. And not everybody can be that personable, I understand that. And I don’t expect that from everyone. But if there is something that you do that your customers love, there’s something that you bring to them that they just truly appreciate. You know what they always give me an extra slice of pie. Really – just give them an extra slice of the pie is gonna get them to tell everybody and their mama about you.

Zack Oates

I I go to this place called Villa Villa chicken. Every time I go, he hooks me up with an extra little piece of chicken or a free soda. And it’s something where, you know I’ve told so many people about Villa Villa Chicken and that cost him what you know. 50 cents. You know each time I go and

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

And here you are talking about it on your podcast.

Zack Oates

Yeah, exactly ight. And I tell everyone Hey, you need to go over here, but make sure you get Villa Villa chicken. Yeah. Last question, Phyllis, who deserves an ovation in the restaurant industry?

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Oh my goodness, you already said it You already said I was gonna tell you, Cali BBQ because his thing about embracing technology. And so many people have to get on board with that, I’m sorry. But restaurants are becoming a high tech business. And you have to understand how to leverage that for yourself. You have to learn to find the technology that works for you, though. It’s like you’re talking about your Ovation brand and the different things that they can bring to people the different things that they can do for them, sweetie, does this work for you? And if it doesn’t, then how can you either make it work? Or find the value in it? Or how do you find the value over here but you’re going to have to start using technology on a on a higher level and stop thinking that you know what, I don’t need tech. Really? You sit here with an empty space trying to pass out coupons and have a happy hour and nobody’s still checking for you. Mm hmm. So it’s you got to learn to embrace the technology so him doing that and even you doing that now I will put you on Ovation hahah.

Zack Oates

I’ve never gotten an ovation before!

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Helping people embrace the technology is a great thing.

Zack Oates

Amen. Love that Phyllis. How do people find you follow you because I know that there’s a whole bunch of people that just fell in love with Phyllis today.

Phyllis Williams-Strawder

Oh my goodness you can always DM me on my Instagram, CKO Creator. Everything that I do is under @CKOcreator.com. whether it’s on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, um, I don’t do YouTube do I? No I don’t. You can also if you have questions you can email me at hello@ckocreator.com, you can text me a question 562-356-8111. I will answer as many free questions that I that I can but once you ask me one too many I’m gonna have to charge you.

Zack Oates

Well, Phyllis, for helping us all lift up our spirits today and helping us feel like we could conquer this 80% and five year rule, today’s Ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us Phyllis.

Zack Oates

(Outro) Glad you were with us today. And thank you! Thank you to the risk takers, the troublemakers, the crazies who are keeping this world clothed and fed. You’re the ones who deserve an Ovation. Again, this podcast was sponsored by Ovation! To see how we can help you grow your business, go to Ovationup.com. Don’t forget to subscribe, and as always, remember to give someone in your life an Ovation today!