Shaz Khan, co-founder of Tono Pizzeria + Cheesesteaks, joins Give an Ovation to share how he built a tech-savvy, guest-centric brand that stays rooted in authenticity. With an engineering background and a deep respect for family legacy, Shaz explains how thoughtful feedback loops, transparent operations, and community-driven values help scale without losing the personal touch.

Designing for Authenticity at Scale (3:45)

“We’re not trying to sell something—we’re just saying, ‘Here’s our story, come on in.’” – Shaz Khan

Shaz shares how staying honest, transparent, and connected to the brand’s origin story helped Tono grow while keeping a local vibe. For him, guest experience starts with truthfulness and a commitment to refining based on feedback—not hype.

Local Feel, Even at Scale (5:15)

“We never want to feel like a chain… we want to feel like your local pizzeria.” – Shaz Khan

As Tono expands past ten locations, Shaz makes it a priority to maintain a neighborhood feel. His team avoids corporate polish and focuses on building trust through sincerity, consistency, and heartfelt service.

The Feedback Loop That Drives Change (8:00)

“We respond to every single review—across every platform—for every location.” – Shaz Khan

Using Ovation and Marqii together, Shaz has built a guest feedback engine that drives improvement. Every comment is read and responded to, helping the team uncover operational gaps and reinforce what’s working.

Why Data Helps, But Empathy Wins (10:45)

“I want this brand to be representative of a psyche that says: we want to get better.” – Shaz Khan

Shaz talks about listening beyond the numbers. Even with data tools, he emphasizes human responses, real conversations, and transparent explanations that make guests feel heard—and valued.

Operational Insights From Real-Time Feedback (14:04)

“Ovation helped us find issues we didn’t even know we had—down to shifts and product temperature.” – Shaz Khan

Guest comments led to operational adjustments that improved consistency and training. Shaz credits Ovation for surfacing patterns at specific times and locations, giving leadership the visibility they needed to take action.

Who Deserves an Ovation? (15:52)

Shaz gives a collective shoutout to local restaurant owners everywhere, urging others to have real conversations with operators in their neighborhoods. They deserve the ovation for their grit, hustle, and heart.

Transcript

00:00:00:05 – 00:00:20:19

Zack Oates

Welcome to another edition of Give Innovation, 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.

00:00:20:20 – 00:00:48:11

Zack Oates

Learn more at ovation. Up.com. And today, we’ve got a guy here who is just so impressive. He’s been doing amazing things. He’s the co-founder and president of Tono Pizzeria and Cheesesteaks. I mean, look this place up. The pictures are just mouthwatering. I mean, this stuff looks so good. He’s an advisor to a bunch of different places, including toast and DoorDash.

00:00:48:13 – 00:00:58:15

Zack Oates

He’s also the co-founder and president of Frank from Philly and Andrea Pizza. I mean, you’re all over the place. Welcome, Shaz Khan. How are you, Shaz?

00:00:58:17 – 00:01:00:07

Shaz Khan

I’m doing well. How about yourself?

00:01:00:12 – 00:01:09:05

Zack Oates

Oh, man, I’m doing great. Now because I got the chance to just look at all these amazing photos from your restaurant, so it looks awesome.

00:01:09:06 – 00:01:11:24

Shaz Khan

Glad to hear that. I mean, you got to fly over now.

00:01:12:01 – 00:01:26:14

Zack Oates

I know. Well, next time, because you guys are a Delta hub, aren’t you? Up there in Minnesota? We sure are. There we go. So I have layovers there occasionally, so next time I just. I may have to miss the next leg of my flight and, go get.

00:01:26:16 – 00:01:27:16

Shaz Khan

Home at Tono.

00:01:27:18 – 00:01:31:21

Zack Oates

Yeah, there we go. So tell me about Tony. What was the birth of Tono?

00:01:31:23 – 00:01:55:03

Shaz Khan

Yeah. So it’s kind of funny because I don’t come from the food industry. My background is in engineering. I went to school for electrical engineering. My best friend of 20 something years, Antonio Gambino. There’s a joke in there somewhere. He’s Sicilian. And we eventually started having talks about kind of how to work together and what that would look like.

00:01:55:05 – 00:02:19:11

Shaz Khan

He was working at his family’s slice shop called Andre A Pizza for many years, like out of high school. And he wanted to kind of step outside of that and then do his own thing. So he was born in Philly, but obviously raised in Minnesota. So we kind of talked about this, and so came our first concept. Frank and Andre is it’s short for Frank from Philly and Andre at Pizza Frank’s his brother’s name Andre is his dad.

00:02:19:17 – 00:02:45:24

Shaz Khan

Like I said, his dad’s from Sicily, mom’s from Philly. He was born in Philly. So this is, dual pizza and cheesesteak concept recipes go back almost a century. So, yeah, it’s very authentic artisan. So the pizza that Frank and Andrea’s New York style, we’re located on the University of Minnesota campus, in an area called Dinkytown. And that was our first, joint venture together and my entry into this space in 2016.

00:02:46:01 – 00:03:10:02

Shaz Khan

Fast forward to 2019. We were going to open a second one, and it quickly transformed into what is now a Tono Pizzeria plus cheesesteaks. This is brick oven pizza. So I guess for the untrained eye it’s Neapolitan esque. I wouldn’t call a new partner by any stretch, but it’s artisan Hand-tossed brick oven pizza paired with authentic cheesesteaks. So we have nine locations.

00:03:10:02 – 00:03:12:24

Shaz Khan

I’ve actually got a grand opening tomorrow for our next.

00:03:13:01 – 00:03:13:19

Zack Oates

Tough.

00:03:13:21 – 00:03:20:01

Shaz Khan

Thank you. And then location ten, 11 and 12, around the corner. So busy time of year.

00:03:20:03 – 00:03:45:00

Zack Oates

That’s incredible. And it’s amazing to see, how much people love your brand. The pictures don’t only look amazing, but the reviews are great. People love the food, they love the vibe. And so you’ve done a great job building something special. And people are looking at this and it’s like you’ve created such a great guest experience. And so what do you think is one of the most important aspects of guest experience nowadays?

00:03:45:02 – 00:04:32:01

Shaz Khan

Great question. To be honest, I’m huge on technology, right? Like I’m a massive tech enthusiast. As if my city didn’t make that happen. But it has nothing to do with technology at the forefront. To me, it’s integrity and truthfulness, right? It’s an aspect of authenticity. I would say. So my mission that I chose to accept was taking that history and that family legacy and that story that came from Antonio’s family translating that into a physical space, a menu presentation, but also combining this with being able to tell that story in a fashion that didn’t feel like people are being sold, something we don’t want to be like, oh, we’re the best, you know, we’re authentic.

00:04:32:01 – 00:04:54:02

Shaz Khan

Come check us out. It’s more like, hey, here’s a story, here we are. Come on in. And usually that refining process of getting that guest feedback, it might go without saying, but just using that feedback to constantly refine the product and that guest experience and when things aren’t working well, like I said, the truthfulness that right your slam things are really busy.

00:04:54:02 – 00:05:15:21

Shaz Khan

Things are laid not as expected. Maybe there’s a bunch of training shifts and, and, you know, things didn’t go as planned. Just letting people know and offering them that information in a fashion that makes them understand that you care, that you’re still giving them that hometown feel. And to be honest, that’s the key factor for us. It’s just the level of service.

00:05:15:23 – 00:05:38:19

Zack Oates

Yeah. And one of the things that we find is, do you know why most people, they want to go to their local businesses, they want to support local. But if they feel like it’s a chain, why do people go to chains? Because it’s consistent. Because they know what they’re going to get. But when you can fight back and you can start to grow your brand into the double digits and still maintain that community feel.

00:05:38:21 – 00:06:03:05

Zack Oates

Yeah, it’s like powerful. And to your point, a lot of people who complain they’re not complaining to like, ruin your business. They’re complaining because they want to feel heard. And if you fulfill that need to help them feel heard, then you’ve won them. And it’s not just something where they’re like, okay, maybe I’ll come back and try it out, but that recovered guest is worth 24 times the value of an average guest.

00:06:03:09 – 00:06:26:08

Zack Oates

So it’s just so powerful. Exactly what you’re saying. Hey, if the shifts were off or if someone didn’t show up, be open. Yo, I’m so sorry someone didn’t show up for their shift. It was a little crazy tonight. Here’s a free cheesesteak on me that goes so far to humanize each location and to realize, like, this is my local town, us, you know?

00:06:26:10 – 00:06:44:23

Shaz Khan

Yeah, absolutely. We never want to lose that human touch, that element. We never want to feel like a chain. We’re always as we’ve been growing at the pace, we’ve been growing. That’s been one of my challenges, is to make sure and to kind of get ahead of the idea that we might be a chain, local or not, because that has connotations with it.

00:06:45:00 – 00:07:09:24

Shaz Khan

And I don’t want those connotations to overcome any kind of human element and that sense of locality that we are very adamant about having. Now. People obviously get it when they show up, as evidenced by the reviews, and that repeatability in our customers in that raving fan base. But we certainly want to make sure that we’re driving that narrative not out of manipulation or marketing, but out of authenticity.

00:07:10:01 – 00:07:35:05

Zack Oates

Yeah. I mean, you don’t get to 5000 reviews and 4.7 stars without doing something right. I just think that is a testament to what you’re doing, because at the end of the day, people vote with their wallets, but they hint with their reviews. So I think that it’s important to remember that. And you’ve just nailed that recipe. And so let’s talk about that recipe.

00:07:35:08 – 00:07:39:22

Zack Oates

What are some tactics that you’ve used to improve the guest experience?

00:07:39:24 – 00:08:01:15

Shaz Khan

Yeah, this is I say I would say where the technology piece comes in. And I guess our training and management and leadership style. So we leverage a number of platforms to acquire data. Like you said, it’s important for the customers to feel heard. Well, we want them to know that we’re listening. It’s not just about waiting for somebody to raise their voice, proverbially, until we hear them.

00:08:01:17 – 00:08:26:12

Shaz Khan

We want to make sure that they know that we’re open and we want to listen. And so offering the capacity to listen in the form of customer feedback via a platform like ovation or responding to every single review, that’s another thing that we do, is we make sure that no matter the platform, we respond to every single review across our entire location base.

00:08:26:14 – 00:08:46:06

Shaz Khan

So it’s powerful. All of those five hours or maybe more reviews, there’s a response to each and every one of them in a timely fashion and in a fashion that demonstrates the empathy that we truly hold, as well as letting others who may see those responses know we care. We’re not AI driven, right? It’s not like, oh, just get the text out there.

00:08:46:12 – 00:09:04:13

Shaz Khan

I understand that’s a solution for brands. I just personally don’t entirely believe in that. I fully leverage AI where it’s best suited for us. But at this point in the evolution of our accessibility to those tools, I don’t know that that’s the place I want to deploy it at. It’s Maximo.

00:09:04:15 – 00:09:07:13

Zack Oates

Who do you use to respond to your reviews?

00:09:07:15 – 00:09:09:23

Shaz Khan

We use a platform called marquee at the moment.

00:09:10:00 – 00:09:10:18

Zack Oates

Yeah.

00:09:10:19 – 00:09:16:06

Shaz Khan

Yeah. So marquee innovation like together. It’s like, I don’t know the Dream Team.

00:09:16:08 – 00:09:39:12

Zack Oates

Yeah. It’s Stockton Malone, Jordan Pippen right. I don’t know who’s who but they’re great. We love our friends over marquee. In fact they’re the only company that we currently resell. And we’re pretty open about that when we talk about our review. Management services is powered by marquee because they have such a great tool. And I can go out there and reinvent the wheel, or I can get some really cheap solution and slap it in there.

00:09:39:12 – 00:09:58:05

Zack Oates

But we wanted it to be something that works. And so yeah, we also use marquee and they’re amazing. Great team, great support. So yeah, anytime I hear someone that like talks about it, I’m like, I’m assuming that they’re using marquee. But anyway, awesome. I think that’s so great. And I think that what you’ve talked about and the things that you’re doing are amazing.

00:09:58:05 – 00:10:04:15

Zack Oates

And I’d love to just ask you, when it comes to aviation, how has aviation been helpful for your brands?

00:10:04:17 – 00:10:23:18

Shaz Khan

Yeah. Great question. I think before aviation things were just disjointed. I knew I mean, first and foremost, the impetus has to be there on on the part of leadership of a restaurant brand for them to want to listen. I know we’re talking about listening a lot, right? Like actively listening. But even when you want to, it’s like, okay, how do I do this?

00:10:23:22 – 00:10:55:23

Shaz Khan

Right? And some point of sale manufacturers offer tools to be able to get that gas feedback, we’ll call it. There are other third party tools available to acquire that, but then getting data from multiple sources and having it live in multiple places across different databases, call it, then that’s a task in and of itself, to be able to aggregate that and put it all together and make sense of it and interpret it into some kind of actionable item so that you can actually derive what your customers are saying at large or issues that need to be addressed, challenges that are being posed.

00:10:56:03 – 00:11:17:02

Shaz Khan

And so ovation provides that it consolidates everything into one place, gives us an analytics dashboard, allows us to see in the form of both a word cloud and graphs and numbers and text, just what our customers are saying and where the opportunities of improvement are, what locations they’re at, what time of day they’re at. That consolidation is massive.

00:11:17:06 – 00:11:22:22

Shaz Khan

I’m all about efficiency, and ovation has made that process efficient. Yeah, that was not a sales pitch.

00:11:22:22 – 00:11:41:04

Zack Oates

No, no I love I love hearing that because we always talk. Innovation is we are where great restaurants get better. And to your point of like the leadership has to be on board. You have to actually want to hear if I’m talking to someone and I’m saying I talk to my wife every Sunday and ask her, hey, what’s something I could do to improve?

00:11:41:06 – 00:12:00:18

Zack Oates

And if she tells me something and I don’t do it, and then every single week she’s telling me the same thing, it’s like she’s going to eventually learn. I just don’t want to listen. But that’s how you build these relationships, because we all know that we’re not perfect, but we’re so afraid to hear why. But the beautiful thing is, is if you ask it frequently, right?

00:12:00:18 – 00:12:27:03

Zack Oates

And normally in marriages with a lot of my friends, like the only time they ask that is like in marriage counseling, that’s like a big thing. But if you ask it every week and then it’s little things and then it helps just kind of like course correct with ovation. Right? It helps you kind of see the real picture of what’s going on, as opposed to getting a really detailed list from a couple of people, or just kind of closing your eyes and hoping you’re doing the right thing, which sometimes feels easier, right?

00:12:27:04 – 00:12:28:00

Zack Oates

Yes.

00:12:28:02 – 00:12:51:09

Shaz Khan

I can understand why that may be the case, but it honestly no longer does it feel easier. Like the first question in my mind, whether it’s a restaurant or just in my personal life too. It’s right. It’s that very question of what is it that I’m not considering? What I do not know where am I blind spots? And how can I ask others to help me identify those in a fashion that lets them know that I truly want to offer that to them, and I want to be better, right?

00:12:51:09 – 00:13:11:10

Shaz Khan

I want this brand to be representative of that kind of psyche of we’re looking to be better. We want to improve, we want to be the best. And to do that, we can’t just make our own assessments and assumptions on what that looks like in the end, because that would be fluid, too. That might change over time. I’d rather take it from the customers and say, where can we improve?

00:13:11:13 – 00:13:34:11

Shaz Khan

What do you like? What don’t you like? And in the process, let them know, like that’s a great idea, for example. But we’re just not there yet. And that transparency, being able to have those conversations, it creates trust. I mean, I trust somebody that’s telling me what time it is with them, right? Versus somebody who’s telling me everything’s all good and great and my experience is telling me otherwise.

00:13:34:11 – 00:13:39:09

Shaz Khan

So we’re managing expectations by being that transparent.

00:13:39:11 – 00:13:40:10

Zack Oates

I love that.

00:13:40:12 – 00:13:48:04

Shaz Khan

That managing those expectations. If we close that gap between reality and that expectation, that’s where we want to live. Right there.

00:13:48:06 – 00:14:04:08

Zack Oates

I think that’s spot on. And I think it makes, makes a ton of sense. And as I look at what things are operationally, because, you know, you’re a man of efficiency, are there any things that ovations allowed you to change in the last year about operations that you didn’t know about beforehand?

00:14:04:10 – 00:14:22:11

Shaz Khan

Oh, absolutely. I think as we’ve scaled, I myself personally have you lose a little bit of visibility into some aspects of your organization. It’s not like when you had one unit or when you were visiting the store frequently. And of course, you’re always going to look at things from the perspective of that. Your brain is kind of predisposed to.

00:14:22:11 – 00:14:42:08

Shaz Khan

So like I’m bringing like that engineer look to things and whatnot. Right? So for me personally too, it’s kind of given me some of that visibility back so I can notice things like, oh, that’s interesting. At 4 p.m. at this particular location, there is an increase or uptick in comments about temperature of the suit. Right. What’s going on there?

00:14:42:08 – 00:15:06:15

Shaz Khan

Is there a shift switch that’s happening at that moment? Is there information that’s not being translated from the earlier shift to the later shift? How do we document that and identify where that opportunity is? So it’s giving us more opportunities to find solutions that we didn’t think of or we didn’t know are needed for that. I’m grateful. I mean, anytime I get more information, the better it is.

00:15:06:17 – 00:15:31:24

Zack Oates

That’s great. And again, I appreciate you being the type of restauranteur who really cares about the guest experience enough not just to invest in collecting it, but also taking action on it and making your brand better because of it. I mean, I was looking before our podcast and you had some stores or some months where you’re at 4.9 of your average online ratings.

00:15:32:01 – 00:15:49:19

Zack Oates

I mean, that’s bananas. It’s super cool to see. Really impressive. And again, a testament to what you’re doing. So one thing that I want to ask you last question is, I got second last technically, but who’s someone in the restaurant industry that we should be following? You know, a lot of people on these advisory boards and stuff.

00:15:50:00 – 00:15:52:12

Zack Oates

Who’s someone that you think deserves an ovation?

00:15:52:14 – 00:16:27:04

Shaz Khan

Honestly, it’s not a singular person. It’s the restaurant to our next door. I encourage every restaurant tour. Everyone who remotely touches hospitality cares about it as a customer or as a business owner to have conversations with their local restaurant owners. Because, I mean, first of all, they deserve a round of applause just doing what they do. Everything’s changing constantly from a regulatory and customer and environmental standpoint, but also it humanizes those conversations.

00:16:27:06 – 00:16:41:12

Shaz Khan

It allows people to empathize with challenges that they didn’t know existed, as well as understand what moves and motivates those business owners to do what they do. So from that perspective, I think that that’s who we should be talking to.

00:16:41:14 – 00:16:46:23

Zack Oates

Love that man. Well, chefs, where can people go to find and follow you and your brand’s.

00:16:47:00 – 00:17:05:00

Shaz Khan

Yeah, we’re on TikTok. So it’s underscore Tono. Amen. So that’s Tono. Tono and man is in Minnesota. We’re on Instagram with the same handle underscore tono. Amen. And you can find us on LinkedIn on our pizzeria plus cheesesteaks. Come check us out sometime. If you’re ever in Minnesota we want to see you love it.

00:17:05:04 – 00:17:14:10

Zack Oates

Well, Shaz, for using your engineering background to engineer an amazing restaurant brand. Today’s ovation goes to you. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m given ovation.

00:17:14:12 – 00:17:16:05

Shaz Khan

Thank you. Pleasure.

00:17:16:07 – 00:17:38:19

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 up.com.